Abstract: Francis Allen and I overlapped as members of the Michigan Law faculty in the 1962-63 academic year. It was much too short a colleagueship. But Frank hadn't gotten Chicago out of his system at that time, and I, a year after his departure, decided to follow the sun. (It took Frank a bit longer, apparently.) At all events, that year together at Michigan was the start of a friendship which has survived the separation of the intervening years. I became and remain a total and enthusiastic admirer of Frank Allen as a person and as a scholar, and of all that he stands for. To the shameless partisanship I bring to the task of penning these comments I offer these two pleas in abatement: one, that such is the inevitable fate of those who come to know him, and two, what I say here about him and his work has the redeeming virtue of being demonstrably true. I will not try to say all that deserves to be said about Professor Allen's many achievements. I rely on others to speak from firsthand experience to such facets of his excellence as his talents as a teacher, his contributions as dean of the Michigan Law School during some trying years, his success in leading a revision of the Illinois Penal Code. I will confine my observations to what I know firsthand his contributions to legal scholarship. Frank Allen is a towering figure in criminal law scholarship. The bulk and range of his bibliography and the close attention paid his work by those who labor in these fields are sure indicators of his power and influence. Precisely because of his stature some comment is called for on the style of his work and the qualities of mind and heart which it reveals; on the nature of his intellectual contributions and how they came to have the impact they did. Allen is a master of the essay form. He has done some work in the classic law review article mode, in chronicling the Supreme Court's development of the constitutional law of criminal procedure.1 But the