Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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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

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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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'How a mlm P law, Win 'W cr- : and WSU. hen a Phi of Um fffical 1920 illled, ll for 2 and 1 the Owed An. law. Cd a 'Il of con- 930's PHI! work tritus Q31-. 1 the ly to ation WIS ru1fY- Q l . ...,... -.....m1u-411:11 S h l b 1995 the orginal Langdell Hall was much too small Th 't' fl9l8b ht .hftdtbkt th oog y - 1 1 e qrmlsme O mug a me O Su eng ac 0 e dc lan much larger than the original design of 19959 the to take care of the load. In 1926-1927 the building was complete on a p l ' H west wing was added and the northerly wing extended considerably farther than the architect had originally contemplated. saw a number of the members of the faculty leave the Law School temporarily or permanently to aid the Roosevelt administration and its New Deal. This tradition of governmental service by professors had begun as early as 1900, but the movement was much intensified in the later years of Roscoe Poundls deanship and has con- tinued ever since. In 1936 a brilliant young professor of legis- lation, James McCauley Landis, succeeded Pound in the deanship. Landis had been one of the most committed activists of the faculty who went to Washington to help the Roosevelt administration. On October 8, 1933 the President appointed Landis a Federal Trade Commissioner, in the following July, Roosevelt appointed him a mem- ber of the new Securities Exchange Commission, of which Landis became Chairman for two years. Meantime Harvard carried him on leave. Landis' Washington days made him a devout convert to faith in administrative discretion as the cure for governmental ills. His book The Administrative Process, published after his return to Harvard, demonstrated his intellectual brilliance and his remarkable grasp of the intricacies of national government. At the same time it showed his capacity to shut out from his mind the possibility that power is a heady thing, and that the political process can as easily produce unfortunate ad- ministrators as it can create any other sort of unfortunate public servant. But in 1936 James Landis had to his credit all the qualities needed to carry the School for- ward. His academic experience was brilliant, his writing was literate and forceful. He foresaw the increasing role of government in American life. He understood the theory and practice of adminis- tration, and he had known the Harvard Law School for fifteen years as a student and as a teaching professor. The School welcomed him as 19