Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School
Established: 1817
Type: Private
Endowment: US$1.7 billion
Dean: Elena Kagan
Staff: 284
Students: 1,800
1680 JD
150 LLM
50 S.J.D.
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Campus: Urban
Website: www.law.harvard.edu

Harvard Law School (also known as Harvard Law or HLS) is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the United States' oldest law school in continuous operation. It is home to the largest academic law library in the world.[1]

Harvard Law introduced what became the standard first-year curriculum for American law schools — including classes in contracts, property, torts, criminal law, and civil procedure — in the 1870s, under Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell. At Harvard, Langdell also developed the case method of teaching law, which became the dominant model for U.S. law schools.

The current dean of Harvard Law School is Elena Kagan, who succeeded Robert C. Clark in 2003.

Each cohort in the three-year J.D. program numbers approximately 550 students. The first-year (1L) class is broken into seven sections of approximately 80 students who take most first-year classes together. Harvard Law has 246 faculty members.[2]

Admission to Harvard Law is highly selective: For the class entering in 2008, there were approximately 7200 applicants, of which approximately 11.4% were admitted; 67.9% of those admitted enrolled. For that class, the median GPA was between 3.74 and 3.95 (out of 4.00) and an LSAT score between 170 and 176 (out of 180).[3] Harvard Law's admissions process includes the unusual feature of telephone interviews conducted amongst students likely to be accepted.

Harvard Law School has produced numerous leaders in American law and politics, including many more U.S. Supreme Court justices and U.S. Senators than any other law school. In part because of its large size, it is consistently the best represented law school among the faculty at the U.S. law schools and among the attorneys at the top law firms in the U.S.

Contents

Campus

Langdell Hall
Austin Hall
Langdell Hall, home of the Harvard Law School library

Harvard Law School's campus is located just north of Harvard Yard, the historic center of Harvard University, and contains several architecturally significant buildings.

Austin Hall, the law school's oldest dedicated structure, was completed in 1884 by architect H. H. Richardson. The law school's student center, Harkness Commons, was designed by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, along with several law school dormitories. Together, they make up the Harvard Graduate Center complex. Langdell Hall, the largest building on the law school campus, contains the Harvard Law Library, the most extensive academic law library in the world.

As of 2006, a new complex is scheduled to rise on the northwest corner of the law school campus, to be designed by traditionalist architect Robert A. M. Stern.[4] The complex is set to marry the architectural themes present in Austin and Langdell Halls, as well as the Gropius buildings.

History

Harvard Law School was established in 1817, making it the oldest continuously-operating law school in the nation. (The Marshall-Wythe School of Law at The College of William & Mary opened in 1779, but was forced to close at the outset of the American Civil War, and did not reopen until 1920.[5] The University of Maryland School of Law was chartered in 1816, but did not begin classes until 1824, and also closed during the Civil War.[6])

The Royall estate

Its origins can be traced to the estate of Isaac Royall, who sold most of his Caribbean slaves and plantations to move to Medford, Massachusetts. His Medford estate, the Isaac Royall House, is now a museum, and includes the only remaining slave quarters in the northeast United States. The estate was passed down to Royall's son, Isaac Royall, Jr., who fled Massachusetts as the American Revolution broke out. Just prior to his death in 1781, Royall, Jr. left land to Harvard, the sale of which was intended for the "endowing of a Professor of Laws at said college, or a Professor of Physics and Anatomy". Harvard took the opportunity to fund its first chair of law. The Royall chair remains today. It traditionally was held by the Dean of the law school, but the current Dean, Elena Kagan, declined the Royall chair, instead giving herself the Charles Hamilton Houston Professorship.

In 1806, the Royall estate in Medford was returned to Royall, Jr.'s heirs, who sold it and donated the proceeds for the formal foundation of Harvard Law School. The Royall family coat-of-arms was adopted as the school crest, which shows three stacked wheat sheaves beneath the university motto (Veritas, Latin "truth").[7]

Growth and the Langdell curriculum

While the law school had previously been located on Harvard Yard, the new curriculum that Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell developed in the 1870s demanded lecture halls suited to the case law and interrogatory Socratic method of teaching.

