Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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of Langdell south of the present west wing was completed and occupied. E more significant for the long run was n the vcehange which came in underlying faculty attitudes around the turn of the century. The United States was moving from a law primarily decisional to a law of statutes. Dean Ames, a wise, learned and good man, then the worldls most distinguished university scholar in the field of negotiable obligations, wrote an article in the Harvard Law Review for 1900, which carried un- intended overtones of the non-involvement of academic jurists in practical legislation. The Ne- gotiable Instruments Law had been drafted, ap- proved by the Commissioners on Uniform Laws and adopted in four States, Dean Ames told his readers, before he saw it! At that late day the Dean suggested how he thought it should have been drafted in the first place. But the function of professors of law, including the faculty of the Harvard Law School, to aid in shaping the new statutory law was rapidly developing. This func- tion came to the fore with Samuel Williston's activities in drafting other uniform statutes con- cerning commercial law. Dean Ames himself took up the Work as a Uniform Law Commissioner for Massachusetts. The School's continuing increase in students ,,l...a......'..w-nf-1 1 l 1 i i 17

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ld a coming need for much more teaching, ipoiifticn the fall of 1909 the faculty still had only nine professors of law. Dean Ames fell gravely ill and Austin Wakeman Scott, who had graduated the proceeding June, was called back to the School in December of that year as an instructor to take over the Dean's courses in pleading aud CQUHY- Dean Ames died in January, 1910 andgin May of that year Austin Scott became an .assistant pro- fessor. The youth of the School is exemplified h f t that in 1966 Dane Professor Emeritus b Szotttestiiiz comes daily to his .office in Laggdil and is working hard at new editions of his oo s on trusts and on the American Law Institute Reslatement of the Conflict of Laws. For a brief time, from 1910 to 1915, Ezra d h' . He was an Ripley Thayer held the eans ip eminent alumnus of the School, a scholarly and charming member of the Boston Bar. Following Dean Thayer's untimely death in 1915 Professor Roscoe Pound became Dean in his place. Pound served as Dean from 1916 to 1936, and in 1964 died as a University Professor emeritus. Poundis deanship began just before World War I reduced the School's student population to a handful of men all unfitted for field service. A large number of the professors left for government service of one sort or another. The armistice of 1918 brought a rush of students back to the Schoolg by 1925 the original Langdell Hall was much too small to take care of the load. In 1926-1927 the building was completed on a plan much larger than the original design of 1905, the west wing was added and the northerly wing extended con- siderably farther than the architect had originally contemplated. The School continued to grow- by 1930 it had almost as many students as it now has, though the faculty was only half as large, Dean Pound's administration reflected a num- ber of significant movements in American law, His main theoretical commitment was to uS0Ci0- logical jurisprudence -the idea that the law ex- isted to serve the best interests of society and that man should mold it to serve those interests. Today few people remember the day when a number of otherwise sensible lawyers thought of law as a brooding omnipresence which tran- scended man's poor powers, and-indeed practical legislators had for many generations before 1920 been giving their constituents what they wanted, without realizing that such legislation called for any theoretical justification. Pound's Scope and Purpose of Sociological Jurisprudence in the Harvard Law Review of 1911 and 1912 showed that theory was catching up with practice. An- other effort occurred in the field of penal law. During the 1920's the United States sensed a deep dissatisfaction with the administration of criminal justice. The Law School became con- spicuously active in this field, in the early 1930's it established a Criminal Law Institute as part of the School. The Institute discontinued its work after a brief time, but today's Professor Emeritus Sheldon Glueck, and his wife Eleanor, have car- ried forward from that day to the present the Institute's concept of criminal law as a study to which scientific methods can be applied. The last days of Dean Pound's administration Lunizdcll Hall-Built about 1906 the right wing contemplated by the original ' ' ' j I . . . 1 A Q j plan had not been bu lt when this picture was 1-lk' 11- T111 111111111112 C0111111110d the bulk of the library with adjoining reading rooms, lecture rooms, and the offices of the faculty. .-- 4...--I ,,. ...J , The lu tale West vs saw 1 the l aid Deal prol mov 1611 llllll l lati ini C01 W 01 lt it lt 18

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its Dean. He had problems to cope with. The student population was about fifteen hundred. HIS faculty numbered forty teachers in all-thirty of professorial rank, two Visiting Lecturers, seven Lecturers, and the Erza Ripley Thayer 'Teaching Fellow-about one teacher for every thirtyiseven students. The 1936 School had nearly tW1Ce as many students for each teacher as we have in 1966, with 81 teachers for about 1700 students. A joint faculty-student survey of student opimon in 1935 had disclosed some discontent with things as they were, courses were not interesting enough, individual students had too little opportunity to engage in research and writing, the life of the law student was drab and dispiriting compared to life of the Harvard undergraduate in the then-new Houses. As always, famous veteran professors were approaching the end of their teaching days, and Dean Landis had to find brilliant young successors. To cope with his tasks, the new Dean had available a total annual income for the School of about one-fifth that of 1965-66-much less, even allowing for the 1966 diminished value of the dollar. And the University carried the Law School as debtor to its parent for a million and a half dollars, the still unpaid balance of the cost of completing and expanding Langdell H311 in 1927. The new Dean wound up his Washington duties and took the lead in coping with the School's tasks. He recruited a number of new junior pro. fessors who are now some of the faculty's seniors, Under his leadership began the program which now calls for a third year thesis Calthough we avoid the termj as a requirement for a degree, The generosity of the School's noted alumnus Henry L. Stimson brought the Root Room in 1938, providing for students a common-room as beautiful as any, anywhere. Careful management permitted the School in Landis' first year to con- tinue the wise enlargement of the library collec- tion and still pay 342,000 on the Langdell Hall debt and end with a small annual surplus. The faculty understood and cooperated. It was an era of advance and good feeling. Two and a half years after Dean Landis took up his duties, war broke out in Europe. For seven years it deeply affected the Law School. 1940 brought partial mobilization in the United States, The International Legal Studies Building was completed in 1959. Of modem design, it blends easily and naturally into itsiolder surroundings. Shown below is the has-relief by Constnntino Nivola which occupies at wall in the lobby Just outside of the ILS library. 'lr' UF? we Q .f 1, p ,ft we 1 , 1 1 su , . . y W :, I i ,D , I, VV' by 'A 'f'1 if 'I W ' ' . , is . , 't , A gg 9 , ' , , Q 2 Il , 4-L. K, I A-1 if . . u gs, - f ' 1 . 2 3: . 'I . l , . , gi - ' .F . 1 , Q, .?' All the If Buildll so 5 Lansd tunnel trance that t an 0f the ll the W The bridge Pearl the v to W lense Midt the