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The Langdell Problem: Historicizing the Century of Historiography, 1906–2000s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

Bruce A. Kimball
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Christopher Columbus Langdell (1826–1906) is arguably the most influential figure in the history of legal education in the United States, having shaped the modern law school by introducing a number of significant reforms during his tenure as dean of Harvard Law School (HLS) from 1870 to 1895. Langdell's innovations—including the admission requirement of a bachelor's degree, the graded and sequential curriculum, the hurdle of annual examinations for continuation and graduation, the independent career track for professional faculty, the transformation of the professional library from a textbook repository into a scholarly resource, and the inductive pedagogy of teaching from cases—became the characteristics gradually adopted by university law schools after 1890 and, eventually, schools of other professions. Langdell thus transformed legal education from an undemanding, gentlemanly acculturation into an academic meritocracy.

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Law and History Review , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , Summer 2004 , pp. 277 - 337
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Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2004

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References

1. Quotation is from Siegel, Stephen A., “John Chipman Gray and the Moral Basis of Classical Legal Thought,” Iowa Law Review 86 (2001): 1515n9.Google Scholar See Daniel R. Coquillette, Daniel Hamilton, and Mary Beth Basile, Typescripts on file of extensive interviews conducted with deans of selected law schools in Fall 2002, Modern Legal Pedagogy Project, funded by the Spencer Foundation and located at Harvard Law School.

2. The following tentative interpretation draws partly from these essays, in which citations to many of the original sources may be found: Kimball, Bruce A., “‘Warn Students That I Entertain Heretical Opinions, Which They Are Not to Take as Law’: The Inception of Case Method Teaching in the Classrooms of the Early C. C Langdell, 1870–1883,” Law and History Review 17 (1999): 57–140CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kimball, , “Young Christopher Langdell: The Formation of an Educational Reformer 1826–1854,” Journal of Legal Education 52 (June 2002): 189–239Google Scholar; Brown, R. Blake and Kimball, Bruce A., “When Holmes Borrowed from Langdell: The ‘Ultra Legal’ Formalism and Public Policy of Northern Securities (1904),” American Journal of Legal History 45 (2001 [published in 2004]): 278–321CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kimball, and Brown, R. Blake, “‘The Highest Legal Ability in the Country’: Langdell on Wall Street, 1855–1870,” forthcoming in Law and Social Inquiry (Spring 2004).Google Scholar

3. Quotation is from “C. C. Langdell… Finding Aid,” Harvard Law School Library, Special Collections (typescript removed from circulation). See now Bruce A. Kimball and Molly McGinn Shapiro, “Finding Guide to the Papers of Christopher Columbus Langdell (1826–1906),” Harvard Law School Library, Special Collections (Fall 2003). I wish to thank Molly McGinn Shapiro for her meticulous work, David Warrington and David Ferris for meir cooperation and help, and the James Barr Ames Foundation for its support of this analysis of the Langdell Papers.

4. See Appendix 1.

5. Quotations are, respectively, from: “Prof. Christopher C. Langdell,” New York Tribune (7 July 1906): 7; “Dean Langdell,” Boston Daily Advertiser (7 July 1906): 4; “Professor Langdell Is Dead,” Boston Evening Record (6 July 1906): 1; “Prof. Langdell,” Boston Herald (7 July 1906): 6.

6. Eugene Wambaugh, “Professor Langdell and the Study of Law,” Nation 83 (12 July 1906): 30. Reprinted as Wambaugh, Eugene, “Professor Langdell—A View of His Career,” Harvard Law Review 20 (1906): 1–4.Google Scholar Unless otherwise noted, information about the careers of Wambaugh and other HLS graduates below is drawn from Warren, Charles, History of the Harvard Law School and of Early Legal Conditions in America (New York: Lewis, 1908), vol. 3Google Scholar; The Centennial History of the Harvard Law School, 1817–1917 (Cambridge: Harvard Law School Assoc, 1918); Quinquennial Catalogue of the Law School of Harvard University, 1817–1934, ed. Holliday, Guy H. (Cambridge: Harvard Law School, 1934).Google Scholar

7. Pollock, Frederick, “The Late Professor Langdell,” Law Quarterly Review 88 (1906): 353–55.Google Scholar

8. C. C. Langdell, “Memoranda Concerning Law School Students, September, 1870, to July, 1873,” Bound Manuscript Collection, Harvard Law School Library, p. 29, #118,7 Oct. 1870; “Pow Wow Club Records and Case Reports of Supreme Court, 1870–1882,” bound manuscript in Pow Wow Club Records, Harvard Law School Library, pp. 7, 18.

9. Fox, Austen G., “Professor Langdell—His Personal Influence,” Harvard Law Review 20 (1906): 7–8.Google Scholar See, too, Warren, Harvard Law School, 2:373; Batchelder, Samuel F., “Christopher C. Langdell,” Green Bag 18 (1906): 440.Google Scholar

10. Ames, James Barr, “Professor Langdell—His Services to Legal Education,” Harvard Law Review 20 (1906): 12–13.Google Scholar See, too, [Ames, James Barr,] “Christopher C. Langdell,” Harvard Graduates'Magazine 15 (1906): 209–12.Google Scholar

11. Smith, Jeremiah, “Professor Langdell—His Student Life,” Harvard Law Review 20 (1906): 5–6Google Scholar; Smith, Jeremiah, “Christopher Columbus Langdell ′45,” in Bulletin of the Phillips Exeter Academy (Sept. 1906): 27–32Google Scholar; Smith, Jeremiah, “Prof. Christopher C. Langdell,” Proceedings of the New Hampshire Bar Association 2 (n.s.) (1904–1908): 340–48.Google Scholar “Obituaries [Jeremiah Smith],” Bulletin of the Phillips Exeter Academy (January 1922): 18–19. For providing information about Smith, I am grateful to Edouard Desrochers, Archivist, Phillips Exeter Academy Library.

12. Sheppard, Steve, ed., The History of Legal Education in the United States (Pasadena: Salem Press, 1999), 1:523.Google Scholar

13. Beale, Joseph H. Jr, “Professor Langdell—His Later Teaching Days,” Harvard Law Review 20 (1906): 9–11.Google Scholar

14. Batchelder, Samuel F., “Christopher C. Langdell,” Green Bag 18 (August 1906): 437–43.Google Scholar See Warren, Harvard Law School, 2:372–73; Centennial History, vi, 34–35; Sheppard, ed., The History of Legal Education, 1: 26.

15. “Manuscript Class Book of the Class of 1851 of Harvard College,” Harvard University Archives, 168–69; Minutes of Vestry Meetings of Christ Church, 1883–1907, in Vestry Minutes of Christ Church, Cambridge, 1862–1904 and Vestry Minutes of Christ Church, Cambridge, 1905–1927, Archives of Christ Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Batchelder, Samuel F., “C. C. Langdell, Iconoclast,” in Bits of Harvard History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924), 323n.Google Scholar

16. Batchelder, “C. C. Langdell, Iconoclast,” 323n; Batchelder, “Christopher C. Langdell,” 440–41. “Manuscript and Research Notes,” Samuel F. Batchelder Papers, Cambridge Historical Society, Cambridge, Mass., box 5.1 am grateful to Aurore Eaton, Eaton, Executive Director of the Cambridge Historical Society, for her exceptional cooperation with the investigation of Batchelder's papers during Fall 2000.

