Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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For a long time tl1e condition of the Harvard Law School has been almost a disgrace to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A school which undertook to confer degrees without any preliminary examina- tion whatever was doing something every year to injure the profession throughout the country and to discourage real students. So long as the possession of a degree signified nothing except a residence for a certain period in Cambridge or Boston, it was without value. The opposing view, for which proponents are still occasionally found, was supported upon the following policy considerations by the President of Harvard College in his Report to the Overseers: 'gThe1'e is a growing tendency which is to be deprecated-that of making a student's continued membership of College contingent on his annual examinations. In the judgment of the undersigned, every student who maintains a blameless moral character, attends College exercises regularly, and is not culpably negligent in the preparation of his lessons from day to day, should be permitted to remain undisgraced and unmo- lestcd. There are many cases in which there coexists with an average capacity of liberal culture an irremediable deficiency as to the memory of words and details. The undersigned believes that it is of positive benefit to a college class to have a certain proportion of members of the kind under discussion. Their defect of memory will always keep them near the foot of the class, and by occupying that position they sustain the self-respect and ambition of those next above them. LANGDELL 11870-18955 Wlien, in 1851, President Eliot was a junior in college, he heard the law talk of Christopher Columbus Langdell, then a student helping Parsons with his treatise on Contracts, and was convinced that he was listening to a man of genius. ln 1870, acting upon that early impression, he asked Langdell to leave his New York law practice and become the first Dean of the school. Witliin one year Langdell was using the advance sheets of his Cases on Contracts and substituting the Socratic for the Pump-and-Bucket method, Most of the students thought the new technique silly and stayed away from Lang- dell's lectures. What could be more ridiculous than asking students, who by hypothesis knew nothing about the subject, to express their views? The bar was hostile and, convinced that the stubbornness of Langdell would ruin the school, founded the Boston University Law School so that Bostonians could get a proper legal education. Langdell drew around him an able triumvirate. James Barr Ames, the first and greatest disciple, was appointed Assistant Professor directly following his student days, a revolutionary step. John Chipman Gray, an experienced prac- titioner, took over the property field. James Bradley Thayer, essentially a scholar, devoted his principal thought to Evidence and Constitutional Law. Langdell's ideas became articles of faith. Keener, becoming Dean at Colum- bia after a row with President Eliot on a matter of salary, installed the C388 system and caused a bloc of the faculty to secede and form the New York Law School QCf. Boston Universityj. Wigmore took the gospel to Northwestern. Others spread it elsewhere. AMES f1895-19101 There is a general agreement that Ames was the foremost teacher in the modern history of the school. As Dean he developed and consolidated what Langdell had begun. 14

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amenity with which he treats them and their faults. lt is told that on a wintry morning, as he stamped off the snow on entering the classroom, he said, Gentle- men, this is one of the days when 1 would rather facit per alium than facit per sef, lf this seems less than uproarious-we repeat, look into the countenance of that portrait, imagine him saying it, and we think you will warm to this man. Simon Greenleaf came from Portland, Maine but had the firm-set mouth, long nose and small, canny eyes which, since the Coolidge administration, have been considered typical of Vermonters. He was Story's full-time partner in the administration of the school. Greenleaf on Evidence was the first of the full- scale 'treatises to come out of the faculty. lt ran through sixteen editions, the last by Wig111o1'e in 1899, and was superseded only hy W'igmore's own treatise in 1904. Eight students attended Story's first lecture. One hundred and thirty bade Greenleaf good-bye. The steady upward progress of numbers seems to have reflected a similar development in the repute of the school. The 1ncubator-of- Greatness aspect began to appear. Charles Sumner, Richard Henry Dana, William M. Evarts, a11d James Russell Lowell all sat at Storyls feet. The school also produced Rutherford B. Hayes, who, if not the greatest president, was still a president. PARKER, PARSONS AND WASHBURN C1848-18701 .loel Parker resigned as Chief .lustice of New Hampshire to become Story's successor. It had been said of him by a member of the New Hampshire bar, 'sludge Parker can afford to be obstinate better than most men, for he is almost always right. He was none too happy in Cambridge. Langdell and Holmes both found him inspiring, but the rank and tile took a different view. Said one of l2llCl11Z l HHe was precise, minute and involved to the point of obscurity. If