Columbia Law School
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Columbia Law School | |
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| Established: | 1858 |
| Type: | Private |
| Postgraduates: | 1,300 |
| Location: | New York, New York, USA |
| Dean: | David Schizer |
| Website: | www.law.columbia.edu |
Columbia Law School, located in the New York City borough of Manhattan, is one of the professional schools of Columbia University, a member of the Ivy League, and one of the leading law schools in the United States. According to The Princeton Review, 1,229 students, pursuing J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees, are enrolled at the school.[1] David Schizer is the dean.
Columbia is and has historically been one of the country's most prestigious law schools. For the past decade, Columbia has ranked among the top five law schools in the nation; Columbia Law is currently ranked 4th by U.S. News & World Report.[1]
Columbia Law School has a large number of distinguished alumni including two Presidents of the United States and six Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Furthermore, Columbia Law School has graduated a number of prominent figures in the business world, with more current members of the Forbes 400 having attended Columbia than any other law school.[2]
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[edit] History
The teaching of law at Columbia reaches back to the 18th century. Graduates of the university's colonial predecessor, King's College, included such notable early American judicial figures as John Jay, who would later become the first chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. Columbia College appointed its first professor of law, James Kent, in 1793, but the formal instruction of law was suspended for some time during the early decades of the 19th century.
A revival of interest resulted in the formal establishment of the law school in 1858. The first law school building was a Gothic Revival structure located on Columbia's Madison Avenue campus. Thereafter the college became Columbia University and moved north to the neighborhood of Morningside Heights.
In the 1920s and 30s, the law school soon became known for the development of the legal realism movement. Among the major realists affiliated with Columbia Law School were Karl Llewellyn, Felix S. Cohen and William O. Douglas.
In September 1988, Columbia Law School founded the first AIDS Law Clinic in the country, taught by Professor Deborah Greenberg and Mark Barnes.[2]
[edit] Columbia Law School today
Today, Columbia Law School is well regarded in the areas of business law, (John C. Coffee, Jr., Ronald J. Gilson, Harvey Goldschmid, Jeffrey Gordon, Katharina Pistor), criminal law (Debra Ann Livingston, Harold Edgar, George Fletcher, Jeffrey Fagan, James Liebman, Gerard Lynch), international and comparative law (Michael Doyle, Jose Alvarez, George Bermann, Lori Fisler Damrosch, Louis Henkin, Petros Mavroidis, Katharina Pistor), Legal Philosophy (Joseph Raz, William H. Simon, R. Kent Greenawalt, Charles Sabel), intellectual property (Jane Ginsburg, Michael Heller, Clarisa Long, Eben Moglen, Tim Wu), administrative law (Thomas Merrill, Gillian Metzger, Peter L. Strauss), and legal history (Eben Moglen, John Witt, Vincent Blasi, Robert Ferguson, Ariela Dubler).
Widely cited scholars in other specialties include Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (race and gender), Michael C. Dorf and Henry Monaghan (constitutional law), Marvin Chirelstein (tax law) Thomas Merrill (administrative law, Property Theory), Robert Scott (contract law), and Patricia J. Williams (race and gender). Columbia was also among the first schools to establish both comparative and international law centers, and is also a major center for the study of Chinese, Japanese and Korean law.
In 2006, Columbia Law School embarked on an ambitious campaign to increase the number of faculty by fifty percent without increasing the number of students.
Columbia Law School’s Arthur W. Diamond Library is the second largest law library in the United States, with over 1,000,000 volumes. The Columbia Law Review is the second most cited law journal in the country and is one of the four publishers of the Bluebook. Columbia Law School has also cultivated alliances and dual degree programs with overseas law schools, including King's College London (KCL), University College London (UCL) and London School of Economics (LSE) in London, England and the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (“Sciences Po”) in Paris, France. Furthermore, Columbia Law School runs vigorous clinical programs that contribute to the community, including the nation's first technology-based clinic, called Lawyering in the Digital Age. This clinic is currently engaged in building a community resource to understand the collateral consequences of criminal charges.[3] In April 2006, Columbia announced that it was starting the nation's first clinic in sexuality and gender law.[4] In 2007, Columbia opened a new program in law and technology.
Columbia Law School’s main building, Jerome L. Greene Hall (or simply "the Law School"), was designed by Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz, architects of the United Nations Headquarters and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (which for many years served as the site of Columbia Law School's graduation ceremonies). It is located at the intersection of Amsterdam Avenue and W 116th Street. One of the building's defining features is its frontal sculpture, Bellerophon Taming Pegasus, designed by Jacques Lipchitz, widely reviled among Columbia students. In 1996, the Law School was extensively renovated, including the addition of a new entrance façade and lobby, as well as the expansion of existing space to include a café and lounges. Other Columbia Law School buildings include William and June Warren Hall, the Jerome Green Learning Annex (which Jerome Green's representatives politely declined to have renamed after the building of Jerome Green Hall) and William C. Warren Hall (or "Little Warren").
The student-run organization Unemployment Action Center has a chapter at Columbia Law School.
[edit] Notable alumni
[edit] Columbia Law School in popular culture
- Marvel Comics character Matthew Murdock, the alter ego of superhero Daredevil, and his roommate and eventual law partner, Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, attended Columbia Law School.
- On the television show Law & Order, Assistant District Attorney Jamie Ross studied law at Columbia.
- In Body Heat, Edmund Walker (played by Richard Crenna), the wealthy husband of the film's femme fatale, is a Columbia Law School graduate.
- In the film Old School, Dean Gordon Pritchard bribes the student body president by guaranteeing her admission to Columbia Law.
- On the television show How I Met Your Mother, the character Marshall is a Columbia Law student.
- On The West Wing (S7E1), Toby Ziegler is seen in a three-year flash-forward to be teaching at Columbia.
- On The West Wing (S5), Angela (the new head of legislative affairs at the White House) meets Leo in regards to the President's high popularity in polls during the time of his daughter's kidnapping. When Leo says that the President's temporary self-removal from office was a constitutional necessity, Angela comments on the negative political ramifications and tells Leo, "If you want a Constitutional debate, call the Dean of Columbia Law."
[edit] References
- ^ The Princeton Review
- ^ Constance Hays, Students Protest Possible Closing of Legal Clinic, The New York Times, April 16, 1989.
[edit] External links
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