17. See Emory Washburn, “Harvard Law School,” (c.1877), 44 pp., in Samuel F. Batchelder Papers, Cambridge Historical Society box 2, folder 14; Letter from George O. Shattuck to Charles W. Eliot (17 December 1869), Charles W. Eliot Papers, Harvard University Archives, box 66; Letter from Victor Morawetz to James B. Thayer (15 April 1882), James Bradley Thayer Papers, Harvard Law School Library, box 20, f. 1; Choate, Joseph H., “Address,” in Harvard Law School Association, Report of the Ninth Annual Meeting at Cambridge, June 25, 1895, in Especial Honor of Christopher Columbus Langdell (Boston: Harvard Law School Assoc, 1895), 63Google Scholar; Fessenden, Franklin G., “Rebirth of the Harvard Law School,” Harvard Law Review 33 (1920): 513CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Letter from Joseph H. Choate to Samuel F. Batchelder (18 July 1906); Letter from Joseph H. Choate to Charles Warren (18 Oct. 1907), Charles Warren Papers, Harvard Law School Library, box 37.

18. Batchelder, “Christopher C. Langdell,” 439. Cf. Samuel F. Batchelder, Unpaginated sheets of draft biography of C. C. Langdell, in Batchelder Papers, box 5, f. 2.

19. Batchelder, “Christopher C. Langdell,” 439–41.

20. Schofield, William, “Christopher Columbus Langdell,” American Law Register 55 o.s., 46 n.s. (1907): 273–96Google Scholar; Warren, Harvard Law School, 2: 455, 455–60.

21. Schofield, “Christopher Columbus Langdell,” 277–78.

22. Ibid., 282–92.

23. Ibid., 292. Bouvier, John, A Law Dictionary Adapted To The Constitution And Laws Of The United States Of America, 12th edition, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1868)Google Scholar, s.v. Alimony, Condonation, Divorce, Nullity of Marriage, Promise of Marriage, and Separation a Mensa et Thoro. These articles are not mentioned again until Schofleld's reference is cited by LaPiana, William P., Logic and Experience: The Origin of Modern American Legal Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 191n78.Google Scholar

24. LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 191n75. See, too, Carter, W. Burlette, “Reconstructing Langdell,” Georgia Law Review 32 (1997): 15n43.Google Scholar Ames's essay is “Christopher Columbus Langdell, 1826–1906,” 465–89, in Great American Lawyers, ed. Lewis, William D. (Philadelphia: John C. Wilson, 1909), vol. 8Google Scholar; reprinted in Ames, Lectures on Legal History and Miscellaneous Essays (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1913), 467–82.

25. Letter from Hannah Warner to Mildred C. Warren of New Boston, New Hampshire, quoted in Atwood, Frances A. in Old Folks' Day, New Boston, N.H., June 13, 1907, Thirteenth Reunion (Manchester, N.H.: John B. Clarke, 1908), 11–12Google Scholar; Ames, “Christopher Columbus Langdell, 1826–1906,” 469; Program of “Performance for Exhibition,” Harvard College, 16 October 1849, in “Charles F. Dunbar Personal and Professional Correspondence,” Harvard University Archives, 1 box, f. H-L Correspondence, Professional; Gorham, “Diary,” 8 Sept. 1849. Unfortunately, the notes and sources for Ames's undocumented essay have not been located, nor could a file be found regarding the Langdell essay among the editor's papers at the University of Pennsylvania. I am grateful to Cynthia Arkin, Associate Director of Special Collections at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and Chris Rooney, Research Assistant, University of Pennsylvania Archives, for their help in investigating their holdings in February 2001.1 am also grateful to R. Blake Brown for searching for papers by James C. Batt Ames in the archives at Harvard, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston Athenaeum, the Cambridge Historical Society, and the New Hampshire Historical Society, as well as on the World-Wide Web.

26. Kuhn, Administrator v. Webster & Others, 78 Mass. (12 Gray) 3 (1858); Delafield v. Parish 1 Redf. Surr. 1 (N.Y. Surrogate's Court 1857).

27. Quotations are from Ames, “Christopher Columbus Langdell, 1826–1906,” 476, 481, 483.

28. Ibid., 467n; see also 466–68.

29. Quotation is from Schofield, “Christopher Columbus Langdell,” 277. See Ames, “Christopher Columbus Langdell, 1826–1906,” 485.

30. Warren, Harvard Law School, 2:175–202, 302–31, 354–460.

31. Quotations are from ibid., 2:302–3. [Letters from 1907 and 1908 giving Reminiscences of Harvard Law School], Charles Warren Papers, box 37. These letters were apparently not consulted or cited again in the twentieth century until LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 14, 51–53, 70, 191n78.

32. Quotations are, respectively, from Warren, Harvard Law School, 2:333, 335, 132, 388. See ibid., 419–60.

33. Ibid., 2:395.

34. Redlich, Josef, The Common Law and the Case Method in American University Law Schools (New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1914)Google Scholar, Bulletin No. 8, pp. 3–4, 26. Quotations are from pp. 5, 4.

35. Quotations are, respectively, from Letter from Charles Noble Gregory (Dean of George Washington Univ.) to Ezra Ripley Thayer (4 Oct. 1913), and Letter from Ezra Ripley Thay-er to Charles Noble Gregory (8 Oct. 1913), Ezra Ripley Thayer Papers, Harvard Law School Library, box 9, f. 2. See similar letters in folder.

36. Redlich, The Common Law and the Case Method, 9–21.

37. Ibid., 23, 24. In 1940 the Carnegie Foundation gave to Harvard Law School Library the original German text and successive revisions and four translations of Redlich's report. Alfred Z. Reed, who commissioned Redlich's study for the Carnegie Foundation, reviewed and revised each translation, and it was he who inserted subtitles and highlighted as distinctive this new thesis, although Redlich's interpretation appears in the original German text. “Redlich Bulletin, [Version] V. Translation B., Reed's revision of A.” Typescript, annotated in pencil. Pages 36–38 in Josef Redlich, “Case teaching system in the law schools of American universities and the common law,” 1914, Typewritten with MS notes, in Special Collections, Harvard Law School Library.

38. Redlich, The Common Law and the Case Method, 24–25. In support, Redlich quoted Ames, although the quotation does not identify any shift in purpose; and Redlich himself noted parenthetically in his draft that “(quotation does not seem correct).” “Redlich Bulletin, [Version] V. Translation B., Reed's revision of A.” Typescript, annotated in pencil. Pages 39–40 in Josef Redlich, “Case teaching system in the law schools of American universities and the common law,” 1914, Typewritten with MS notes, in Special Collections, Harvard Law School Library.

39. Letter from Frank W. Grinnell to Zechariah Chafee, Jr. (24 Feb. 1925), Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Papers, Harvard Law School Library, #913. All subsequent citations to the Chafee Papers are to microfilm reel 51.

