Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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IN MEMURIAM Harvard Law Faculty Joseph warren 1876 : 1942 Binsepb iiaenrp Beale 1861 : 1943 QE11marh 39. warren 1872 : 1945 11811

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A Sketch of the History of Harvard Law Sehoolxei By Rorroe Pound With an unbroken continuity of operation as teaching school since 1817, the Harvard Law School is the oldest of the existing law schools in the United States. Before the Revolution a certain number of those who were preparing for the practice of law in America went to the Inns of Court. But mostly law students had a course of reading laid out for them by a friend or a preceptor, or underwent an apprenticeship in the office of a practitioner. It was not till the present century that apprentice training of lawyers became obsolete and the majority of those who came to the bar came to be school trained. The stages in the development of the Law School mark periods in American legal education, and correspond to well-marked periods in the history of American law. American law schools have a twofold origin: professorships founded in the latter part of the eighteenth century in imitation of Blackstone's chair at Oxford, and law ofhces in which the preceptorial function developed at the expense of law practice. The Harvard Law School derived from both. First as a point of origin is the Royall Professorship, provided for by the will of Isaac Royall fd. 1781j, but not established till 1815. Royall's will was executed in 1778, and to that extent he was a pioneer. But before his gift became available a number of professorships on the model of Blackstone's chair had been set up elsewhere. None survived the eighteenth century. The Royall Professorship, on the other hand, within two years became merged in the Harvard Law School, and has had a continuous existence from its foundation. In his inaugural lecture as Royall Professor, Chiefjustice Parker of Massachusetts expressed the hope that at some time in the future a school for the instruction of resident graduates in jurisprudence might be added to the professorship. For his was not a reaching chair. Like Wythe at William and Mary 0779-80j,James Wilson at the College of Philadelphia f1790j, and Kent at Columbia f1793j, he lectured to such college seniors, resident graduates, and occasional lookers-in from the local bar, as chose to hear him. A year later QMay 17, 18175 Parker laid before the Corporation a plan for a law school. It was adopted by a vote appointing Asahel Stearns University Professor of Law, who was to live in Cambridge and open and keep a school. He was to prescribe a course of study, confer with the students and examine them, read appropriate lectures, and act as a tutor. For this chair the school of Tapping Reeve at Litchfield, Connecticut, was the model as clearly as the Vinerian Professorship at Oxford was th model for Parker's chair. -I udge Reeve's school at Litchfield began about 1784. To the end it was an expanded law OFF1 ce. The students copied precedents of pleadings and of conveyances, and read such books as were at hand, exactly as did apprentices in lawyers' oiiices. The chief difference, aside from the greater number of students, was that, instead of occasional conferences between preceptor and student, the teachers dictated lectures which, before the days of many printed text books, were in effect text books of the law. The school which Asahel Stearns set up at Harvard in 1817 was of this sort. Yet in its possibilities it was much more. There had been professorships of 'Abridged by Professor Pound with permission of the Harvard University Press from his account, chap. xxx, The Law School, 1817-1929, in Morison, The Deifelopmefzt of Harvard Uniifwzrily Since lhe Inaugurullrm ufPre.ridef1l Eliot. IReprinted from the 1937-38 Harvard Law School Yearbook with substitution and additions of editor's notes. l20l