H. H. Richardson would later design the law school's first independent home, the Romanesque Austin Hall, to the north of the Yard, with these needs in mind. This would come to form the nucleus of the current law school campus.

As the 20th century dawned, Dean Langdell's innovations became standard in law school curricula across the country. New theories, such as legal realism, blossomed at Yale and Columbia, while Harvard faculty members were generally known for their conservative approach.

Institutional criticism

As one of the preeminent law schools in the United States, Harvard has been criticized for many perceived shortcomings.

Harvard Law is often believed to be a competitive environment. For example, Dean Berring of Berkeley Law once stated that he "view[ed] Harvard Law School as a samurai ring where you can test your swordsmanship against the swordsmanship of the strongest intellectual warriors from around the nation."[8] This was possibly historically true. When Langdell developed the original law school curriculum, Harvard University President Charles Eliot told him to make it "hard and long."[9][10] The school maintained a relatively uncompetitive admissions process, but "weeded out" a large number of first year students. This gave rise to the infamous legend of a dean at the school telling incoming students, "Look to your left, look to your right, because one of you won't be here by the end of the year."[11] Novels such as Scott Turow's One L and John Jay Osborn's The Paper Chase describe such an environment.

This Harvard Law persisted into the 2nd half of the 20th century,[9] but bears no resemblance to the modern Harvard Law. The school eventually implemented the once-criticized[10] but now dominant approach pioneered by Dean Robert Hutchins at Yale Law School: It shifted the competitiveness to the admissions process. Robert Granfield and Thomas Koenig's 1992 study of Harvard Law students that appeared in The Sociological Quarterly found that students "learn to cooperate with rather than compete against classmates," and that contrary to "less eminent" law schools, students "learn that professional success is available for all who attend, and that therefore, only neurotic "gunners" try to outdo peers."[12] According to the ABA, in 2007-2008 the school admitted only 11.8% of applicants and no students left as a result of "academic" shortcomings.[13]

Whether the school ever was competitive is a subject of debate. A New York Times article from 1894 described in-class moot courts at Harvard as "co-operative."[14]

In addition, Eleanor Kerlow's book Poisoned Ivy: How Egos, Ideology, and Power Politics Almost Ruined Harvard Law School criticized the school for a 1980s political dispute between newer and older faculty members over accusations of insensitivity to minority and feminist issues. Divisiveness over such issues as political correctness lent the school the title "Beirut on the Charles."[15] Dean Robert C. Clark is generally given credit for "break[ing] the logjam."[16]

Several other criticisms of the school have been the target of reforms by current Dean Elena Kagan (discussed below):

In Broken Contract: A Memoir of Harvard Law School, Richard Kahlenberg criticized the school for driving students away from public interest and toward work in high-paying law firms. Kahlenberg's criticisms are supported by Granfield and Koenig's study, which found that "students [are directed] toward service in the most prestigious law firms, both because they learn that such positions are their destiny and because the recruitment network that results from collective eminence makes these jobs extremely easy to obtain."[12]

The school has also been criticized for extremely large first year class sizes (at one point there were 140 students/classroom; as of 2001 there are 80), a cold and aloof administration,[17] and an inaccessible faculty. The latter stereotype is a central plot element of The Paper Chase and appears in Legally Blonde. Inaccessibility of the faculty was possibly a side effect of Harvard's original admissions process, which may have annoyed faculty by giving them less than stellar students.[10]

The Kagan Deanship

Elena Kagan sought to reverse these stereotypes when she assumed the deanship of the school in 2003, promising reforms. She gives students her personal e-mail address, holds office hours, has successfully cut first year class sizes in half, and has been given credit for a host of quality-of-life improvements at the law school, including an ice-skating rink (during the winter) and a beach volleyball court (the rest of the year) on campus, free coffee in classroom buildings, free tampons in campus public restrooms, and the renovation of several of the school's facilities.[18] She has also managed to boost the school's involvement in international[19] and public interest law,[20] and has hired a number of new faculty members.[21]

