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The University of North Carolina Press
448 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 13 illus., 9 tables, appends., notes, bibl., index
Studies in Legal History
The Inception of Modern Professional Education
C. C. Langdell, 1826-1906
Christopher C. Langdell (1826-1906) is one of the most influential figures in the history of American professional education. As dean of Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1895, he conceived, designed, and built the educational model that leading professional schools in virtually all fields subsequently emulated. In this first full-length biography of the educator and jurist, Bruce Kimball explores Langdell's controversial role in modern professional education and in jurisprudence.
Langdell founded his model on the idea of academic meritocracy. According to this principle, scholastic achievement should determine one's merit in professional life. Despite fierce opposition from students, faculty, alumni, and legal professionals, he designed and instituted a formal system of innovative policies based on meritocracy. This system's components included the admission requirement of a bachelor's degree, the sequenced curriculum and its extension to three years, the hurdle of annual examinations for continuation and graduation, the independent career track for professional faculty, the transformation of the professional library into a scholarly resource, the inductive pedagogy of teaching from cases, the organization of alumni to support the school, and a new, highly successful financial strategy.
Langdell's model was subsequently adopted by leading law schools, medical schools, business schools, and the schools of other professions. By the time of his retirement as dean at Harvard, Langdell's reforms had shaped the future model for professional education throughout the United States.
"In addition to illuminating the details of Langdell's life, Kimball offers a fascinating narrative of the transformation of Harvard Law School during Langdell's deanship, focusing on both the faculty and university administration as well as the students. Never before have we been able to follow in such detail the increasing demands Harvard Law School made upon its students. And never before has anyone even tried to get at the experience of being a law student at Langdell's Harvard Law School--let alone succeeded the way Kimball does."
--William LaPiana, New York Law School
"Kimball provides all that one could have asked for in a biography of Langdell. This is a careful, sensitive rendering of the life of a very important legal educator. Kimball makes sense of Langdell's innovations in legal education in terms of his experiences before teaching as well as his experiences when teaching and administering at Harvard. Wondrously, along the way Kimball unearths fascinating things about the nature of legal practice in New York City during the years surrounding the Civil War. He has pieced together reconstructions of what took place in the early Socratic classroom as well as what law student life was like. These are extraordinary gifts to historians."
--John Henry Schlegel, University at Buffalo Law School
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