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CHAPTER NINE: Poor Old White-Whiskers, 1895–1906
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chapter 9 Poor Old White-Whiskers, 1895–1906 Even while betraying its fundamental meritocratic principles, Langdell’s system proliferated throughout university law schools, slowly during the 1890s and then rapidly after the turn of the century. In most schools, the system encountered opposition prompted by the “abomination”1 of converting to case method teaching. This inductive pedagogy relied on Langdell’s system because teaching with original sources demanded stronger academic preparation from both students and faculty . Hence, case method entailed “many of the organizational characteristics” of the meritocratic law school, and implied “Langdell’s general theory of legal education.”2 Beyond that functional link to the meritocratic reforms, case method assumed a powerful symbolic role in the campaign for higher academic standards. It was the “emblem” of Langdell’s model, that is, “the specific figure which concentrates and intensifies a much more general reality.”3 Case method thus became “the badge of ‘modernism’ in the teaching world” and “the cachet of the crack law school.”4 By adopting case method, a law school signified that it had allied itself with the hls-led movement to infuse legal education with the principles and policies of academic meritocracy. This alliance, though attractive to some, became for others a major reason to defend lecturing and recitation, to oppose “the Langdellian law curriculum...slavishly followed in the prestigious ‘national’ law schools,”5 and, in a word, to resist “Harvardizing” themselves.6 1. Centennial History of the Harvard Law School, 35. 2. Quotations are, respectively, from Johnson, Schooled Lawyers, 126; C. Warren, History of the Harvard Law School, 2:511. See 504–14. 3. Quotations are from Williams, Marxism and Literature, 101–2. 4. Quotations are, respectively, from Kirkwood and Owens, “Brief History of the Stanford Law School,” 16; Hicks, Yale Law School: 1895–1915, 45. See also Woodward, “Dimensions of Social and Legal Change,” 246. 5. Boden, “Milwaukee Law School: 1892–1928,” 16. 6. Frank, “Harvardizing the University” (1923), 1807. 310 Poor Old White-Whiskers But the advance of Langdell’s new system of professional education was inexorable . By 1915, 40 percent of American law schools had adopted the emblematic case method, and another 24 percent had partially accommodated Langdell’s method with the clear prospect of complete adoption on the horizon. Of the 36 percent of law schools that still rejected case method, the great majority were marginal or rapidly losing influence in American legal education, and most of these would convert during the next decade.7 Already in 1898, Oxford professor Albert Dicey observed that “Harvard is quite ahead of the Universities of the U.S...., and the Law School is their greatest triumph.”8 In 1904 Eliot concurred, “The Law School is the most successful of the University’s professional Schools. And if there be a more successful school in our country or in the world for any profession, I can only say that I do not know where it is. The School seems to have reached the climax of success in professional education.”9 This tidal wave was still welling up when Langdell wrote to Eliot on 17 June 1895: Dear Sir, Having now completed twenty-five and one half years of service as Dane Professor of Law, and twenty-five years of service as dean of the Law Faculty, and having reached the age of sixty-nine, I respectfully ask to be relieved from further services in the office of dean, and from one third of my duties as Dane Professor. I ask this, not because I find my present duties to be too heavy a burden, nor with a view to doing less work in the near future than I have done in the recent past, but in order that I may have more leisure to devote to the completing of other work.10 Langdell’s retirement had been anticipated for some time. In the previous few years, Ames had gradually assumed some decanal duties and begun speaking on behalf of the school. In the previous months, the Harvard Law School Association had planned “a monster celebration” to honor the dean.11 Speaking at the fête on 25 June 1895, were eminent jurists who had known Langdell over the course of his career, while he himself offered a typical “modest disclaimer” deflecting the praise.12 7. See Kimball, “Proliferation of Case Method,” 240–47. 8. A. V. Dicey to Elinor M. Dicey (13–14 Nov. 1898), quoted in Rait, Memorials of Albert Venn Dicey, 164. 9. Eliot...