The number of students interested in public interest law positions has expanded as Harvard has begun to offer summer funding for public interest internships and low income loan reduction plans for alumni who take on careers in the public interest and academia. For example, beginning with the J.D. Class of 2011, students who pledge to spend five years working for nonprofit organizations or the government after graduation will receive a grant in the full amount of their tuition during their third year, and are entitled to keep the grant if they remain in such positions for the five-year period. [22] Tuition for the 2008-2009 academic year is $41,900.[23]

In 2006, the faculty voted unanimously to approve a new first-year curriculum, placing greater emphasis on problem-solving, administrative law, and international law. The new curriculum is being implemented in stages over the next several years.[24][25] In 2008, the faculty voted to eliminate letter grades and move to a pass/fail grading system, effective for the class entering in the Fall of 2008.

In addition, a vast new complex under construction on the northwest part of the law school campus is intended to expand classroom space for additional courses and create more space for an expanding clinical program.[4] Several dormitories are also set to be renovated.

Programs

Harvard Legal Aid Bureau

The Harvard Legal Aid Bureau is the oldest (and perhaps only) student-run legal services office in the country, founded in 1913.[26] The Bureau's mission is to provide an important community service while giving student attorneys the opportunity to develop professional skills as part of the clinical programs of Harvard Law School.

The Harvard Legal Aid Bureau is a student-run law firm. The Bureau serves clients in housing law (landlord-tenant relations, public housing, subsidized housing), family law (divorce, custody, paternity, child support), government benefits (Social Security, unemployment benefits, Veterans' benefits, welfare), and wage and hour cases (including unpaid or underpaid wages, benefits, and overtime). The Bureau employs seven supervising attorneys and elects approximately twenty student members annually. Students at the Bureau practice under the supervision of admitted attorneys; however, students are primarily casehandlers on all matters. As a result, students gain firsthand experience appearing in court, negotiating with opposing attorneys, and working directly with clients. Students receive both classroom and clinical credits for their work at the Bureau.

Unlike most clinical programs at Harvard (or other schools), the Bureau is a two-year commitment. This gives clients a chance to have a much more sustained and in-depth academic experience. In addition to the substantive legal experience, students gain practical experience managing a law firm. The student board of directors makes all decisions regarding case intake, budget management, and office administration.

Famous alumni include Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, activist Michelle Obama, and professors Erwin Chemerinsky and Laurence Tribe.[27]

Berkman Center for Internet & Society

The Harvard Law School is home to the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, which focuses on the study and construction of cyberspace. The Center sponsors conferences, courses, visiting lecturers, and residential fellows. Members of the Center do research and write books, articles, and weblogs with RSS 2.0 feeds, for which the Center holds the specification. The Center's present location is a small Victorian wood-frame building which sits next to the larger-scale buildings of the Harvard Law School campus. It is in the process of relocating to a larger site on the campus' perimeter. Its newsletter, "The Filter", is on the Web and available by e-mail, and it hosts a blog community of Harvard faculty, students and Berkman Center affiliates. The Berkman Center is funding the Openlaw project. One of the major initiatives of the Berkman Center is the OpenNet Initiative, which is a joint worldwide study of the filtering of the web, along with the Universities of Toronto and Cambridge (UK). The Berkman Center was a co-sponsor of Wikimania 2006. Charles Nesson, Lawrence Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain, John Palfrey, William W. Fisher, and Yochai Benkler hold appointments at the Berkman Center.

Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice

Established in the fall of 2005 at Harvard Law School, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice seeks to honor the contributions of Charles Hamilton Houston, who dedicated his life to using law as a tool to reverse the unjust consequences of racial discrimination. The Institute carries forth Houston's legacy by serving as a hub for scholarship, legal education, policy analysis, and public forums on issues central to current civil rights struggles.

see also Charles Ogletree

Labor & Worklife Program

The Labor and Worklife Program (LWP) is Harvard University’s forum for research and teaching on the world of work and its implications for society. Located at the Harvard Law School, the LWP brings together scholars and policy experts from a variety of disciplines to analyze critical labor issues in the law, economy, and society. The LWP also provides unique education for labor leaders throughout the world via the oldest executive training program at Harvard University, the Harvard Trade Union Program, founded in 1942. As a multidisciplinary research and policy network, the LWP organizes projects and programs that seek to understand critical changes in labor markets and labor law, and to analyze the role of unions, business, and government as they affect the world of work. By engaging scholars, students, and members of the labor community, the program coordinates legal, educational, and cultural activities designed to improve the quality of work life.

