Christopher Columbus Langdell (May 22, 1826 - July 6, 1906), American jurist, was born in the town of New Boston, New Hampshire, of English and Scots-Irish ancestry.
Langdell's core legacy is his influence on the legal education. Before Langdell's tenure, the study of law was a technical pursuit. Students were told what the law is. However, at Harvard Langdell applied the principles of pragmatism to the study of law. Now, as a result of this innovation, lawyers are taught the law through a dialectical process of inference called the case method. The case method has been the primary method of pedagogy at American law schools ever since. The case method has since been adopted and improved upon by schools in other disciplines, such as business, public policy, and education. Students such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. would ensure that Langdell's innovation would not go unnoticed.
Contents |
He studied at Phillips Exeter Academy in 1845-1848, at Harvard College in 1848-1850 and at Harvard Law School in 1851-1854. He served as one of the Harvard Law School's first librarians, as a student. From 1854 to 1870 he practiced law in New York City, but was almost unknown when, in January 1870, he was appointed Dane Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Soon after, he became Dean of the Law Faculty, succeeding Theophilus Parsons, to whose Treatise on the Law of Contracts (1853) he had contributed as a student.
He resigned the deanship in 1895, in 1900 became Dane Professor emeritus, and on 6 July 1906 died in Cambridge. He received the degree of LL.D. in 1875; in 1903 a chair in the law school was named in his honor; and after his death the school's primary academic building, housing both the world's largest academic law library and classrooms, was named Langdell Hall.
Christopher Langdell made the Harvard Law School a success by remodeling its administration. In a private correspondence of 13 April 1915, Charles Eliot wrote: "the putting of Langdell in charge of the Law School was the best piece of work I did for Harvard University, except the reconstruction of the Medical school in [18]70 and [18]71, and the long fight for the development of the elective system."[1]
Dean Langdell's greatest innovation was his introduction of the case method of instruction. Until 1890, no other U.S. law school used this method, which is now standard. Moreover, the standard first-year curriculum at all American law schools — Contracts, Property, Torts, Criminal Law, and Civil Procedure — stands, mostly unchanged, from the curriculum Langdell instituted.
Langdell, who came from a relatively unknown family, was conscious of the fact that students from more privileged backgrounds often received higher grades in their coursework purely because of their family's wealth and social status. Dean Langdell instituted the process of blind grading, now common at U.S. law schools, so that students already known by professors or from esteemed families would have no advantage over others.
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by New title |
Dean of Harvard Law School 1870–1895 |
Succeeded by James Barr Ames |
Christopher Columbus Langdell in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.