Harvard Law School (also known as Harvard Law or HLS ) is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. HLS typically ranks among the top law schools. The U.S. News and World Report law school rankings place it as second, behind Yale Law School.
In the 1870s, under Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell, HLS introduced what has become the standard first-year curriculum for American law schools—including classes in contracts, property, torts, criminal law, and civil procedure. At Harvard, Langdell also developed the case method of teaching law, now the dominant pedagogical model at U.S. law schools.
The law school is currently led by Dean Martha Minow, who assumed the role on July 1, 2009. It was previously led by interim dean Howell Jackson, who took over from Elena Kagan upon her confirmation as Solicitor General of the United States on March 19, 2009.
Each class in the three-year J.D. program has approximately 550 students. The first-year (1L) class is broken into seven sections of approximately 80 students who take most first-year classes together. Harvard Law has 246 faculty members.
Admission to Harvard Law is highly selective: For the class entering in 2008, there were approximately 7,200 applicants, of which approximately 11.4% were admitted; 67.9% of those admitted enrolled. For that class, the median GPA for the middle 50% of the students was between 3.74 and 3.95 (out of 4.33, as calculated by the Law School Data Assembly Service of the Law School Admissions Council) and an LSAT score between 170 and 176 (out of 180). Harvard Law's admissions process includes the unusual feature of telephone interviews conducted amongst students likely to be accepted.
Harvard Law School has produced numerous leaders in law and politics, including the current President of the United States, Barack Obama. One other former president, Rutherford B. Hayes, is a graduate, as is the current President of the Republic of China, Ma Ying-jeou. Some 149 sitting United States federal judges are Harvard Law School graduates, including four sitting justices of the Supreme Court of the United States - Associate Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, and Antonin Scalia, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts. Seven sitting United States Senators graduated from the school.
Harvard Law School graduates have accounted for 568 judicial clerkships in the past three years, including one-quarter of all Supreme Court clerkships. More than 120 from the last five graduating classes have obtained tenure-track law teaching positions.
Campus
Harvard Law School's campus is located just north of Harvard Yard, the historic center of Harvard University, and contains several architecturally significant buildings.
From 1849 to 1855, the Harvard Branch Railroad terminated within what would become the present Law School campus, close to its southwest edge. Austin Hall, the law school's oldest dedicated structure, designed by architect H. H. Richardson, was completed in that vicinity in 1884. The law school's student center, Harkness Commons, was designed by the Bauhaus's founder, Walter Gropius, and his firm, along with several law school dormitories. Together they make up the Harvard Graduate Center complex. Langdell Hall, the largest building on the law school campus, contains the Harvard Law Library, the most extensive academic law library in the world.
As of 2006, a new complex is scheduled to rise on the northwest corner of the law school campus, to be designed by traditionalist architect Robert A. M. Stern. The complex is set to marry the architectural themes present in Austin and Langdell Halls, as well as the Gropius buildings.
History
Harvard Law School was established in 1817, making it the oldest continuously-operating law school in the nation. (The Marshall-Wythe School of Law at The College of William & Mary opened in 1779, but was forced to close at the outset of the American Civil War, and did not reopen until 1920. The University of Maryland School of Law was chartered in 1816, but did not begin classes until 1824, and also closed during the Civil War.)
The Royall estate
Its origins can be traced to the estate of Isaac Royall, who sold most of his Antiguan slaves and plantations to move to Medford, Massachusetts. His Medford estate, the Isaac Royall House, is now a museum, and includes the only remaining slave quarters in the northeast United States. The estate was passed down to Royall's son, Isaac Royall, Jr., who fled Massachusetts as the American Revolution broke out. Just prior to his death in 1781, Royall, Jr. left land to Harvard, the sale of which was intended for the "endowing of a Professor of Laws at said college, or a Professor of Physics and Anatomy". Harvard took the opportunity to fund its first chair of law. The Royall chair remains today. It traditionally was held by the Dean of the law school. The school's previous Dean, Elena Kagan, declined the Royall chair, instead giving herself the Charles Hamilton Houston Professorship.
In 1806, the Royall estate in Medford was returned to Royall, Jr.'s heirs, who sold it and donated the proceeds for the formal foundation of Harvard Law School. The Royall family coat-of-arms was adopted as the school crest, which shows three stacked wheat sheaves beneath the university motto ( Veritas , Latin "truth").
Growth and the Langdell curriculum
By 1827, the school, which was down to one faculty member, was struggling. An alumnus stepped in by endowing the Dane Professorship of Law and insisting that it be given to then Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story. Story's belief in the need for an elite law school based on merit and dedicated to public service helped build the school's reputation at the time, although the contours of these beliefs have not been consistent throughout its history. Enrollment remained low through the 19th century as university legal education was considered to be of little added benefit to apprenticeships in legal practice.
In the 1870s, Christopher Columbus Langdell arrived, introducing his new curriculum. Langdell's notion that law could be studied as a "science" gave university legal education a reason for being distinct from vocational preparation.
While the law school had previously been located on Harvard Yard, the new system demanded lecture halls suited to the case law and interrogatory Socratic method of teaching. Henry Hobson Richardson would later design the law school's first independent home, the Romanesque Austin Hall, to the north of the Yard, with these needs in mind. This would come to form the nucleus of the current law school campus.
As the 20th century dawned, Dean Langdell's innovations became standard in law school curricula across the country. The school also became the first to elevate legal education to a graduate-only discipline. Yet new theories, such as legal realism, blossomed at Yale and Columbia, while Harvard faculty members were generally known for their conservative approach.
20th century: institutional criticism
As it rose to preeminence among law schools in the United States, Harvard attracted significant criticism for many perceived shortcomings.
Harvard Law was often believed to be a competitive environment. For example, Dean Berring of Berkeley Law once stated that he "view Harvard Law School as a samurai ring where you can test your swordsmanship against the swordsmanship of the strongest intellectual warriors from around the nation." This was possibly historically true. When Langdell developed the original law school curriculum, Harvard University President Charles Eliot told him to make it "hard and long." The school maintained a relatively uncompetitive admissions process, but "weeded out" a large number of first year students. This gave rise to the infamous legend of a dean at the school telling incoming students, "Look to your left, look to your right, because one of you won't be here by the end of the year." Novels such as Scott Turow's One L and John Jay Osborn's The Paper Chase describe such an environment.
Whether the school ever was competitive is a subject of debate. A New York Times article from 1894 described in-class moot courts at Harvard as "co-operative."
In addition, Eleanor Kerlow's book Poisoned Ivy: How Egos, Ideology, and Power Politics Almost Ruined Harvard Law School criticized the school for a 1980s political dispute between newer and older faculty members over accusations of insensitivity to minority and feminist issues. Divisiveness over such issues as political correctness lent the school the title "Beirut on the Charles."
In Broken Contract: A Memoir of Harvard Law
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