Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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some reduction in the number of students per faculty member, and many of the fac- ulty are perhaps more approachable than was the case in some years of the past. With the coming year, the new dormi- tory and dining room project will be an actuality, and that should go far toward developing a sense of unity among the stu- dents, and toward enhancing their feeling of being an essential part of the School. The new buildings will also have meeting rooms and common rooms, which will pro- vide added facilities for law club work, group meetings and other activities. No longer, I think, can it be said that the Harvard Law School has no interest in its students as individuals. That was never true in the past, but was doubtless some- times felt. It is true that the School has counted on self-reliance and individual re- sponsibility among its students, and it is hoped that that will remain its general pol- icy. But the School, with the generous aid and support of the University and of its a- lumni, has now taken significant steps to im- prove its facilities and modes of operation in areas in which there has been felt a lack. This was not done just to ease the lot of students. It includes no luxuries. The purpose of all of these developments has been to increase the educational facilities and opportunities of the School. The years to come will disclose the fruits of this program. A -nz , , 4. Development of effective research ac- tivities. The Harvard Law School has al- ways conducted research. Over the years much work of great importance to the law and to the country has come from its halls. Its faculty members as individuals have written many books, have drafted many statutes, have worked for many private and governmental organizations on tasks which had for their basic objectives the improve- ment of the law. In recent years, however, the needs and opportunities in the field of research have developed and changed. Twenty years ago many of the faculty were working on the Restatements of the Law. That was a new sort of undertaking, although it was still basically a library job. But it did involve the coordinated work of considerable groups of people. In the intervening years, at least two further research projects have been conducted under the auspices of the School. One was the important Research in Inter- national Law, of which Professor Hudson was the director. The other is the exten- sive work in criminology and juvenile de- linquency which has been done at the School for the past twenty years under the direction of Professor and Mrs. Glueck. Significant as this work has been, we have so far made scarcely a beginning on what ought to be done. The School should have a regularly established Division of Research, with a Director of Research who would spend all his time and energy on the research activities of the School. It should have a number of large scale research proj- ects under way at once. It should have the personnel and the facilities to under- take independent investigation of important problems where law plays a prominent role. It should be developing revisions of statutes in many fields, and making a constant pos- itive contribution to the improvement of our law. Only one who has actually cn- countered the problems in this field will know what a difficult task this is. But it is clearly a task of first importance. And it is clearly a proper, indeed, an essential, task for a law school. S. Contiuualfion and development of ser- vice to the public. Out of an effective Division of Research will come the means

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means completed. The changes reflect a change in the position and function of law- yers in the community. At one time they were primarily family solicitors and forensic advocates, and legal education was designed for fitting men to perform these tasks. These functions are still performed by law- yers, and they must not be ignored in train- ing. But lawyers today are also extensively engaged as business advisers, and have to deal constantly with many aspects of gov- ernment regulations not even thought of a few decades ago. To meet these new demands, new subject matters have been added to the curriculum, old courses have been adjusted, often at great pain, to make way for the changes, new materials have been developed, and new teaching methods experimented with. There is clearly a ferment in the faculty on all of these matters, and out of it will come more developments and more changes-which will surely make the next half century of legal education as interesting as the last has been. 2. Faculty. The next area of develop- ment is closely related to the last. There have already been significant developments cent larger than it was before the war. Not more. During the past year we have under- taken the Teaching Fellow program, with marked success. Counting the Teaching Fellows, our faculty is now about fifty per cent larger than before the war. Not counting the Teaching Fellows, nearly half of our faculty have been appointed within the past ten years, most of these since 1945. In making faculty selections, many fac- tors have been considered. Although the faculty is now perhaps as young in average age as it has been for many years, it stands rather high in practical experience. Some of this experience has been obtained in gov- ernment serviceg several of the new faculty members have had substantial experience in private practice of the typically strenuous sort. We may expect that new faculty members will continue to be persons who combine intellectual and teaching capacities with the ability to keep their feet on the ground. One of the factors which limits develop- ment of a faculty is, of course, the matter of finances. I think quite a case can be made for the proposition that Law Schools have long been among the stepchildren of education. To put a rather striking ex- ample-the Harvard Medical School spends not twice as much per student each year as is spent at the Law School, but seven times as much! Of course the problems are some- what different, but not that much differ- ent. Ways must be found to make it plain that adequate work in the fields of law and the social sciences generally requires finan- cial support of a sort far beyond that which has hitherto been available. Prograss of this sort may be slow, but I think we can count on developments over the years to come which will mean a continued strength- ening of the faculty and enlargement of its activities and resources. 3. Amelioration of the lot of students! The present generation of students will probably never admit it, but we have sof- tened up considerably in the past few years. Some of us still have a nostalgic yearning for the days when men were men. But they are apparently gone for good, and there will not be too much wailing at the change. The development of the highly selective admissions system has greatly re- duced the first year failure rate, and fail- ures at the end of the second and third years have all but disappeared. The Teach- ing Fellow program with its system of Group Work performs a great service in assisting the first year students at what has been regarded as their most confused and uncertain period in Law School. There is

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of meeting one of the School's obligations which has not been met directly, except occasionally for many years. The School has an obligation to its community. It has made some contributions to its city and state, but not in any consistent way. In the l930's, Dean Landis was instrumental in getting the Plan E form of government adopted in Cambridge. And Professor Amory's current service on the Cambridge School Committee is welcomed by the Law School. But it has been a long time since the School has clone much for the state. For many years, faculty members have been engaged from time to time in impor- tant services for the Federal Government. It is hoped that it will be possible for this to continue. But the School should, too, be a greater factor in its own community than it has been. It is hoped that there will be developments, through the Division of Research and otherwise, which will make this possible. 6. A School of World Law. There is an- other area in which the School has an op- portunity and an obligation. We have here magnificent facilities. Due to the thought and care of our predecessors, we have a library of law of the world which cannot be matched elsewhere. We are already a center for students from many countries, and our graduates may be found all over the world. But we are essentially a common-law law school. As far as our regular under- graduate work is concerned, that is, of course, as it should be, and as it will no doubt remain. But we could do much more with foreign students, and with our own students who have special interests in for- eign law and foreign affairs. Given the means fand we have already much to con- tribute ourselves Q, we could develop in Cambridge a School of World Law which might come to have great significance. It might have a student body of about two hundred, equally divided between graduates of American law schools, and foreign stu- dents with equivalent training in their own countries. This group could engage in gen- eral study of the world's legal systems, and in intensive work on special problems of interest to particular students, including the problems of world commerce and trade, as well as the structure of world organi- zations, and the development of machinery for the maintenance of world peace. Such a project would require a consider- able sum of money from one point of view, though a very small sum compared to what is spent now for past wars and current de- fense, and a very small sum in comparison to its potential usefulness. Such a develop- ment cannot now be outlined in detail nor can it be said when it will begin. But a de- velopment along these lines in association with the Harvard Law School, seems inev- itable if the School is to meet in the future the great standards set in the past. Such is a sketch of developments at the Harvard Law School. The future looks good to me. At least there is a lot to do, and we have many of the facilities for do- ing it. The developments outlined are squarely in the tradition of the Harvard Law School, which has long been a pioneer in legal education and in the development of the law. In the years to come many mem- bers of the faculty may have to revise their lectures. It will not be the first time that has happened.