Harvard at 150

There is something special about the mind of a good lawyer--he does not think as others do. He will not accept easy generalizations nor climb quickly to a conclusion. He prefers, like a mountaineer intent upon a peak, to take the more careful, circuitous route so that he can be surer of his ground. He loves the facts, detests disarray and imprecision, and spends his working hours trying to define life within a framework of the law. He is not born this way; it takes a law school to turn the necessary bent of mind. And for thousands of hopeful lawyers, the pre-eminent place to be trained is, and has always been, Harvard Law School.

The 546 who are lucky enough to be the first-year men of 1967 (out of 3,250 applicants) have every reason to expect that they are in for a rich educational experience. Under Dean Erwin Griswold, Harvard Law School is celebrating its 150th anniversary, and the sum of what it has accomplished in those years is indeed impressive. Its faculty is regarded by many as the finest in the U.S. More than 40,000 lawyers have studied there, including such men as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Roscoe Pound and Felix Frankfurter. Among today's leaders, the school has produced Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz, Yale President Kingman Brewster and Sociologist David Riesman. The quality is matched by quantity. Harvard Law has prepared fully one-fourth of all U.S. law professors, and its 21,000 living graduates constitute one-sixth of the lawyers in the country.

"It's Discriminatory." Such a record would have been hard to predict back in the fall of 1817, when the school was founded with six students and one professor. In fact, as late as 1870, the Boston law firm of Ropes & Gray was saying that Harvard Law was "almost a disgrace to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." That year, however, things changed. Christopher Langdell became dean, and he brought with him the case method--the innovative inspiration that has been the cornerstone of legal education ever since. He viewed the law as a science, with a series of progressively dependent rules. These rules were based on the precedent of cases, he observed, and they could be learned only by dissecting those cases.

The dissection become a pitilessly reasoned undertaking. The aim was to recast the collegian's thought process almost as radically as military basic training recasts the civilian's. Sensibilities were not spared. "Sir, that may be logical, but it's not ethical," said a student to renowned Professor Joseph Beale. Replied Beale coldly: "Sir, I suggest that you transfer to the divinity school." That pre-World War II exchange is not much different from the give-and-take in today's Harvard Law lecture rooms. "Mr. Marcuss, what is constitutionally objectionable about this ordinance?" Professor Frank Michelman asked recently. "It's discriminatory, sir," said Marcuss. "Discriminatory," boomed Michelman. "Can you name one regulatory act that is not discriminatory? Is it not the very nature of regulation to discriminate?"

Lights Out & On. Mr. Marcuss' thought process was doubtless properly sharpened. But sharp or not, most students do not shirk. Legal Aid Bureau President Deanne Siemer spends an irreducible six hours every day on studies outside of class--and outside of her voluminous extracurricular legal-aid work. "All of the kids work pretty hard, particularly in the first year," agrees Jay Becker, who compiled the school's first confidential critique of courses and professors (sample blasts: "Gave me an absurdly high grade. Disorganized. Wears white socks." "Lecturer is beneath the usual intellectual level of Harvard professors." "Zzzzzz."). Academic competition is so intense that stories abound of students who hang blankets on their windows so that neighbors will not suspect extra nocturnal studying or, conversely, students who sleep with eye guards and all the lights on to panic a classmate.

Getting a chance to clerk for a judge or work for one of the many law firms that pluck from Harvard each year provides a large carrot at the end of the stick. There is also the hope of getting into one of the three honor societies-law review, board of legal advisers, and legal aid. Admittance to the honoraries has long been strictly on the basis of grades. Now, in line with general dissatisfaction over the emphasis placed on marks, the Legal Aid Bureau has accepted a few members on the basis of other qualifications, and the law review and board of student advisers are studying the feasibility of doing the same.

Not the Only No. 1. Such changes come slowly. Harvard Law refused to accept women students until 1950. The school is still reluctant to concede that it failed to lead the most recent major movement in the law. Legal realism--the sociological observation that judges make law rather than find it--was nurtured at Columbia and Yale in the '30s. Though Harvard Law Dean Roscoe Pound was a leading sociological scholar, his colleagues did not follow. Griswold ("the Griz"), who has been in the dean's chair since 1946, has made a determined effort to press once again into the vanguard.

Along with other law schools, Harvard has been paying more attention to honing the writing skills of its students. The first full-time sociologist and economist have been added to the faculty. Former Defense Department Whiz Kid Adam Yarmolinsky is developing a program of urban studies. The Griz is proudest of the increased action in international legal studies, in which Harvard is pioneering. Milton Katz, who ran the Marshall Plan in Europe, heads the program, which now offers 24 courses (compared with one in 1946).

To some critics, however, the school's moves into new fields is still mere toe-dipping. Many feel that the traditional Harvard Law approach needs modification. Not surprisingly, the students themselves file many of the most damning complaints; last year their organized gripes sparked the forming of a student-faculty committee. It has still to submit specific proposals, but this year, in response to the committee, second-year students for the first time do not have any required courses.

Dean Griswold himself is not satisfied with Harvard Law's current approach. As part of the two day sesquicentennial celebration, he sounded off on one lack that he considers paramount. Said Griswold: "It has often been said, for a smile, that legal education sharpens the mind by narrowing it. To my mind, there is more truth to this than we have been willing to admit. The methods fostered at this school and widely adopted elsewhere do have a tendency to exalt dialectical skill, to focus the mind on narrow issues, and to obscure the fact that no reasoning, however logical, can rise above the premises on which it is based. If the Harvard Law School, through its faculty activity and its teaching, could shift its concern even slightly from the generally too narrow objectives of much traditional legal scholarship, we might increase our contribution. Even in our field it may be true that 'the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.' "

As it developed, Griswold's critique proved to be his valedictory as well. At week's end, President Johnson announced his appointment as the next U.S. Solicitor General. As the nation's top trial lawyer, succeeding Thurgood Marshall, Griswold will shortly be exercising both his dialectical skill and his spirit.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.