The faculty, staff, and research associates of the Program include some of the nation’s premier scholars of labor studies and an array of internationally renowned intellectuals. The executive training program (HTUP) works closely with trade unions around the world to bring excellence in labor education to trade union leadership. The LWP regularly holds forums, conferences, and discussion groups on labor issues of concern to business, unions, and the government. Housed at the LWP are the Paywizard.org and ElMundoLaboral.org websites, the latter providing the only Spanish-language wage-checker available for the American workplace.

WilmerHale Legal Services Center

The WilmerHale Legal Services Center (formerly known as the Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center) is Harvard Law School’s oldest and largest clinical teaching facility. The Legal Services Center is a general practice law firm that provides legal counsel to over 1,200 clients annually. It offers students an opportunity to gain practical legal experience and earn academic credit by handling real cases for real clients under the supervision of clinical instructors who are experienced practitioners and mentors. The Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center sponsors up to 70 students each semester through several clinical courses offered at Harvard Law School and, during the summer, sponsors a program for volunteer law students from across the country.

Students working at the Center are placed in one of its clinics housed in five substantive practice groups and work with clinical instructors, experienced practitioners and mentors, who supervise student work and provide guidance as students build and manage their own caseload. The Center provides substantive training in each practice area and also offers general instruction on topics such as client interviewing and intake, case management, legal investigation and discovery, creative legal analysis, research and drafting.

The WilmerHale Legal Services Center is located in Boston’s culturally diverse Jamaica Plain neighborhood.

Other Harvard Law School programs

Pound Hall

There are two additional programs affiliated with Harvard Law School, the Ames Foundation and the Selden Society.

Publications

Students of the Juris Doctor (JD) program are involved in preparing and publishing the Harvard Law Review, one of the most renowned university law reviews, as well as a number of other law journals and an independent student newspaper. The Harvard Law Review was first published in 1887 and has been staffed and edited by some of the school's most notable alumni. In addition to the journal, the Harvard Law Review Association also publishes The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, the most widely followed authority for legal citation formats in the United States. The student newspaper, the Harvard Law Record, has been published continuously since the 1940s, making it one of the oldest law school newspapers in the country, and has included the exploits of fictional law student Fenno for decades.

Classroom in Pound Hall

The law journals are:

Notable alumni

Main article: List of Harvard Law School graduates

Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th President of the United States, and Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States (elect), graduated from HLS. Obama was the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review and will be the first African-American President of the U.S.

Fourteen of the school's graduates have served on the Supreme Court of the United States, more than any other law school, and another four justices attended the school without graduating. Six of the current nine members of the court attended HLS: Chief Justice John Roberts, and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. Ginsburg transferred to and graduated from Columbia Law School. Past Supreme Court justices from Harvard Law School include Harry Blackmun, Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Lewis Powell (LLM), and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Attorneys General Alberto Gonzales and Janet Reno, among others, and noted federal judges Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Michael Boudin of the First Circuit Court of Appeals, and Pierre Leval of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, among many other judicial figures, graduated from the school. The current Commonwealth Solicitor General of Australia Stephen Gageler SC graduated from Harvard with an LL.M.[28]

Famous legal academics who graduated from Harvard Law include Erwin Chemerinsky, Ronald Dworkin, Susan Estrich, Arthur R. Miller, William L. Prosser, John Sexton, Kathleen Sullivan, Cass Sunstein, and Laurence Tribe.

Past presidential candidates who are HLS graduates include Mitt Romney, Michael Dukakis and Ralph Nader.

In addition to their achievements in law and politics, Harvard Law alumni have also excelled in other fields. Many have gone on to become influential journalists, writers, media and business leaders and even professional athletes.

