Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

Page 16 text:

, 1 5 '-Q2 , ., 4'7 -, ' s ,.WS1:ZI fTa.z3lZj 5 v - .-5235327111 an g' ' ' ' K 'Qvf fjr?Lf?'i , ... J n. --.IQ1t'e x F11 . '-.-.K-'-ii' -.'ff 'fi . .,.a....,Mrg if I forty-five for a period of twenty-five years, it was apparent by the late 1840's that a third pro- fessor was necessary. After seeking in many places and trying a number of disappointing nominees, the Corporation appointed a former governor of Massachusetts, Emory Washburn, as Lecturer in Law in 1855. A year later Harvard made him a University Professor of Law. The name of Professor Washburn's professorship was changed to the Bussey Professorship in 1862. , -Q X' ?'f1g5'52-Ike 1 : 53- 1 if' aa 'z 'Z if , .Aff-,,g,a, ug I JA, f.,g-1,3 Li-ag-5 . Q, ,..,.,,ft. ,-. i . an .'A?gvf sf ,A 5: gs 2 , V , . Y 'fn,4,wefT?'Mfg 2' l in Tag. Three Libraries-T0 the left, the working library in Dane Hall, below the Austin reading room Know the Ames Courtroomj and on the opposite page, the current li- brary in Langdell Hall. These three, Parker, Parsons, and Washburn were good men and conscientious teachers. No one of them was another Story. They were not inno- vators, and for many successive years their an- nual reports on the Law School consisted of statements that during the year no changes had been made and that therefore the report of the previous year was incorporated by reference. Despite a regulation adopted by the President and Fellows that the Law School approve degrees 'I4

Page 15 text:

A . U. i af 'f an '01 1-a .1747 4 3 l Lhelaw Webber, ae county stone's rr law Coke fomis. an in JIUICS. t pro- rd I0 f all 1 law :cted the gold 3 of the tally and. PHY pon tum the lish est ns, 53 -wi, set up America's first professorship of law, a chair of Law and Policen, in 1779. George Wythe, distinguished judge, was the first pro- fessor of the new chair and in 1779-80 Captain John Marshall, on leave from active duty, got his only formal instruction in law from Professor Wythe at William and Mary. In 1784, Judge Tapping Reeve of Litchfield, Connecticut, es- tablished a remarkably successful private law- school in that village, which in forty years of life gave professional training to more than a thousand men, 16 of whom became United States Senators, 50 Congressmen, 40 Justices of higher State courts including 8 Chief Justices, 2 Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 10 Gover- nors, and 5 Cabinet members. In 1790 the college of Philadelphia, later the University of Pennsyl- vania appointed as professor of law James Wilson, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Three years later Columbia ap- pointed James Kent professor of law. Yale es- tablished such a professorship in 1801. All these college and university professorships of law, like the Vinerian Chair at Oxford, were intended at least as much for the non-professional education of citizen leaders as for men who intended to practice law. Meantime from the 1780's on suggestions were made for establishment of an law-professorship at Harvard. Isaac Royall made the most effective such suggestion, for in his will he gave to Harvard at his death in 1781 a substantial gift of western Massachusetts lands to support a professorship of law or Physick and Anatomyf, Royall had been a prominent and prosperous public man in prerevolutionary Massachusetts. Allied by mar- riage with the Cambridge Vassalls, he was a na- tural Loyalist. In April, 1775 he left his Medford home to take refuge with General Gage's forces in Boston, went, like other Loyalists, to Nova Scotia for a while, and then went to England with his daughter, her husband and children, there he died. Many men's feelings in colonial America were bitter against Loyalists, and Harvard found that obtaining the benefit of Royallls testamentary gift was a slow business. In 1795 the University sold for 32,000 a tract of seven or eight hundred areas, more or less, in 'fthe Township of Granby formerly known by the name of South Hadley in the County of Hampshire. In 1808 and 1809 Harvard sold two other parcels for 5837.90 and S100. These sums, and the reinvested interest on it 3' Dane Hall-As it a eared for 1882, when it was built, until about 1845, when the addition shown on the PP next page was made in the rear.

