Dark Ages?

Laura Kalman. Yale Law School and the Sixties: Revolt and Reverberations. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. xiv + 467 pp. Notes and index. $49.95 (cloth).

Laura Kalman is a distinguished legal historian who has made a substantial contribution to the field, in particular to our understanding of twentieth-century legal education and legal thought. In addition to a prize-winning biography of Justice Abe Fortas, she is the author of two books on her alma mater, Yale Law School. The first, Legal Realism at Yale, 1927–1960, made the case that, by adopting a novel approach to legal pedagogy, YLS elevated itself to the front rank of American law schools, and in the process transformed how law was taught and thought in elite law schools throughout the country. In the present volume, she carries the story into the 1960s and beyond, tracing the student protests that rocked the school from 1967 to 1970, and explaining the relationship of those tumultuous days to the rise of YLS to the front rank of law schools today.

Her tale is both a narrative of heroes and villains set in a particular time and place and a result of the processes she describes so vividly. Kalman is an admiring and loyal graduate of the school whose history she is analyzing. Though this might have proven troublesome for a historian of lesser quality, she manages to integrate her unique Yale orientation into the story. Because she admits this connection openly and it is, in part, why she is so perfectly suited to offer an insider's account of the troubles and the later triumphs, this reviewer feels compelled to reveal his affiliation to the doppelganger in the story. As much as this book is an internalist account, Harvard Law School is a brooding omnipresence in these pages. It is the source of frequent asides, the "other," the road not taken, and, finally, the fallen foe.

To be fair, the two schools were not only self-consciously rivals, they often vied for hires, students, and contributions. No one familiar with the rivalry can miss the strength school ties exert in this account. Though Kalman does not dwell on the events that brought state troopers into Harvard Yard, that too throws its shadow over her pages. For the respective law schools were part of larger and even more vulnerable universities, and those universities were themselves caught in the sixties revolt in general.

Alongside Kalman's institutional tale, this is a study of the transformation of legal thought and education, and as an intellectual history of the role of ideas at elite educational institutions, including the effect of leadership in a competitive marketplace and the demise of American liberalism, Kalman's own intelligence shines through her analysis of the crisis at Yale. Her expert readings of the wealth of scholarship produced in the decades following the protests serves as a primer one can consult without reservation. Dispassionately keeping the narrative flow moving through anecdote and aside, she compels the reader to think about what happens when competing visions of education, justice, and law collide.

Kalman's research exemplifies the advantages an insider has in writing a history of her school. Not only does the insider have an almost instinctive grasp of the local culture, permitting a Geertzian thickness to her account, the administration of YLS gave her access to the school's records, newspapers, and general archives. Her personal contacts with many of the participants—including former student rebels, faculty, and observers—enabled her to conduct extensive interviews with almost all of the principals. Oftentimes, she lets their words tell the tale. The result comprises a very balanced, even-handed assessment of these turbulent years and their aftermath. Kalman treats her subjects with a critical, yet understanding eye. This creates an odd sense of composure—given that the students and, on occasion, their professors emotionally engaged one another in such a heated atmosphere, and nearly shut down the school during the late sixties.

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