Classic history of Yale Law School. This book collects four classic studies that form a history of Yale Law School to 1915: The Founders and the Founders' Collection, From the Founders to Dutton 1845-1869, 1869-1894 Including The County Court House Period and 1895-1915 Twenty Years of Hendrie Hall. A fascinating collection, these essays are distinguished by their colorful anecdotes and careful use of archival sources. Introduction by Morris L. Cohen [1927-2010], Professor of Law, Yale Law School. Illustrated. Index.

The entity that became the Yale Law School started life early in the nineteenth century as a proprietary school, operated as a sideline by a couple of New Haven lawyers. The New Haven school affiliated with Yale in the 1820s, but it remained so frail that in 1845 and again in 1869 the University seriously considered closing it down. From these humble origins, the Yale Law School went on to become the most influential of American law schools. In the later nineteenth century the School instigated the multidisciplinary approach to law that has subsequently won nearly universal acceptance. In the 1930s the Yale Law School became the center of the jurisprudential movement known as legal realism, which has ever since shaped American law. In the second half of the twentieth century Yale brought the study of constitutional and international law to prominence, overcoming the emphasis on private law that had dominated American law schools. By the end of the twentieth century, Yale was widely acknowledged as the nation’s leading law school. The essays in this collection trace these notable developments. They originated as a lecture series convened to commemorate the tercentenary of Yale University. A distinguished group of scholars assembled to explore the history of the School from the earliest days down to modern times. This volume preserves the highly readable format of the original lectures, supported with full scholarly citations. Contributors to this volume are Robert W. Gordon, Laura Kalman, John H. Langbein, Gaddis Smith, and Robert Stevens, with an introduction by Anthony T. Kronman.

The study of legal history has a broad application that extends well beyond the interests of legal historians. An attorney arguing a case today may need to cite cases that are decades or even centuries old, and historians studying political or cultural history often encounter legal issues that affect their main subjects. Both groups need to understand the laws and legal practices of past eras. This essential reference is intended for the many nonspecialists who need to enter this arcane and often tricky area of research.

The development of the modern Yale Law School is deeply intertwined with the story of a group of students in the 1960s who worked to unlock democratic visions of law and social change that they associated with Yale's past and with the social climate in which they lived. During a charged moment in the history of the United States, activists challenged senior professors, and the resulting clash pitted young against old in a very human story. By demanding changes in admissions, curriculum, grading, and law practice, Laura Kalman argues, these students transformed Yale Law School and the future of American legal education. Inspired by Yale's legal realists of the 1930s, Yale law students between 1967 and 1970 spawned a movement that celebrated participatory democracy, black power, feminism, and the counterculture. After these students left, the repercussions hobbled the school for years. Senior law professors decided against retaining six junior scholars who had witnessed their conflict with the students in the early 1970s, shifted the school's academic focus from sociology to economics, and steered clear of critical legal studies. Ironically, explains Kalman, students of the 1960s helped to create a culture of timidity until an imaginative dean in the 1980s tapped into and domesticated the spirit of the sixties, helping to make Yale's current celebrity possible.

Harvard Law School is the oldest and, arguably, the most influential law school in the nation. U.S. presidents, Supreme Court justices, and foreign heads of state, along with senators, congressional representatives, social critics, civil rights activists, university presidents, state and federal judges, military generals, novelists, spies, Olympians, film and TV producers, CEOs, and one First Lady have graduated from the school since its founding in 1817. During its first century, Harvard Law School pioneered revolutionary educational ideas, including professional legal education within a university, Socratic questioning and case analysis, and the admission and training of students based on academic merit. But the school struggled to navigate its way through the many political, social, economic, and legal crises of the century, and it earned both scars and plaudits as a result. On the Battlefield of Merit offers a candid, critical, definitive account of a unique legal institution during its first century of influence. Daniel R. Coquillette and Bruce A. Kimball examine the school’s ties with institutional slavery, its buffeting between Federalists and Republicans, its deep involvement in the Civil War, its reluctance to admit minorities and women, its anti-Catholicism, and its financial missteps at the turn of the twentieth century. On the Battlefield of Merit brings the story of Harvard Law School up to 1909—a time when hard-earned accomplishment led to self-satisfaction and vulnerabilities that would ultimately challenge its position as the leading law school in the nation. A second volume will continue this history through the twentieth century.

Includes "Class poem" by A.M., 2 references and a biography on A.M.

For more than one hundred years, Harvard's use of the case method of appellate opinions dominated legal education. Deploring the attempt to reduce law to an autonomous system of rules and principles, the realists at Yale developed a functional approach to the discipline--one that stressed the factual context of the case rather than the legal principles it raised, one that attempted to address issues of social policy by integrating law with the social sciences. Originally published 1986. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.