GU professor served up a heady mix of rigor and enthusiasm

Walter I. Giles's U.S. Constitution and Law class, which he taught at Georgetown University for more than 40 years, was considered an intellectual proving ground for future lawyers and legislators. Among his students was a young Bill Clinton, who considered Dr. Giles one of his favorite college professors.

That wasn't enough to keep the future president from catching a few winks during class one day.

Clinton, who had stayed awake the previous night, fell asleep as Dr. Giles was explaining how one U.S. Supreme Court ruling was written so clearly that it was easily understood, "unless, of course, you're from some hick town in Arkansas."

The Hope, Ark., native was jolted awake by the guffaws of his classmates, and, as Clinton wrote in his autobiography, he never fell asleep in front of Dr. Giles again.

Dr. Giles, long known as "Jack," died Oct. 9 of congestive heart failure at 89. He was a professor of government at Georgetown for 43 years before retiring in 1990.

Many of his students, including Clinton, regarded the constitutional law class, a course taken by most undergraduates interested in law school, as the most exacting of their sophomore year. Dr. Giles, an occasionally gruff Oklahoma native with a shock of red hair, did not coddle his students, and he expected them to treat his class like a law school seminar.

He locked the lecture hall door after five minutes to shut out tardy arrivals. Students had to stand when answering a question, and all exchanges with him started with "sir." If students were not prepared and wanted to avoid the humiliation of being called upon without an answer, they had to approach the professor before class began and plead "nolo contendere," or no contest.

Walter Irb Giles, a native of Hollis, Okla., was a 1943 graduate of the Georgetown's School of Foreign Service and later received a master's degree and a doctorate in government from the university.

A lifelong bachelor, Dr. Giles was said to have been married to the Constitution. But he often socialized with his favorite students, including Clinton, by inviting them to his house to watch Redskins games, sip Heineken and munch Triscuits topped with cheddar cheese and bacon.

His lighter side also made an occasional appearance in the classroom. Every spring, he gave the Madison Martini Lecture. He would stroll into the room with a portable bar -- glasses, tumbler, jigger, ice, Seagram's gin, Cinzano vermouth, olives -- and launch into the day's lesson: President James Madison's contribution to the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the system of checks and balances.

As Dr. Giles prepared pitchers of martinis, he explained how the ingredients -- the olive, the vermouth and the gin -- represented the three branches of government and the delicate balance between them. If one part is too potent, the balance would be destroyed, and the concoction ruined.

"Each True Believer of Martinis, including even your garden variety lush, is convinced that he knows how to make the perfect Martini," Dr. Giles would say, according to his script for the lecture. "When we move into the realm of this particular First Amendment freedom of expression and association, I am the authority, and my approach is an absolutist one, not a balancing of interests. Here, I am, indeed, your Perfect Master."

At the end of the presentation, Dr. Giles would invite a group of students to the front to join him in a toast.

"Gentlemen, to the Republic!" he declared as they downed their drinks. Then he would pass out martinis to the rest of the class -- his notes for the lecture included a recipe that made 128 drinks -- and offer a second toast.

"Gentlemen, confusion to the enemies of the Republic!" Dr. Giles said, in a toast attributed to various sources, including George Washington, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Frank Sinatra.

Dr. Giles expected much from his students but promised much in return. He prefaced every semester's thick stapled syllabus with a quotation from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo:

"In the end the great truth will have been learned, that the quest is greater than what is sought, the effort finer than the prize, or rather that the effort is the prize, the victory cheap and hollow were it not for the rigor of the game."