40. Quotation is from Letter from Frank W. Grinnell to Zechariah Chafee, Jr. (17 April 1918), Chafee Papers, #957. See Letter from Chafee to Joseph N. Walsh (17 Oct. 1928), #872; Letter from Chafee to Frank W. Grinnell (14 Nov. 1928), #879; Letter from Chafee to Frank W. Grinnell (4 March 1931), #863, in Chafee Papers.

41. See, for example, Williston, Samuel, “Christopher Columbus Langdell”, Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933), 10:585–86Google Scholar; Stevens, Robert, “Law Schools and Legal Education, 1879–1979: Lectures in Honor of 100 Years of Valparaiso Law School,” Valparaiso University Law Review 14 (1980): 218nn172–73Google Scholar; King, Donald B., Legal Education for the 21st Century (Buffalo: Fred B. Rothman, 1999), 548.Google Scholar The indirect influence is even more widespread, as seen in key theses of the Centennial History being invoked from Robert Stevens's work in, for example, Hoeflich, Michael H., “Law & Geometry: Legal Science from Leibniz to Langdell,” American Journal of Legal History 30 (1986): 95, 95n2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42. MacManamon, Mary B., “The History of the Civil Procedure Course: A Study in Evolving Pedagogy,” Arizona State Law Journal 30 (1998): 417.Google Scholar

43. Centennial History, 170–74.

44. Letters in Chafee Papers, #839–989. See Smith, Donald L., Zechariah Chafee, Jr.: Defender of Liberty and Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. Letter from Joseph H. Beale to Roscoe Pound (20 Dec. 1916), Chafee Papers, #989.

46. Quotations are, respectively, from Centennial History, 9, 37, 81. Commensurately, the appended biography of Ames (pp. 175–89) exceeds that of Langdell (pp. 223–36.)

47. Centennial History, 42, 47–48, 139, 184–85; “Notes,” Harvard Law Review 1 (1887–88): 100; 5 (1891–92): 89–90, 147, 238.

48. Keener, William A., “Address,” in Harvard Law School Association, Report of the Ninth Annual Meeting at Cambridge, June 25, 1895, in Especial Honor of Christopher Columbus Langdell (Boston: Harvard Law School Assoc, 1895), 77.Google Scholar

49. Keener, William A., A Selection of Cases on the Law of Quasi-Contracts (Cambridge, Mass.: Charles W. Sever, 1888), p. viGoogle Scholar; Book Note, “William A. Keener, Selections on Contracts …,” Harvard Law Review 5 (1892): 355. The scholarly history of Columbia University Law School initially cites and repeats Redlich's interpretation on behalf of Keener, who led “the revolution of 1891” at Columbia Law School. Goebel, Julius Jr, A History of the School of Law, Columbia University (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), 140–41.Google Scholar But in the end, Goebel draws back from attributing originality to Keener, saying “whether or not [these purposes] originated with Keener, to Keener undoubtedly is due the credit for their widespread acceptance” (155).

50. Holmes, Oliver Wendell Jr, “Oration,” in Harvard Law School Association, Report of the Organization and of the First General Meeting, 1886 (Boston: Harvard Law School Association, 1887), 39.Google Scholar Emphasis added.

51. Ames, “Christopher Columbus Langdell, 1826–1906,” 485; Letter from Joseph D. Brannan to James B. Thayer (3 June 1897), James Bradley Thayer Papers, Harvard Law School Library, box 17, f. 2; Schofield, “Christopher Columbus Langdell,” 273–77; Brandeis, Louis D., “The Harvard Law School,” Green Bag 1 (1889): 19.Google Scholar Letter from Brandeis, Louis D. to Douglas, Walter Bond (31 Jan. 1878), Letters of Louis D. Brandeis, ed. Urofsky, Meivin I. and Levy, David W. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1971), 1:21–22.Google Scholar

52. Beale, “His Later Teaching Days,” 10; Beale, , “Papers and Discussion Concerning the Redlich Report,” American Law School Review 4 (1916): 106–7.Google Scholar

53. Beale, Joseph H. Jr, “Langdell, Gray, Thayer, and Ames: Their Contribution to the Study and Teaching of Law,” New York University Law Quarterly Review 8 (1931): 394Google Scholar; See Ellsworth, Frank L., Law on the Midway: The Founding of the University of Chicago Law School (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 49–79.Google Scholar

54. [Joseph H. Beale,] Untitled draft of history of HLS since 1870, Chafee Papers, #906. See Williston, Samuel, Life and Law: An Autobiography (Boston: Little Brown, 1940), 134, 187.Google Scholar

55. Quotations are from “Dean of Harvard Law School Dead,” Boston Herald (9 Jan. 1910): 14.

56. Mack, Julian W., “James Barr Ames—His Personal Influence,” Harvard Law Review 23 (1910): 337.Google Scholar See Williston, Samuel, “James Barr Ames—His Services to Legal Education,” Harvard Law Review 23 (1910): 332–33.Google Scholar

57. Quotation is from Kirchwey, George W., “James Barr Ames,” Columbia Law Review 10 (1910): 188.Google Scholar See Eliot, Charles W., “James Barr Ames,” Harvard Law Review 23 (1910): 322Google Scholar; Lewis, William D., “James Barr Ames, 1846–1869,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 58 (1909–1910): 289–92.Google Scholar

58. Letter from Alfred Z. Reed to Ezra Ripley Thayer (2 Oct. 1913) and Letter from Ezra R. Thayer to Alfred Z. Reed (3 Nov. 1913), Ezra Ripley Thayer Papers, box 9, f. 2.

59. Goebel, A History of the School of Law, Columbia University, 140–44.

60. Letter from Harlan F. Stone to Ezra R. Thayer (27 Oct. 1913), Ezra Ripley Thayer Papers, box 9, f. 2. See letters exchanged between Harlan F. Stone and Ezra R. Thayer in early October, 1913, box 9, f. 2.

61. That Redlich's attribution to Keener of a shift in purpose was instrumental or convenient is suggested by the fact that, later in his report, Redlich dropped the distinction and omitted further reference to Keener, such as in discussing the “True Significance of Langdell's Invention in the Development of Legal Science,” 54–59. Moreover, the question of whether Redlich gave too much notice or praise to Harvard did, in fact, become a point of contention among Alfred Z. Reed and Henry Pritchett of the Carnegie Foundation and Dean Ezra Ripley Thayer and President Abbott L. Lowell at Harvard. See correspondence among these four individuals in Ezra Ripley Thayer Papers, box 8, f. 8.

62. Beale, “Langdell, Gray, Thayer, and Ames,” 394. At least one of the eulogists initiating this attribution shared Beale's affection for Ames. See Letter from Julian Mack to Charles W. Eliot (19 Sept. 1898), Charles W. Eliot Papers, box 139a, f. 1394.

63. Letter from Joseph H. Choate to Charles Warren (18 Oct. 1907).

64. Baldwin, Simeon, Report of the Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association 17 (1894), 375–77Google Scholar; Baldwin, Simeon E., “Education for the Bar in the United States [reviewing the Redlich Report],” American Law School Review 4 (1915): 13.Google Scholar “Baldwin led the resistance to the case method within the American Bar Association.” Carrington, Paul D., “Hail! Langdell!” Law and Social Inquiry 20 (1995): 738.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65. Cate, Wirt A., Lucius Q. C. Lamar, Secession and Reunion (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935), 123.Google Scholar See also English, Thomas H., Emory University 1915–1965: A Semicentennial History (Atlanta: Emory University, 1966), 164–65.Google Scholar

66. Meador, Daniel J., “Lamar and the Law at the University of Mississippi,” Mississippi Law Journal 34 (1963): 240.Google Scholar Claims on behalf of other putative originators of case method antedating Langdell are discussed in Appendix 2 below.

