National University - Docket Yearbook (Washington, DC)

Page 20 text:

Message from the Chancellor F OR three years at National University you have sat at the feet of Judges and lawyers who are every day in the center of legal activities in the National Capital. They have striven to give you a conception, not only of the prin- ciples of the law, but concretely how the machinery of the courts and other legal tribunals function in the real work of the lawyer in applying those principles to the every day af- fairs of life. It has been our constant aim and purpose to be not merely a law school, but a lawyer’s school. The realiza- tion of your ambition here and the measure of success you have thus far obtained are at once a gratification and an in- spiration. We take just pride in the caliber and serious pur- pose of our students and graduates. We hope for you the greatest happiness and success in life, and that as an alum- nus of the University each of you will feel that we have a personal and growing interest in you and what concerns you will not be foreign to us. Your success will be our suc- cess. We have an abiding faith in you as we trust you have a deep affection for your Alma Mater. LESLIE C. GARNETT Chancellor

Page 19 text:

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

Page 21 text:

LESLIE C. GARNETT Chancellor