Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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Recently certain original documents relating to the founding of the Harvard Law School have been found in the University Library. They are: fll A draft of uStatutes of the Professorship of Law in Harvard University, dated April 17, 1816, and signed by Isaac Parker, then Chief Justice of Massachu- setts and Royall Professor of Lawg f2J a project for the establishment of a law school as a department of the University, in the handwriting of Chief Justice Parker, signed by him, and dated in another hand May 14-, 1817, tm the minutes of the Corporation authorizing the establishment of the Law Schoolgl fllfl a memorandum of a vote of the corporation on May 14, 1817, as to payment of tuition by law students, their privileges and duties, and disposition of the tuition fees, l51 a letter of Asahel Stearns to President Kirkland, accepting appointment as University Professor of Law, dated July 5, 181732 f61 a letter from Professor Stearns to President Kirkland enclosing a draft notice of the opening of the Law Schoolzi' and f7'l the draft notice referred to in Mr. Stearns's letter? It may be well to recall the circumstances under which Chief Justice Parker con- ceived the project of a law school as a department of the University. After, in consequence of the Revolution, American students ceased to go to London to the Inns of Court, an apprenticeship to a practising lawyer was the only form of train- ing for the profession. Certain lawyers in different communities got reputations as good teachers and their offices were resorted to by students. Some of these lawyers had many pupils and the first American law school, the school of Judge Tapping Reeve at Litchfield, Connecticut, conducted from 1784 till 1833, was in origin the ofiice of a practitioner in which the major activity had come to be teaching. ln the meantime another type of law' teaching had grown up parallel with the apprentice school. The Vinerian professorship at Oxford, from which came l3lackstone's Com- mentaries on the Laws of England, attracted the attention of Americans and was taken for a model in this country from the very beginning of independence. The professorship established for George Wythe at Vlfilliam and Mary in 1779-80, that for James Wilsori at the College of Philadelphia in 1790, and that for James Kent at Columbia in 1793 were set up on the plan of Blackstone's introductory lecture. They were lectureships for general audiences, not merely for law students. James Wi1soni's lectures were mostly taken up with political philosophy, were said to be addressed to gentlemen of all professionsf' and to aim at informing the legislator and the magistrate as well as the lawyer. Kent began by saying that he would set forth nothing ubut what may be usefully known by every gentleman of polite education. The professorship of law at Harvard endowed by the will of lsaac Hoyall fdied 17815, to which Chief Justice Parker was appointed in 1815, was of this sort. Thus there were general university lectures for the general student, the cultivated public, and the law student alike, and outside of educational institutions was an apprentice training in a lawyer's ofhce. 1These minutes are reproduced on page 18. 3Tl1is letter is reproduced on page 21. 'Thisleuer E reproduced on page 21. divas nodce E reproduced on page 23 f20l

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In the statutes governing the Royall professorship it is provided that the professor shall deliver not less than Hftcen lectures each year, that only the Hsenior class among the undergraduatesf' oflicers of the University, and resident graduates may attend the lectures gratis, but the professor may admit others, not resident at the College, on such terms as he may think proper. In his lectures the Professor was to uexhibit the theory of law in its most comprehensive senscg the principles and practical operation of the Constitution and government of the United States and this Cornmonwealthg a history of the jurisprudence of this state under the colonial and provincial as well as under the present govcrnmcntg an explanation of the principles of the common law of England, the mode of its introduction into this country, the sources and reasons of its obligation thereing also its various modi- Hcations by usage, judicial decision and statuteg and generally those topics connected with law as a science which will best lead the minds of the students to such inquiries and researches as will qualify them to become useful and distinguished supporters of our free systems of government as well as able and honorable advocates of the rights of the citizens. This is truly an ambitious project for a course of fifteen lectures. But it shows that Chief Justice Parker had two ideas in mind. On the one hand, he w'ished to give to those who were entering upon the study of law some- thing in the way of foundation and direction of their interests toward scientific thinking which they were not likely to get in a law ollicc, and, on the other hand, he sought to give to advanced students not preparing for the law and to the cultivated laity some idea of the law under which they lived. Thus far he was keeping to the Blackstonian model. A year later he seems to have felt that the University could do more for the law than merely provide such lectures as he had outlined. The school at Litchfield was being copied, as Blackstoneis chair had been. Why not combine the two in an academic law school? Such was, in effect, the project he submitted to the corpo- ration in May, 1817. Chief Justice Parker begins by saying his opinion as to what should be done is concurred in by friends of the University whom he has consulted. He asserts that the prevailing mode of legal education is necessarily defective, as it is obtained principally in the ollices of eminent practitioners, who are unable from their constant application to business to act the part of instructorsfi Hence he proposes a school uunder the immediate care of a learned lawyer w'hose attention would he principally directed to the instruction of his pupils. He then suggests seven points to be voted by the corporation ttwo more in the draft are crossed outj as follows: 1. That some ucounsellor learned in the lawn should be elected University Pro- fessor of Law and uopen and keep a school for the instruction of graduates of this or any other university and of such others as according to the rules of admission to practice as attorneys may be admitted after tive years of study in the ollice of a counsellor. 2. That the University Professor, with the advice of the Royall Professor, should I22l