67. Reed, Alfred Z., Training for the Public Profession of the Law (New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1921)Google Scholar, Bulletin no. 15, p. 372.

68. Fessenden, “Rebirth,” 493.

69. “Letter to Henry S. Pritchett” (13 April 1915), Correspondence of Charles W. Eliot, Small Manuscript Collection, Harvard Law School Library.

70. Eliot, Charles W., “Langdell and the Law School,” Harvard Law Review 33 (1920): 521.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71. C. C. Langdell, “Memoranda Concerning Law School Students, September, 1870, to July, 1873,” 4–5; Ames, “His Services to Legal Education,” 13; Fox, “His Personal Influence,” 7; Batchelder, “Christopher C. Langdell,” 440–41; Ames, “Christopher Columbus Langdell, 1826–1906,” 484; Fessenden, “Rebirth,” 503.

72. Frank W. Grinnell, “An Unpublished Conversation with President Eliot at the Beginning of Langdell's Teaching,” ([c.1929]; typescript, 1 page), Biographical File of Christopher Columbus Langdell, Harvard University Archives. This remarkable incident has not previously been reported in the literature. Cf. Fessenden, “Rebirth,” 503; Eliot, Charles W., Banquet in Honor of Hon. Franklin G. Fessenden, Justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts … (Boston: Boston University Law School Assoc, 1917), 21.Google Scholar

73. Letters between Eliot and Fessenden (19 March 1919, 28 Mar 1919, 23 April 1919, 12 May 1919, 15 July 1919, 22 July 1919), Charles W. Eliot Papers, Harvard University Archives, box 382. I am grateful to Pedro Reyes for searching in the papers of Charles W. Eliot and Franklin G. Fessenden for further materials and correspondence about their essays. Eliot's article, scarcely mentioned in their correspondence, was evidently written as a shorter companion to Fessenden's piece.

74. Quotations are, respectively, from Fessenden, “Rebirth,” 498, 500, 508.

75. Quotations are, respectively, from ibid., 502, 514.

76. Letter from Charles W. Eliot to Franklin G. Fessenden (19 Mar 1919), Charles W. Eliot Papers, Harvard University Archives, box 382, f. A–J.

77. Samuel Williston, however, seemed to shift his view subsequently. In one prominent article, he credited the invention of case method entirely to Langdell, saying merely that Keener's and Ames's “success in applying [Langdell's] method did much to popularize it.” “Christopher Columbus Langdell,” 586. In his autobiography, Williston's view of whether, how, and when case method teaching was fully developed is somewhat ambiguous, as he appears to try to spread the credit evenly among Langdell, Ames, Keener, , Thayer, James B., and Gray, John C.. Williston, , Life and Law, 74, 76, 132, 199–201.Google Scholar

78. In his role as the faculty supervisor of the Harvard Law Review, Beale had to arrange for the publication of the two essays and so was well aware of them. In the surviving correspondence in this regard, Fessenden's references to Beale (to whom he did not send a draft of his essay) are distinctly unfriendly. Letters from Fessenden to Eliot (18 July 1919, 22 July 1919), Charles W. Eliot Papers, Harvard University Archives, box 382, f. A–J.

79. Letter from Samuel E. Morison to Zechariah Chafee, Jr. (27 June 1928), Chafee Papers, #893.

80. [Beale,] Untitled draft of history of HLS since 1870, Chafee Papers, #904.

81. Letter from Samuel E. Morison to Zechariah Chafee, Jr. (27 June 1927), Chafee Papers, #893; [Beale,] Untitled draft of narrative history of HLS since 1870, #906.

82. Roscoe Pound, “The Law School, 1817–1929,” 475, 479, in Morison, Samuel E., The Development of Harvard University since the Inauguration of President Eliot 1869–1929 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

83. Beale, “Langdell, Gray, Thayer, and Ames,” 394.

84. Ibid., 385, 387, 386, 388. This anomalous mention of Langdell's “resentment” seems to refer to an incident described in Williston, Life and Law, 138.

85. On “Bealism,” see Frank, Jerome, Law and the Modern Mind (New York: Brentano's, 1930), 48–56.Google Scholar

86. Williston's 1933 article in the Dictionary of American Biography credited Langdell with virtually all of the salutary reforms at HLS and made no mention of realism. In 1940 Williston qualified or obviated much of that credit while endorsing the shift to pragmatic, contextual, and realist jurisprudence. Cf. Williston, “Christopher Columbus Langdell,” 585–86; Williston, Life and Low, 199–210.

87. Beale, “Langdell, Gray, Thayer, and Ames,” 385–95; Sheppard, ed., The History of Legal Education, 1:522–27.

88. LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 3. See Gordon, , “The Case for (and against) Harvard,” Michigan Law Review 93 (1995): 1235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

89. Wiecek, William W., The Lost World of Classical Legal Thought: Law and Ideology in America, 1886–1937 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 4–14, 92–93.Google Scholar

90. An example of this point is discussed in Kimball, B. A., “The Life of Langdell Has Not Been Logic; It Has Been Experience,” Law and History Review 17 (1999): 156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

91. Batchelder, , “Wanted!—College Characters,” in Bits of Harvard History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924), 262, 296, 287–88.Google Scholar

92. Batchelder, “C. C. Langdell, Iconoclast,” 303.

93. “Article on Langdell in CENTENNIAL HISTORY HARV. LAW SCHOOL …,” and Annotated copy of “Christopher C. Langdell [1906],” Batchelder Papers, box 5, f. 2, box 6, f. 6.

94. Samuel F. Batchelder, Annotated copy of “Christopher C. Langdell [1906],” Batch-elder Papers, box 6, f. 6, p. 443; Batchelder, “C. C. Langdell, Iconoclast,” 318nl; see also 312, 312n1.

95. The legacy of Batchelder's inconsistency can be seen in a recent essay citing evidence supporting Batchelder's 1906 version on behalf of the view that Langdell's “method was Socratic” as well as evidence supporting “the conventional view” of a dogmatic and didactic Langdell. Nyquist, Curtis W., “A Contract Tale from the Crypt,” Houston Law Review 30 (1993): 1231n149, 1232n151.Google Scholar Similarly, another scholar writes, “Contemporary opinions of Langdell's teaching were mixed, but predominantly negative: most of his students thought him boring and his Socratic technique incomprehensible.” Wiecek, The Lost World of Classical Legal Thought, 93–94.

96. Letter from Joseph H. Beale to Samuel F. Batchelder (14 November 1922), Batch-elder Papers, box 4, f. 5.

97. Kalman, Laura, Legal Realism at Yale, 1927–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 3.Google Scholar

98. Williston, Life and Law, 208–9. Williston's Statement reveals how by 1940 even those regarded as “rigorously a Langdellian Legal scientist” by current scholars had been forced to accommodate themselves to Realist arguments. Quotation is from Siegel, “John Chipman Gray,” 1591.

