Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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the jurisdiction of federal courts. My first draft was a prosaic collection of the relevant materials. Hartls revision was the Exercise in Dialectici' published separately at my insistence. As always when he gave his mind to any problem, he illumined it as a giant search light sweeps away the darkness anywhere it casts its rays. I have had a large acquaintance in the law but no one I have known has more invited the appraisal that was made of Leonardo: nihil quad tetigit non ornavit. Henry Hart touched nothing that he failed to ornament, as those who worked with him throughout the years in many different fields will testify without reserve. Holmes somewhere said that men may be par- doned for the defects of their qualities if they have the qualities of their defects. Hartjs qualities had two signiticant defects: the first was his reluctance to participate in group endeavors to which he could make enormous contributions, as he did by his exceptional participation in the work of the American Law Institute as an Adviser in the drafting of the Model Penal Code and the Study of Division of Jurisdiction Between State and Federal Courts. The second was the incurable perfectionism that led him to withhold publication of highly accomplished and creative works that ought to have been shared with other minds, however much he might have added to their quality had nature been more generous in granting him the time. But that he had the quality of these defects cannot be doubted. His inner directed concentration on what he conceived to be his major Work and the punctilious standards he ap- plied in judging his own product cast an elevating influence that will endure. We may hope, nonethe- less, that now that he is gone the unpublished work on which he labored for so long, especially his Holmes lectures, will see the light of day. That plainly is a duty to the law. It is a sorry master whose work surpasses his judgmentg and that master tends toward the perfec- tion of art whose work is surpassed by his judgment. No less than the masters of the Renaissance, Hart's judgment surpassed his work, earning the gratitude of those he left behind. -Herbert Wechsler 5

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Austin Hall A law school, particularly an institution as un- romantic as Harvard, is hardly the place one would expect to find examples of architectural genius. For the most part, the Law School's buildings will not disappoint this expectation, but Austin Hall provides the refreshing exception that proves the rule. In February of 1881, Harvard commissioned Henry Hobson Richardson to design a building for its rapidly expanding law school. Richardson was at that time already recognized as Arnericals premier architect and had earlier provided the college with Sever Hall, a building far more austere than Austin was to be but exhibiting a craftsmanship in execu- tion that was to become one of Richardson's trade- marks. But the style of Sever was, in its austerity, as atypical for Richardson as its craftsmanship was typical. Following his graduation from Harvard Col- lege, Richardson studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. During his stay in France, Richardson was exposed to the Romanesque and Neo-Romanesque architecture that would assert itself as the principal recurrent theme in his own work. Many of his buildings became as castles, massive and weighty in their expression with intricate stone detail and care- ful attention to the choice of stone itself. Austin Hall, unlike Sever, displays all those characteristics, and adds to them an elegance in ornamentation as rare then as now. Richardsonis first conceptualization for Austin Hall was far more complicated in its groupings of mass than the present structure. The front of this early plan was complicated with three turrets of varying height, and the triple arch of the main entrance is found as a triple porch with the gabled roof more characteristic of Neo-Gothic than Upper: Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail, Pittsburgh. This dark castle is perhaps Richardson's finest building. Lower: The library reading room in the nineteenth century-gas lamps and oak desks where the Ames Courtroom now stands.