Page 17 text:

Iempt, mder. :ssafy ?8l an h are f law ll for SPru- 'ofeg. Har. 70r3. A r -U.. , fXw,....? 1. r. - K.: gg-I V fx Ref . .Nl ' 1 . 3 ' ,Q . ,- Q .4 ly 1 - 1 li i 'ii-, 1 .,-Ji. nt- lg .gd iv . ., , ar r 1 1 .-.,g gl! . Z -.nw MM! .,.-3,5 OI' u- Hg nd 5- ie of rl- ie better education of young men destined to that D profession,- 1. That some Counsellor, learned in the law, be elected to be denominated University Professor of Law, who shall reside in Cambridge, and open and keep a school for the instruction of gradu- ates of this or any other university . . . 412. That it shall be the duty of this officer, with the advice of the Royall Professor of Law, to prescribe a course of study, to examine and confer with the students upon the subjects of their studies, and to read lectures to them ap- propriate to the course of their studies, and their advancement in the science, and generally, to act the part of a tutor to them, in such man- ner as will improve their minds and assist their acquisitions . . . 4 6. As an excitement to diligence and good conduct, a degree of bachelor of laws shall be instituted at the University . . f' For the new University Professor of Law Ca University Professor was then any professor not holding a name chair J, the Governing Boards chose Asahel Stearns, aged forty-three. He had just finished a term in the Congress and was District Attorney for Middlesex County, an of- fice he held along with his professorship. To the new Law School, the Corporation assigned three rooms on the ground floor of College House Number Two, a former residence a short distance north of the present site of the Harvard Trust Company, fronting easterly on part of the ir- regular paved area now called Harvard Square. From 1817 to 1829 Parker and Stearns ran the School and during that time taught 104 stu- dents who stayed for longer or shorter periods. Seventy-four of theseistudents already held under- graduate degrees. During those years only twenty- six men-one in four of those enrolled-took the LL.B. Nine took that degree in 1825, the peak graduation class, then attendance began to dwindle. Harvard University went into a general decline in the late 1820's, and the Law School, a novel experiment, was probably more vulner- able than other departments. On November 6, 1827 Isaac Parker resigned as Royall Professor, apparently after some difference with the Corpo- ration. President Kirkland resigned in 1828. Asahel Stearns struggled to keep the School alive, but in the Spring of 1829 only a couple of stu- dents remained. Then, again at the suggestion of the Corporation, Stearns too resigned leaving the School with no faculty. But help was at hand. That 'spring Josiah 1 Quincy, a noted Boston lawyer, former Congress- man and former Mayor of his city, was elected President of Harvard. Nathan Dane of Beverly, who had made a small fortune from his legal reference book called Abridgemenr of American Law, had offered the Corporation 510,000 to found a new Professorship of Law, he hoped that Mr. Justice Joseph Story of the Supreme Court would serve as the first professor under the new foundation. Harvard had been trying for years to get Story to join its faculty. Dane's gift was the final persuasion, and in June of 1829 Story was elected the first Dane Professor, a professorship which he was to hold simultaneously with his Associate Justiceship on the Supreme Court. As Royall Professor, to be on duty throughout Uni- versity term time and do drill duty , the Corpo- ration elected John Hooker Ashmun who had been teaching in a private law school in North- ampton. Story's high reputation and his brilliance as a teacher combined with Ashmunls steadiness in duty, immediately revived the Harvard Law School. In the fall of 1829 the registration rose to twice the peak of the Parker-Stearns years. The viability of the School has never been in any danger since Story's arrival. He began at once to write a series of useful and scholarly books on different branches of American law. During 16 years of leadership at the Harvard Law School and work on the Supreme Court of the United States, Story wrote treatises on many different as- pects of the law of commerce, on American con- stitutional law, on the conflict of laws, and on the law and practice of equity. When Professor Ashmun died less than four years after he had become Royall Professor, Simon Greenleaf, an able and established Maine practitioner was ap- pointed in his place. Until 1845 Story and Green- leaf were the regular faculty, helped out from time to time by young assistants holding brief appointments. The Story era was one of steady success for the School. In 1832 Nathan Dane provided the greater part of the cost of a new home for the Law School, a building resembling a small Greek temple which stood in the Yard about where the westerly end of Lehman Hall now stands. Har- vard named the new building Dane Hall. It was outgrown within a very few years after its con- struction, the student population under Story in- creased to nearly one hundred and fifty, and in 1845 the University had to add a transverse ad- dition at the back of Dane Hall. Story died quite suddenly in the fall of that year and Greenleaf resigned shortly after him. The Corporation, seeking for another Story, appointed Judge Joel Parker of New Hampshire as Royall Professor in 1847 and appointed Theophilus Par- sons, a Massachusetts practicing lawyer as Dane Professor in 1848. The School population fluc- tuated between a hundred and one hundred and 13