99. Langdell, Summary of the Law of Contracts, 20–21; [Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.], “[Review of] A Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts … by C. C. Langdell … 1879 [and] Principles of the English Law of Contract. By SirAnson, William R.,” American Law Review 14 (1880): 234.Google Scholar

100. Quotations are, respectively, from: Burton, Steven J., “Introduction,” p. 1, in The Path of the Law and Its Influence: The Legacy of O. W. Holmes, Jr., ed. Burton, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Posner, Richard quoted in Alschuler, Albert W., Law without Values: The Life, Work, and Legacy of Justice Holmes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 92.Google Scholar See Holmes, Oliver Wendell Jr, The Common Law (Boston: Little, Brown, 1881), 1.Google Scholar

101. Touster, Saul, “Holmes a Hundred Years Ago: The Common Law Legal Theory,” Hofstra Law Review 10 (1982). 675.Google Scholar See Frankfurter, Felix, ed., Mr. Justice Holmes (New York: Coward-McCann, 1931)Google Scholar; White, G. Edward, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 3, 171.Google Scholar

102. See, for example, Shriver, Harry C., Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: His Book Notices and Uncollected letters and Papers (New York: Central Book, 1936).Google Scholar

103. LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 3, 172n4.

104. Frank, Jerome, Law and the Modern Mind, with an introduction by Mack, Julian W. (New York: Brentano's, 1930).Google Scholar Already in 1974, this work was identified by Daedalus as one of the classics of the twentieth century. Ackerman, Bruce A., “[Review of] Law and the Modern Mindby Jerome Frank,” Daedalus 103 (1974): 119–27.Google Scholar

105. Frank, Jerome, “Why Not a Clinical Lawyer-School?” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 81 (1933): 907–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

106. Quotations are, respectively, from ibid., 911, 921, 919.

107. Ibid., 907–8. See Centennial History, 226–27.

108. Frank, Jerome, “A Plea for Lawyer-Schools,” Yale Law Journal 56 (1947): 1303–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

109. See, for example, Stolz, Preble, “Clinical Experience in American Legal Education: Why Has It Failed?” Clinical Education and the Law School of the Future, Resource Papers of the Conference [on law students in court] Held… at the University of Chicago, ed. Kitch, Edmund W. (Chicago: University of Chicago Law School, 1969), 72Google Scholar; Schwartz, Bernard, Main Currents in American Legal Thought (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1993), 346nn518–19.Google Scholar See the acute criticism of Frank's interpretation in Chase, Anthony, “The Birth of the Modern Law School,” American Journal of Legal History 23 (1979): 330–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

110. Mark DeWolfe Howe, “Introduction,” p. xiiin5, in Holmes, Oliver Wendell, The Common Law (1881), edited by Howe, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963).Google ScholarBurrow, J. W., “Holmes in his Intellectual Milieu,” in The Legacy Of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., ed. Gordon, Robert W. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 23–24Google Scholar; Grey, Thomas, “Holmes and Legal Pragmatism,” Stanford Law Review 41 (1989): 788n6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 202n6.

111. Wiener, Philip, Evolution and the Founders of Pragmatism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949), 26, 152.Google Scholar

112. Ibid., 153.

113. Holmes, “Oration,” 39–40. See Kelley, Patrick J., “A Critical Analysis of Holmes's Theory of Contract,” Notre Dame Law Review 75 (2000): 1756–57Google Scholar; Brown and Kimball, “When Holmes Borrowed from Langdell,” sect. I.

114. HLS, Faculty Minutes, Microfilm ed., 26 June 1871, 24 June 1872.

115. Stevens, “Law Schools and Legal Education, 1879–1979,” 211.

116. Quotations are from Wiener, Evolution, 153, 238, 232, 235n2. Cf. Batchelder, “Langdell, Iconoclast,” 318nl.

117. Batchelder, “Christopher C. Langdell,” 440; Batchelder, “C. C. Langdell, Iconoclast,” 323n.

118. Hurst, James W., The Growth of American Law: The Law Makers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1950), v, 261–69.Google Scholar Hurst then becomes the authority for Friedman, Lawrence M., A History of American Law, 2d ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), 613n20.Google Scholar

119. Quotations are from Gilmore, Grant, The Death of Contract (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1974), 6, 13, 12, 97–98.Google Scholar

120. Gilmore, Grant, The Ages of American Law (New York: Yale University Press, 1977), 42.Google Scholar

121. Gilmore, Death of Contract, 107–10. Sutherland, Arthur E., The Law at Harvard: A History of Men and Ideas, 1817–1967 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 162–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Similar reliance upon the Sutherland sediment as bedrock authority—while nevertheless rejecting Gilmore's interpretation—is found in the introduction to the republication of Langdell's first casebook: Barnes, Thomas G., “Introduction” to Christopher Columbus Langdell, Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts (reprint of the 1871 edition, Birmingham, AL: Legal Classics Library, 1983), 27–28.Google Scholar

122. Gilmore, Ages of American Law, 124–26. Gilmore also makes passing reference to Stevens, Robert E., “Two Cheers for 1870: The American Law School,” Perspectives in American History 5 (1871): 403–548.Google Scholar

123. Quotations are from Gilmore, Death of Contract, 13. See echoes in Gilmore, Ages of American Law, 125n3.

124. Langdell, A Summary of Equity Pleading (1877), iii.

125. [Holmes,] “[Review of] A Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts” 234.

126. Gilmore, Ages of American Law, 42.

127. Gilmore's books, or excerpts thereof, were assigned annually in the courses in American Legal History taught by Morton Horwitz, even though Horwitz was rather critical in reviewing Gilmore's Ages of American Law in Buffalo Law Review 27 (1978): 47–53, asserting that “Gilmore's generation is thus forever locked in the particular dogmas of the way it has chosen to define the vices of formalism” (53).

128. Quotations are, respectively, from Hoeflich, “Law & Geometry: Legal Science from Leibniz to Langdell,” 121n100, and Nyquist, “A Contract Tale from the Crypt,” 1232n151. See Farnsworth, E. Allan, “Contracts Scholarship in the Age of Anthology,” University of Michigan Law Review 85 (1987): 1412Google Scholar; Teeven, Kevin M., A History of the Anglo-American Common Law of Contract (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1990), 218Google Scholar; Patterson, Dennis, “Langdell's Legacy,” in “Symposium, Reconsidering Grant Gilmore's The Death of Contract” Northwestern University Law Review 90 (Fall 1995): 200n22, 201Google Scholar; Wiecek, The Lost World of Classical Legal Thought …, 93.

129. Boyer, Allen D., “Book Review, Logic and Experience … by William LaPiana,” Cornell Law Review 80 (1995): 371n53.Google Scholar

130. Speziale, Marcia, “Langdell's Concept of Law as Science: The Beginning of Antiformalism in American Legal Theory,” Vermont Law Review 5 (1980): 1–2.Google Scholar

131. Reimann, Mathias W., “Holmes's Common Law and German Legal Science,” in The Legacy of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., ed. Gordon, Robert W. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 2674n166Google Scholar; Boyer, “Book Review, Logic and Experience,” 363n9; Patterson, “Langdell's Legacy,” 197n3; Carter, “Reconstructing Langdell,” 8n21; Kelley, “A Critical Analysis of Holmes's Theory of Contract,” 1703n97.

