Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

Page 12 text:

.,-T.--rw James Ban Ames Drill N95-l9l0 1- 1' -' f 1'- la ir li, f IS, ,'l! :',. A t V,,, : 1 - 1 4 : ' 1 K i l P 1 S. l 5 James McCauley Landis Dean 1936-1946 , . .SJJ ! i , Erwin Nathaniel Griswold A Dean I946-Present T J- ww- sn:-f.:g1f:,...-3 any-,ggE1-ff-L 1 ki , f fx rr 'ff' ' spa.. 15 'sf ,lf 2,1523 5.91 '- ffg3,1fg'?a,yg ,I ,, s'ugsggvlsiwsefszxarsammass-z-swmmae-we-z:f'L: i Ll- . Q' l' o 11 wah.,-.K-f.---1------ ------1 .,..,,s.WY-.:...s....,... i.,,,,2, - iq I ? 4.3 , f. 1 I X 1 l 1 1 . 4 an i, ' 1 3 I . 1 lg 1, , 2 A 3 , 1 l ' 1 9 23 A W 4 1' E v 4 I i il . -, ,- I , 3 V ,...., 53 J . fs-gg if-' ' -ff7',r,wq4,1 -4-A .-H., , ' I Vff ,W---55 Lf.-1-.0 .A Ezra Ripley Thayer Dean 1910-1915 I Roscoe Pound Dean l9l6-N15 ngdell 1. 895, . 9

Page 14 text:

. I. IUR Tl! A1 IIT Pl' WIA' lmzztz' fy' SABLUEL WVEBBE it -1.fw.. slime . 'S x S amz fy' 75,1 rarity' ff c7Uffl5'ir161'lmUTQSl'tQ'i -nl, so xxx i if J kg. ' XX xx rf!! Kffhfflf Wliffifr E xxx KX f 2 X X 4 X X Thi- lloust- in which the School Began-Second College House, in which three rooms on the first floor were used for the Law S l't ll f 18l t 1889 h Da Hll b 'lt Th H ll th h fS lWbb .t-linol .uit is iiriirv rom 1 o .. w en ne a was ui , e ouse was origma y e ome o amue e er, Prof.-ssor .mtl l.itt-r President of the University, and was afterward bought by the college. The building at the left was the county court house, which stood on the site of the present building of the Harvard Cooperative Society in Harvard Square. propriate to start a history of England with the creation of the world. In England until 1753, and in the United States until 1779 there was no college or univer- sity offering systematic instruction in the common law. England, to be sure, for centuries had pro- vided students a sort of law-school in the Inns of Court. In America. apprenticeship to a prac- ticing lawyer was the only established training for the Bar: and where the master was himself well- read and attentive to his students this system of instruction was excellent. But the student was bound to suffer from a lack of proper intro- ductory books. and was probably destined to some neglect from a lawyer-master busy about his practice. Then in 1753 young Dr. William Blackstone of All Souls. Oxford, was sadly disappointed when political influence gave the Regius Profes- sorship of Civil Law to a rival. Blackstone's friend Solicitor-General Murray Clater to become Lord Mansfieldl comforted him by urging that instead he undertake a course of lectures at Ox- ford on the common law, the result was an im- mediate and resounding success. Blackstone's pirated lecture-notes were sought by eager law students who had been drudging through Coke upon Littleton and copying dreary office forms. Blackstone, to protect his own work, began in 1756 to publish a yearly outline of his lectures. In the same year Charles Viner, to found a pro- fessorship of the common law bequeathed to Oxford a substantial fortune earned by an Abridgement , a sort of digest of English law which Viner had written. In 1758 Oxford elected Blackstone its first Vinerian Professorg in the 1760's he published his Commentaries which sold like hot-cakes in England and on this side of the Atlantic. In 1775, Edmund Burke told the English House of Commons that almost as many copies had been sold in America as in England. American professorships of law were promptly proposed, in 1777 the Reverend Ezra Stiles, soon to be President of Yale, drafted a curriculum for a professorship of law which he hoped the Connecticut General Assembly would establish at that University. But William and Mary College in Virginia, under Thomas Jefferson's urging,