The Path of Legal Education from Edward I to Langdell: A History of Insular Reaction

Chicago-Kent Law Review Volume 57 | Issue 2 Article 4 April 1981 The Path of Legal Education from Edward I to Langdell: A History of Insular Reaction Ralph Michael Stein Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Ralph M. Stein, The Path of Legal Education from Edward I to Langdell: A History of Insular Reaction, 57 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 429 (1981). Available at: https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/vol57/iss2/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Chicago-Kent Law Review by an authorized editor of Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. For more information, please contact . THE PATH OF LEGAL EDUCATION FROM EDWARD I TO LANGDELL: A HISTORY OF INSULAR REACTION RALPH MICHAEL STEIN* This article presents an analytic overview of key aspects in the history of legal education in England and the United States from the time of Edward I to the end of the last century. The response of lawyers and legal educators to the perceived need to protect the profession from a variety of ills and plagues is explored. In general terms this history of legal education can be divided into three parts. The first period begins in 1292 and continues up to the American Revolution. The focus is on the English system, since even in the late colonial period Americal legal education was dependent on the English model. The next two periods are predominantly American. The half century or so after the Revolution saw a good deal of experimentation in the United States as new institutions were developing that were not only unknown to England but were reactions to the perceived shortcomings of their English counterparts. The third period, ending in 1895, begins with the appointment of United States Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story to a professorship at the Harvard Law School, and culminates in the firm establishment of the study of law as a science in the universities during the tenure of Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell at the Harvard Law School. The development of a sense of professionalism by those engaged in the teaching of law, a sense of professionalism that was reactive to public perception about lawyers as well as to academic dismay at the roles played by lawyers, will be explored herein. PRE-REVOLUTION LEGAL EDUCATION England The need for special education for those charged with appearing before the increasingly professional courts of England became obvious in the late thirteenth century. The reforms of Henry II and the com* B.A., New School for Social Research; J.D., Hofstra University School of Law; Assistant Professor of Law, Pace University School of Law. 429 CHICAGO KENT LAW REVIEW plex real property law problems of disintegrating feudalism required specialists. In 1292, Edward I issued a royal edict to his judges of the common bench to find and select "apt and eager" students representative of each county in the realm to learn the business of the courts. I These students were to be concentrated at the seat of the courts, Westminster. 2 The earliest form of education was simplicity personified. Attendance at 3 court and discussion of the cases heard sufficed. With the passage of time, the students, whose lives were spent in that small area of London dominated by Westminster, regularly congregated at a small number of dwelling places and began to organize. The present day Inns of Court began to take their familiar form when masters, men experienced in litigation, were hired to lecture students where they lived. 4 Groups of practitioners became affiliated, at first rather loosely and then formally, at the dwelling places commonly known as Inns. A number of these hostelries became known as the Inns of Court, of which number four dominated the scene: Gray's, 5 Lincoln's, Middle Temple and Inner Temple. As might be expected, control of the Inns soon passed from the hands of the putative employers, the students, to those of the teachers, the masters. 6 There developed a hierarchy, a virtual inevitability in a society as class- and status-conscious as England was and is. The masters became known as benchers while the students were classified into three categories. Experienced students, known as readers, were employed in instruction in somewhat the same manner as contemporary 1. P. HAMLIN, LEGAL EDUCATION IN COLONIAL NEW YORK 13 (1939) [hereinafter cited as HAMLIN]. The business of the king's courts was becoming increasingly complex. The development of various new royal courts and the rise of major commercial relationships with foreign merchants were but two factors pointing the way to an enlarged and specially trained group of legal professionals. 2. Westminster had been the London site for kings and courts, royal and judicial, insofar as that distinction was valid in early English history, since Anglo-Saxon times. It was natural for the new courts to develop in that area. See W. BESANT, EARLY LONDON (1908). 3. T. PLUCKNETT, A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE COMMON LAW 217 (1936) [hereinafter cited as PLUCKNETr]. 4. M. KNAPPEN, CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND 295 (1942) [hereinafter cited as KNAPPEN]. 5. The two former Inns originally belonged to the earls of Gray and Lincoln, respectively; the two latter had been granted to the Knights Templar. BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 709 (5th ed. 1979). These Inns of Court survive and thrive to the present day. Their function as training schools for barristers is unchanged and virtually unchallenged. KNAPPEN, supra note 4, at 296. 6. The pattern perhaps anticipated the same dynamic which led to the founding of the first American law schools. See text accompanying notes 58-60 infra. In any event, with the example of other guilds before them, the new Inns of Court organized rapidly and effectively. The quality of the learning experience undoubtedly increased. PATH OF LEGAL EDUCATION law school teaching assistants. 7 The second category of student, the outer barristers, was perhaps the equivalent of today's second year law school class and their studies were dominated by participation in the moots. 8 New students, whose course of instruction was largely lecture and observation, were denominated inner barristers. The method of legal education available and predominating at the Inns at any given time depended on whether or not court was in session. When the courts were not hearing cases, the readers would give lectures covering a variety of topics and conduct special moots called bolts. 9 When court was in session, the Inns were crowded with the judges and lawyers as well as the students. In the evenings the dual nature of an Inn became apparent as those who dwelled there took part in an educational exercise that has survived, with intermittent interruptions, for seven centuries: the moot court. Practice courts were held in whi (...truncated)