Notable professors

Hauser Hall

Fictional Professors

Professor Callahan Legally Blonde Legally Blonde The Musical

Emmett (In the musical Legally Blonde: The Musical his name is "Emmett Forrest".) Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde

In popular culture

Books

The Paper Chase is a novel set amid a student's first ("One L") year at the school. It was written by John Jay Osborn, Jr., who studied at the school. The book was later turned into a film and a television series (see below).

Scott Turow, a novelist, also wrote a book about his experience as a first-year law student at Harvard, One L.

The book Legally Blonde, by Amanda Brown, is about a sorority girl enrolling at Stanford Law School, much to the scrutiny of her classmates and professors. When the book was adapted into a feature film (which itself spawned both a sequel and a musical) the setting was changed to Harvard Law School. Many scenes from the first movie were filmed on the grounds of Harvard.

Less notable is Richard Kahlenberg's account of his experiences at the school, Broken Contract: A Memoir of Harvard Law School. Kahlenberg breaks from the other two authors and describes the experience of the final two years at the school, claiming that the environment drives students away from their public interest aspirations and toward work in high-paying law firms.

The book Brush With the Law by Robert Byrnes and Jaime Marquart is an account of the authors' three years in Standord (Byrnes) and Harvard (Marquart) Law Schools. The authors indulge in alcohol, drugs (Marquart has a penchant for crack cocaine), womanizing, and gambling before passing their exams and moving on to a successful legal career.

Film and television

Several movies and television shows take place at least in part at the school. Most of them have scenes filmed on location at or around Harvard University. They include:

Many popular movies and television shows also feature characters introduced as Harvard Law graduates. Some of these include:

References

  1. ↑ http://www.law.harvard.edu/about/, http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla67/visit-e.htm
  2. ↑ "HLS Faculty Directory". Retrieved on 2007-07-05.
  3. ↑ HLS: JD Admissions: Frequently Asked Questions About J.D. Admissions
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 The Northwest Corner at Harvard Law School
  5. ↑ "Quick Facts: W&M Law School". Marshall-Wythe School of Law. Retrieved on 2007-08-24.
  6. ↑ "The University of Maryland School of Law: Our History and Mission". The University of Maryland School of Law. Retrieved on 2008-06-21.
  7. ↑ A Royall Find
  8. ↑ Interview with Dean Robert Berring of U.C. Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Harvard Law School Oral History
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Learning Law in New Haven
  11. ↑ Richard D. Kahlenberg, "Broken Contract: A Memoir of Harvard Law School"
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Wiley InterScience :: Session Cookies
  13. ↑ http://officialguide.lsac.org/SearchResults/SchoolPage_PDFs/ABA_LawSchoolData/ABA3457.pdf
  14. ↑ COMPETITIVE DEBATES AT YALE.; The New Law School Building to be Ready ... - Article Preview - The New York Times
  15. ↑ www
  16. ↑ The Harvard Crimson :: News :: Under Kagan, A Harmonious HLS
  17. ↑ Harvard Law Tries to Increase Appeal - New York Times
  18. ↑ Harvard Gazette: Big plans highlight Elena Kagan' 2L
  19. ↑ HLS: Alumni Bulletin: At Home in the World
  20. ↑ HLS: Alumni Bulletin: Hands On
  21. ↑ The Harvard Crimson :: News :: Kagan Stresses Growth
  22. ↑ HLS Student Financial Services: Public Service Initiative Program Guidelines
  23. ↑ HLS Student Financial Services: 2008-2009 Student Budget
  24. ↑ HLS: Alumni Bulletin: A Curriculum of New Realities
  25. ↑ Harvard Law Decides to Steep Students in 21st-Century Issues - New York Times
  26. ↑ Harvard Legal Aid Bureau
  27. ↑ Harvard Legal Aid Bureau
  28. ↑ Stephen Gageler Sydney Barrister - 11th Floor - Administrative & public law, Appellate practice , Commercial law , Competition law , Conflict of laws, Constitutional law, Huma...

Further reading

External links

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