Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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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

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, 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

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a ' .flijgrcz 4, The Austin Hall Steps about 1902, and opposite the same scene more recently. with the scientific process. He was convinced that the law could be treated as a science like the physical sciences, and that the materials for this science could be found in decided cases. To teach the science of the law he felt that students should go through a process comparable to that of young scientists in laboratories, that is to say, they should examine specific instances and derive from them general principles which would apply to other similar instances. To make this process possible, Langdell developed the first Casebook, a collection of decisions on the law of contract. He carried out his laboratory method by having the students read the cases in advance and discuss them in class by dialectic, rather than make notes on an expository lecture concerning general principles, which the professor had composed in advance. Thus began Langdell's version of the much dis- cussed case method. Classroom dialectic was at least as old as Story, and the study of cases in the School went back to its earliest day. Langdell's novelty was in the degree of independent responsibility which he left to the student to derive his own conclu- sions from informed observation of specific in- stances, observation corrected and made more acute by classroom discussion. Langdell's case method attracted so much attention that his ad- ministrative skills in reforming the Law School's curriculum and type of teacher have been to some extent obscured. With President Eliot's full support, Langdell began insisting that abler stu- dents be selected for admission even if this tem- porarily cut down enrollments. He insisted that students be examined for promotion or for gradu- ation, that the LL.B. course be extended from eighteen months to three years of residential study. Dean Langdell took another step which then ap- peared rashg he selected for appointment to the faculty of the Law School, again with President Eliot's cordial support, a brilliant young law stu- dent who had only just obtained his LL.B., James Barr Ames. Some devoted friends of the School were shocked at this departure from the practice of appointing only men established in practice or judges with years of experience. Ames was a devoted disciple of Langdell, and proved even better than Langdell at the case-method of teach- ing and at classroom dialectic. When Langdell re- tired as Dean in 1895, Professor Ames succeeded him in that office. Though Langdell probably exaggerated the applicability of the methods of physical science to the law, his conduct of the Law School was so remarkably successful that after the first few years, enrollments skyrocketed. Fortunately Lang- dell had foreseen this increase and with the help of a generous gift .of Edward Austin, Esq., of Boston, he had built Austin Hall. The architect was H. H. Richardson of Boston, who was de- voted to the neo-Romanesque style so notable in Austin and in Richardson's other work. By the end of Langdell's deanship in 1895, the School had a registration of 400 and its numbers were still rapidly increasing. The succeeding Ames deanship lasted until 1910. Dean Ames' admin- istration carried the Law School from its formative period into an institution much like the present. By 1904 the School had more than 700 students and Austin Hall was outgrown. The Corporation wisely foresaw that growth would continue, and its architects, planning Langdell Hall, arranged for a building which could then be partially built, and could later be expanded. In 1906 that part 16