132. Quotations are, respectively, from Speziale, “Langdell's Concept of Law as Science,” 20, 37, 29. Emphasis added.

133. See Unger, Roberto M., The Critical Legal Studies Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Grey, “Holmes and Legal Pragmatism,” 787–870; Moore, Michael S., “The Interpretive Turn in Modern Theory: A Turn for the Worse?” Stanford Law Review 41 (1989): 871–957.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

134. See Hoeflich, “Law & Geometry: Legal Science from Leibniz to Langdell,” 95–121. Howard Schweber does not identify evidence directly linking his insightful analysis of Protestant Baconianism with Langdell, who “did not leave an extensive written record, forcing historians to rely greatly on Eliot's characterizations.” See Schweber, “Before Langdell: The Roots of American Legal Science,” in The History of Legal Education, ed. Sheppard, 5: 630.

135. Chase, Anthony, “Origins of Modern Professional Education: The Harvard Case Method Conceived as Clinical Instruction in Law,” Nova Law Journal 5 (1981): 340–41Google Scholar; Chase, Anthony, “The Birth of the Modern Law School,” American Journal of Legal History 23 (1979): 331–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See Seligman, Joel, The High Citadel: The Influence of Harvard Law School (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 28–42.Google Scholar

136. Stevens, Robert, Law School: Legal Education in America from the 1850s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 36, 55, 44nn15–17Google Scholar; LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 172n4; Boyer, “Book Review, Logic and Experience” 363n9; Gordon, “The Case for (and against) Harvard,” 1241–42; Carter, “Reconstructing Langdell,” 8n21.

137. Chase, “The Birth of the Modern Law School,” 332, 336, 338, 340–41. To account for the absence of testimony from Eliot or anyone else about Eliot's determinative role, Chase maintains that Eliot “could afford the luxury of modesty.” In response to Eliot's own testimony attributing the origin of case method to Langdell, Chase asserts that Eliot was “willing to confuse at times exactly who was responsible for what” (345).

138. Chase, “The Birth of the Modern Law School,” 341–42; Chase, “Origins of Modern Professional Education,” 330n20. Eliot states that experience in a law office and courtroom is the true analogue to clinical medical education in a hospital, but since a law student spending time in court “would waste his time,” then “the law library… is the real analogue of the hospital” (quoted in Chase, “The Birth of the Modern Law School,” 341–42). In other words, Eliot says that legal case method is not truly analogous to clinical, medical education, but the closest that HLS comes. Chase concedes that Eliot's “indirect” analogy has created “confusion” in the minds of subsequent proponents of clinical education who have missed the point that case method was originally understood as a legal adaptation of clinical, medical education (Chase, “Origins of Modern Professional Education,” 333, 335–40). However, HLS professor Emory Washburn interpreted the same quotation of Eliot discussed by Chase as objecting to clinical teaching, that is, teaching by faculty in the course of professional practice. Washburn, “Harvard Law School,” p. 8v. Jerome Frank also argued that written case reports in case-books did not reflect the experience of a legal dispute and that law schools should replace case method with the clinical model of medical education (Frank, “Why Not a Clinical Lawyer-School?” 916–17). Similarly, “clinical education” programs in current law schools operate on Frank's definition, not Chase's.

139. Chase, “The Birth of the Modern Law School,” 346. On Foucault, see p. 344.

140. Quotations are, respectively, from Chase, “Origins of Modern Professional Education,” 328, 355.

141. Grant Gilmore, Death of Contract, 12. The perseverance of the dilemma and inadvertence strategy in substantive reassessment is shown by Paul D. Carrington, who expresses “gratitude to Langdell for serving a benign cause in which he may never have believed, by making a contribution that he gave no indication of understanding…. Langdell's [case] method was less radical and more useful than he supposed because of its utility to law teachers working in the tradition … of teaching law in support of constitutional democracy” (“Hail! Langdell!” 693; emphasis added). Without intending or understanding or agreeing, says Carrington, Langdell made a benign contribution by introducing case method, though it seems that Langdell was not the originator, either (735–76). In this way, Carrington's inadvertence strategy is unsatisfying because if Langdell did not intend, understand, or condone something that he did not originate, then why should the benign contribution be associated with him at all?

142. Quotation is from Patterson, “Langdell's Legacy,” 198. See, for example, Reimann, “Holmes's Common Law and German Legal Science,” 256n98; LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 187n11; Gordon, “The Case for (and against) Harvard,” 1237; Kelley, “A Critical Analysis of Holmes's Theory of Contract,” 1703n97; Siegel, “John Chipman Gray,” 1520–26.

143. Grey, Thomas C., “Langdell's Orthodoxy,” University of Pittsburgh Law Review 45 (1983): 14.Google Scholar

144. Ibid., 2, 2n6, 39.

145. Quotation is from ibid., 27. See 25–27, 48.

146. Ibid., 10.

147. Langdell, Summary of the Law of Contracts, 20–21; Grey, “Langdell's Orthodoxy,” 4.

148. Grey, “Langdell's Orthodoxy,” 3. See 40, 11n35. Nevertheless, Grey insightfully acknowledges that Holmes shared many premises of “classical orthodoxy” and that scholars have found “contradictions between the formalist elements in Holmes doctrinal writing and his famous realist jurisprudential aphorisms” (ibid., 4, 4n13.). Subsequently, Grey contributed to the scholarship analyzing those contradictions, while the absence of further articles on Langdell suggests that Grey regards his treatment of “Langdell's Orthodoxy” as determinative. See Grey, , “Holmes and Legal Pragmatism,” Stanford Law Review 41 (1989): 787–870CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Plotting the Path of the Law,” Brooklyn Law Review 63 (1997): 19–58; “Holmes on the Logic of the Law,” in Burton, ed., Path of the Law and Its Influence, 133–57.

149. Grey, “Langdell's Orthodoxy,” 16.

150. Ibid., 18. Grey's recognition of Langdell's inductive approach corrected Gilmore's misunderstanding, which was nevertheless subsequently endorsed. Patterson, “Langdell's Legacy,” 200n22.

151. Grey, “Langdell's Orthodoxy,” 18. This inference of a causal link from the analogy between Mill's logic and Grey's view of Langdell's legal science is more plausible than, but analogous to, the speculative arguments of Speziale, Schweber, and Hoeflich, discussed above.

152. Quotations are drawn from Grey, “Langdell's Orthodoxy,” 13, 14, 15. By contrast, Langdell, in the emerging view sketched at the outset, appears (i) to regard justice as the end served by doctrinal coherence and (ii) to regard some specific decisions as unjust when they violate doctrinal coherence. According to this tentative, emerging view, Langdell seems to disagree with Grey's premise that justice could be known by a judge apart from doctrinal coherence. The question is not whether justice should influence specific decisions, as Grey frames it, but whether the conception in a judge's mind that Grey calls justice is merely what Langdell calls “the private judgment or will or caprice of any man.” Letter from Langdell to Joseph R. Webster (19 August 1856) in Christopher Columbus Langdell Papers, Special Collections, Harvard Law School Library, f. 10–11.

