James Barr Ames (June 22, 1846[1] – January 8, 1910)[2] was a American law educator, who popularized the "case-study" method of teaching law developed by Christopher Columbus Langdell. Ames insisted that legal education should require the study of actual cases instead of abstract principles of law. He was instrumental in introducing the case method in the teaching of law, a method in general use by American law schools at the time of his death and today.[3] He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1878.[4] He served as dean of Harvard Law School from 1895 to 1910. He was a manager of the 1907-founded Comparative Law Bureau of the American Bar Association, whose Annual Bulletin was the first comparative law journal in the U.S.
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Christopher Columbus Langdell |
Dean of Harvard Law School 1895–1910 |
Succeeded by Ezra Ripley Thayer |
James Barr Ames in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.