National University - Docket Yearbook (Washington, DC)

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Historical Sketch T HE year 1938 marks for National University the completion of that cycle of three score years and ten proverbially allotted as the span of the life of man. For it was in 1869 — four years after Appomatox, the year the victor of that field and an early Chancellor of this University, General Grant, was inaugurated as eighteenth President of these United States — that National was incorporated as an institution of higher learn- ing. It was the beginning of an era. “Reconstruction” was just getting under way; the nation was launching a series of expansions that have transformed America from an agricultural to primarily an industrial na- tion; the very same year the Union Pacific Railway linking the Atlantic and Pacific was completed. In those days Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase and his Associate Justices Nelson, Grier, Cliffor d, Swayne, Miller, Davis and Field, were busily engaged under the dome of the Capitol writing the famous “Wallace” Decisions. Things have changed in seventy years. Grant has long rested on Riverside Drive and his men in Arlington — and with them the problems and bitterness of “Reconstruction” days. A dozen Presidents have come and gone— among them Hayes, Garfield, Arthur and Cleveland, like Grant, honoring National by serving as Chancellors Ex-Officio. The nation’s population has grown one hundred million, from the thirty odd million of 1869; Washington from a sprawling town has become a great and beautiful metropolis ; and as the country and city, so too has grown National University. The student body, now a thousand strong hail- ing from every state of the Union, literally overflow the lecture halls, con- stituting one of the largest law schools in the world, exceeded in this country only by the Harvard Law School. Fortified by the high, yet practical aspects of legal education, always emphasized by National, its Alumni have sallied forth to achieve distinc- tion at the bar and on the bench, as well as in Congress, the Cabinet and other branches of public service. Under the guidance of its exceptional and distinguished Faculty, and with its unique facilities, National has come to be regarded as the outstanding institution in the field of Constitu- tional and Administrative Law, in its relationship to Government practice. In a word, with its cosmopolitan student body, its great Faculty and ideal location, its non-sectarian, independent and progressive standards, and its insistence on practical democracy in the legal profession, the school has indeed become a truly NATIONAL UNIVERSITY. Eleven