153. Grey, “Langdell's Orthodoxy,” 40. See ibid., 6. The ironical formalism of Grey's analysis is shown in language such as “classical orthodoxy sought objective tests …” or “the heart of classical orthodoxy was its aspirations that…” (ibid., 11). This treatment of a conceptual category as an “ontologically robust, reified, animated” entity is precisely what dismissive critics have considered to be quintessentially formalistic about Langdell, as when he says “Equity will find” such and such. Schlag, Pierre, “Law and Phrenology,” Harvard Law Review 110 (1997): 900–901.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

154. Grey, “Langdell's Orthodoxy,” 2n3, 13n44.

155. Ibid., 24.

156. The only justification Grey gives for this sharp distinction between pedagogy and jurisprudence is that “articulate critics of the latter were at the same time defenders and practitioners of the former.” Ibid., 2n3. Only Holmes is cited in this connection, so it seems that Holmes's interpretation of Langdell is governing and that, since Holmes approved one aspect of Langdell's work and not another, the two aspects must be “independent” in principle. The weakness of this reasoning can be shown by pointing out that no scholar would want to universalize this standard either in regard to Holmes's interpretation of someone else or someone else's interpretation of Holmes.

157. Carrington, “Hail! Langdell!” 693n14; Siegel, “John Chipman Gray,” 1516. John H. Schlegel likewise dismisses an analysis of Langdell's teaching as though it had no bearing on his jurisprudence. Schlegel, , “Langdell's Auto-da-fe,” Law and History Review 17 (1999): 149–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

158. [Holmes,] “[Review of] A Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts,” 234. See Langdell, Prefaces to Summary of Equity of Pleading (1877) and Summary of the Law on Contracts (1880); Ames, “Christopher Columbus Langdell, 1826–1906,” 479.

159. Grey gives no indication that he is analyzing a textbook even when stating, “Langdell's most common form of doctrinal discourse was simple dogmatic pronouncement and when he went beyond that, his more usual appeal was to authority or to ‘principle.’ (that is, doctrinal coherence).” Grey, “Langdell's Orthodoxy,” 14.

160. Grey, “Langdell's Orthodoxy,” 3.

161. Ibid., 13, 29.

162. Ibid., 50 and see 49–50n178.

163. Similarly, this circularity is seen in Grey's discussion of the point that “classical orthodoxy sought objective tests,” a characteristic “illustrated” to varying degrees by Williston, Ames, and Langdell (ibid., 11n36). But these are precisely the exemplary figures who define “classical orthodoxy,” so they necessarily illustrate its characteristics. Commensurate with his formalism, Grey imputes circularity to Langdell's treatment of cases as sources of common law principles (ibid., 24).

164. Grey, “Langdell's Orthodoxy,” 13, 14.

165. Ibid., 14n50.

166. Ibid., 27. Grey also discusses exceptions in Langdell's “classical orthodoxy” that Langdell does not deem anomalous (ibid., 26–27). But Grey does not seem to provide for these exceptions in making his blanket assertion that acceptability—that is, considerations of justice or convenience—is never related by Langdell to bottom-level rules or decisions in specific cases (ibid., 15).

167. See Langdell, “Notebooks of Lectures on Partnership and Commercial Paper [1870–71],” 2 vols. Bound Manuscript Collection, Harvard Law School Library; Langdell, “Untitled Lecture notes on Suretyship and Mortgages,” [Spring 1883], in Langdell, “Sampling of Manuscripts,” Harvard University Archives; “Manuscript Book of Lecture Notes taken by an unidentified student in suretyship class taught by C. C. Langdell in 1892–3,” Bound Manuscript Collection, Harvard Law School Library.

168. Grey, “Langdell's Orthodoxy,” 3–4, 11n35, 13, 14, 26n88, 46.

169. Ibid., 14. The position concerns the question of whether unilateral contacts are revocable up to the time performance is completed.

170. Ibid., 34n130, 35, 35nn131–32. These instances are drawn from articles in Harvard Law Review.

171. Grey, “Langdell's Orthodoxy,” 13–14.

172. [Holmes], “[Review of] A Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts,” 234; Grey, “Langdell's Orthodoxy,” 4; Siegel, “John Chipman Gray,” 1524.

173. Howard Schweber insightfully observes that most commentators fail to read Langdell's entire discussion of the mailbox rule and, when that is done, it “looks a great deal like the derivation of a rule from the observation of practical consequences recorded in cases, precisely the idea of an inductive legal science—however constrained the range of his induction.” Howard Schweber, “Before Langdell,” 633. Schweber was specifically rebutting Grey's reading of Langdell's comment on the mailbox rule.

174. Alschuler, Law without Values, 90.

175. Quotations are from Siegel, “John Chipman Gray,” 1516.

176. Bouvier, A Law Dictionary, s.v. alimony.

177. Langdell, , “Discovery under the Judicature Acts of 1873, 1875,” Harvard Law Review 11 (1897): 217.Google Scholar

178. The People of the State of New York v. The Northern Railroad Company, 53 Barbour's 98, 108 (1869); 1869 WL 6294 (N.Y.).

179. “Manuscript Book of Lecture Notes taken by an unidentified student in suretyship class taught by C. C. Langdell in 1892–3,” Bound Manuscript Collection, Harvard Law School Library, p. 4.

180. Boyer, “Book Review, Logic and Experience” 362. Other reviews include: Matzko, John A. in American Journal of Legal History 39 (1995): 271–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chase, William C. in Journal of American History 81 (1995): 1752–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bloomfield, Maxwell in American Historical Review 100 (1995): 571CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chiappinelli, Eric A. in Western Legal History 9 (1996): 250–52.Google Scholar

181. Apart from passing references, this material is found primarily in LaPiana, William P., Logic and Experience: The Origin of Modern American Legal Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 3–28, 55–78Google Scholar, and the associated notes. The book is founded in the dissertation: LaPiana, William P., “Logic and Experience: American Legal Thought and Legal Education, 1800–1920” (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1987).Google Scholar

182. LaPiana, Logic and Experience, pp. vii, 78. LaPiana expresses appreciation for Langdell in an “Epilogue,” whose tone does not seem fully concordant with that in the body of the book. LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 168–70.

183. Quotations are, respectively, from Schlegel, John H., [Book Review], Law and History Review 14 (1996): 369CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gordon, “The Case for (and against) Harvard,” 1231.

184. LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 78.

185. Ibid., 58–70.

186. But LaPiana at one point confuses the second edition of the Summary of Equity Pleading (1883) with that of Summary of the Law of Contracts. LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 188n12.

187. LaPiana ambitiously visited many archives gathering primary material for the rest of his study, not under consideration here.

188. [Letters from 1907 and 1908 giving Reminiscences of Harvard Law School…], Charles Warren Papers, box 37.

189. LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 173n19. Langdell Papers, box 10. The second largest collection of Langdell letters, recently identified, also addresses Langell's law practice: Eleazar Lord Papers, Special Collections, Harvard Law School Library.

190. LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 191n79. City Bank of New Haven v. Perkins, 29 N.Y. 554 ([New York Court of Appeals] 1864).

191. LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 71. LaPiana was quoting and endorsing the traditional judgment of Ames, though he dropped Ames's key qualifier “often”: “‘Langdell did not often appear in court…’”(“Christopher Columbus Langdell, 1826–1906,” 473).

192. LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 71. In an earlier article, LaPiana reached a similar conclusion without providing evidence that Langdell's professional experience informed him about litigating cases. LaPiana, William P., “Just the Facts: The Field Code and the Case Method,” New York Law School Law Review 36 (1991): 325.Google Scholar

193. Boyer, “Book Review, Logic and Experience,” 367.

194. LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 74.

195. The ancillary topics are addressed in Carter, W. Burlette, “Reconstructing Langdell,” Georgia Law Review 32 (1997): 81–134.Google Scholar

196. Ibid., 11, 8.

197. Ibid., 51, 60.

198. Quotations are from ibid., 40.

199. Ibid., 2n2.

200. Though Carter asserts that she is the first to examine these letters (ibid., 2n3), they were previously quoted, without attribution, by Ames (“Christopher Columbus Langdell, 1826–1906,” 473–74) as well as by Mark DeWolfe Howe, who left a note card in one of the boxes. Langdell Papers, box 11, f. 10–1.

201. Delafieldv. Parish (1857), identified by Ames, and City Bank of New Haven v. Perkins (1864), identified by LaPiana.

202. Apart from the annual reports, she discusses one of his four casebooks, one of his three summaries of doctrine, one of his nine articles in the Harvard Law Review, and two of his three published writings about HLS. Langdell's other publications are listed in passing. See Carter, “Reconstructing Langdell,” 86n298, 112n379.

203. Quotations are from Carter, “Reconstructing Langdell,” 2, 23. See ibid., 4–11, 22n86, 25n96.

204. Regarding the reasons for the perseverance of Holmes's “polemical” view of Langdell, Mathias Reimann maintains that the view “gains its power through its simplistic and one-sided portrayal and thereby successfully discredits logic in the law. The distaste we acquire for logic is transferred easily, and in accordance with Holmes's tactic, to Langdell as its American representative…. The distorted picture of Langdell is, however, not Holmes's responsibility alone, nor due solely to our falling prey to the polemical character.” In addition, the acceptance of Holmes's view is due to “our eagerness to view his relationship with Langdell incorrectly as an all-out conflict between a sophisticated early realist and a simple-minded formalist.” Reimann, “Holmes's Common Law and German Legal Science,” 110.

205. The decanal reports are found in the corresponding Annual Report of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass., 18–).

206. Quotation is from Farnsworth, E. Allan, “Contracts Scholarship in the Age of the Anthology,” University of Michigan Law Review 85 (1987): 1409n16.Google ScholarSmith, John W., A Selection of Leading Cases on Various Branches of the Law [1835] … with Additional Notes and References to American decisions by J. I. Clark Hare and Horace B. Wallace of the Philadelphia Bar (Philadelphia: John S. Littell, 1844), 2 vols.Google Scholar This was cited, for example, by Foltz, I. W., “Do we understand and rightly use the ‘case system’?” Chicago Legal News 39 (1906): 7Google Scholar; Schofield, “Christopher Columbus Langdell,” 281; Simpson, A. W. B., “The Rise and Fall of the Legal Treatise,” in Legal Theory and Legal History: Essays on the Common Law (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), 303Google Scholar; Carter, “Reconstructing Langdell,” 22n86.

207. Smith, A Selection of Leading Cases, publisher's advertisement, 1: vi; 2: 428–29, passim.

208. Carrington, “Hail! Langdell!” 735–36; McClain, Emlin “William Gardiner Hammond,” Great American Lawyers, ed. Lewis, William D. (Philadelphia: John C. Winston, 1909), 8:220–21.Google Scholar

209. Ellis, Dorsey D. Jr, “Legal Education: A Perspective on the Last 130 Years of Legal Training,” Washington University Journal of Law and Policy 6 (2001): 166.Google Scholar

210. Hammond, William G., “Legal Education and the Study of Jurisprudence in the West and North-west,” Journal of Social Science 8 (1876): 177–76.Google Scholar

211. Quotations are from Pomeroy, John Norton Jr, “John Norton Pomeroy,” in Great American Lawyers, ed. Lewis, William D. (Philadelphia: John C. Winston, 1909), 8: 99.Google Scholar

212. Jessup, Phillip C., Elihu Root (New York: Dodd Mead, 1938), 1: 61Google Scholar; Hurst, The Growth of American Law, 261ff.; Chase, “The Birth of the Modern Law School,” 333n18; Speziale, “Langdell's Concept of Law as Science,” 12n40; Friedman, A History of American Law, 613n20; Stevens, Law School, 66n14; Farnsworth, “Contracts Scholarship in the Age of the Anthology,” 1409n16; Carrington, “Hail! Langdell!” 736; Carter, “Reconstructing Langdell,” 22.

213. Additional evidence for thinking that Pomeroy was a pioneer of case method is found in his 1878 program for the new Hastings Law School, in which he says he will discuss “leading cases” in class with students. See Pomeroy, John Norton, The Hastings Law Department of the University of California (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft, 1878), 17–18.Google Scholar But even here, Pomeroy, like Hammond, presents the cases as “illustrative” of legal doctrine previously communicated to students by means of a syllabus or lecture (Pomeroy, Jr., “John Norton Pomeroy,” 99). This approach, whether adopted in the late 1860s or 1878, differs significantly from Langdell's inductive case method. Pomeroy's syllabi and texts confirm that he presented cases for students to examine and discuss after he had lectured on the doctrine. See [John N. Pomeroy], Unpublished volume of pamphlets entitled “Announcement of Course of Instruction for Academic Year 1884/85 and Syllabuses of Lectures” (San Francisco: Hastings College of the Law, University of California, c. 1880-C.1884); Pomeroy, John Norton, A Treatise on Equity Jurisprudence as Administered in the United States of America: Students' Edition (San Francisco: Bancroft-Whitney, 1907)Google Scholar; Pomeroy, John Norton, An Introduction to Municipal Law: designed for general readers and for students in colleges and higher schools, 2d ed. (San Francisco: Bancroft-Whitney, 1886)Google Scholar; Pomeroy, John Norton, An Introduction to the Constitution (New York: Hurd and Hough, 1868).Google Scholar

214. “Notes,” Harvard Law Review 4 (1890): 395.

215. Pomeroy, John N. Jr, “[Review of] Josef Redlich, The Case Method in American Law Schools,” Educational Administration and Supervision 2 (1916): 44–46.Google Scholar A comparison of Pomeroy's teaching and Langdell's teaching is made in Barnes, Thomas G., Hastings College of the Law (San Francisco: University of California Hastings College of Law, 1978), 110–14Google Scholar, where the understanding of Langdell is shaped largely by that of the Centennial History and Grant Gilmore and, therefore, adopts the revisionist view of Langdell and credits Pomeroy, although Pomeroy's systematizing and Langdell's disaggregating approaches to studying cases are distinguished.