a single step of his logic was lost by the listener, farewell to all hope of following to the conclusion. He could no more give a comprehensive view of a whole 'topic than an oyster, busy in perfecting its single pearl, can range over the ocean floor. Vlfhilc at the outset Parker would gladly have gone back to New Hampshire, on his hands and knees if necessary, he seems later to have effected a rapproche- ment with the life of the school without yielding his intellectual austerity. Theophilus Parsons, a portly man of ruddy cheeks and merry eye, had the power of reaching students' minds. uOf all the professors, the most valuable to me, said .loseph H. Choate. Parsons on Contracts was the second of the great treatises, remaining current through nine editions, the last in 1904. Emory lvashburn had been the leading practitioner in W01'CCSIC1' County and then Governor of Massachusetts, he was appointed to the faculty at the age of fifty-five. He was one of the earliest students H8201 of Asahel Stearns, yet he is linked to the present by having instructed, in his last year, Louis D. Brandeis. Five years after he came to the school Wlashburn on Real Property took its place beside Greenleaf and Parsons. It too remained current well into the twentieth century. He was a distinguished lecturer, noted for his genial courtesy. His portrait, also in the Langdell Lobby, shows how a professor of property should look. During these years a great academic issue came to a head: Should all who resided at Cambridge for a year and paid their tuition he given a degree, as heretofore, or should examinations be instituted with a view to measuring performance but also with the necessary by-product of academic casualties? The American Law Review took one side of this controversy: 13

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The pattern of tl1e school became set in the major particulars of substan- tial entrance requirements, an elaborate curriculum, three years of study, and severe examinations. On tl1e eve of the twentieth century the faculty voted to admit a woman student, but tl1e Corporation vetoed the proposal. POUND AND BWEALLISTON fl910-19361 At the dinner tendered to Beale and Williston ill the year of their seventy- fifth birthdays Pound christened the era of their long professorships with their names in composite. But the Dean's generosity must not obscure the fact that, first of all, it was the era of Pound of the prodigious energy, memory and versatility. Sociological Jurisprudence is as closely tied to Pound as the Case Method to Langdell and is as universally accepted, dealing, with the substance of the law, rather than pedagogy, it had an even more important influence. As the faculty grew larger two tendencies developed. First, the familiar names crossed the lines of successive deanships-for instance, Williston served with Langdell, Ames, Thayer, Pound, and Landis. Second, specialization became increasingly the rule-Beale in Conflicts, Williston in Contracts, Scott in Trusts, Chafee in Equity, Frankfurter in Public Law. During Pound's deanship the physical plant of the school reached its present state. Austin Hall had been built in 1883, the original wing of Langdell in 1906, the other two wings in 1927. THE SEVENTH AGE C1936 ........ J James M. Landis provided a rather intermittent deanship for ten years. Erwin N. Griswold succeeded him in 1946. How will this period be judged in the Year Book of 1997? Here are two of the many possibilities. First possibility. f'Griswold found, at the start of his regime, an eminent and experienced faculty inadequate in numbers to cope with the tremendous demands which returning veterans placed upon the school. Seizing the oppor- tunity, he brought to the school a group of vigorous young men variously experienced in practice, government and other institutions of legal education. The school moved to new heights of accomplishment, adapting itself to the h nffinv needs of the times and both as an institution and through its gradu- c a g g , ,, ates, participating in the upward surge of American democracy and world government. Second possibility. On his accession to the deanship Griswold faced a sorry situation. Attracted by the past glories of the school, still symbolized by Scott and Chafee, hordes of students stood at the gates. Within the walls a strange assortment of pedants milled about. Landis had sought to bolster the in-bred faculty with acquisitions from the provinces, with none too happy results. Jurisprudence reached its nadir when one professor published an entire volume reducing the substance of the law to two words: ls and 'cOught. The ancient dignities were sore affronted by another instructor whose only claim to distinction was a moderate, if eager, facility with the piano accordion. Kill-or- cure measures being indicated, Griswold recruited out of the armed forces a group of hopeful but inexperienced youngsters, two of whom actually wore 'ccrew haircutsf' an adolescent tonsorial abomination of the day. The results of this gamble were what might reasonably have been expected. Griswold died a broken man in his early fifties. The renaissance of the school, as is well known, awaited the appointment of Eli Howard Sterling, the distinguished Yale alumnusf' While awaiting this verdict, look again upon those portraits-Story, Wash- burn, Holmes, Greenleaf, Brandeis, Ames. These were men. 15