Proliferation of Case Method Teaching

The Proliferation of Case Method Teaching in American Law Schools: Mr.
Langdell's
Emblematic "Abomination," 1890-1915
Author(s): Bruce A. Kimball
Source: History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Summer, 2006), pp. 192-247
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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The Proliferation of Case Method
Teaching in American Law Schools: Mr.
Langdell's Emblematic "Abomination,"
1890-1915
Bruce A. Kimball
I. INTRODUCTION
Case method teaching was first introduced into American higher education
in 1870 by Christopher C. Langdell (1826-1906) of Harvard Law School
(HLS), where it became closely associated with-and emblematic of-a set
of academic meritocratic reforms. Though regnant today, "the ultimate
triumph of [Langdell's] system was not apparent" for many years.' The vast
majority of students, alumni, and law professors initially derided it as an
"abomination," and for two decades case method and the associated reforms
were largely confined to Harvard. During the subsequent twenty-five years
between 1890 and 1915, a national controversy ensued as to whether case
method teaching-and the concomitant meritocratic reforms-would
predominate in legal education and, ultimately, professional education in
the United States.
By the beginning of World War 1, 40 percent of American law schools
had adopted the emblematic case method. Another 24 percent had partially
accommodated Langdell's method with the clear prospect of complete
adoption on the horizon. Of the 3 6 percent of law schools that still rejected
case method, the great majority were marginal, less influential, or rapidly
losing influence in American legal education; and most of these would
convert during the next decade.
Bruce A. Kimball (bkimball@its.rochester.edu) is writing a biography of Christopher C.

Langdell. For their insights and help with many aspects of the research for this essay, I am
indebted to Daniel R. Coquillette, David Warrington, and Charles Donahue. In addition, I
received helpful suggestions from J. Gravett Hook, Gail Hupper, Mary Elizabeth Basile,
Daniel Ernst, and three anonymous reviewers for HEQ. I also gratefully acknowledge that
financial and logistical support for the research was received at various points from the Spencer
Foundation, the James Barr Ames, Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies.
'Alfred S. Konefsky and John Henry Schlegel, "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Histories
of American Law Schools," Harvard Law Review 95 (Feb. 1982): 837.
History of Education Quarterly Vol. 46 No. 2 Summer 2006
The Proliferation of Case Method Teaching in American Law Schools 193
The reasons for adopting, accommodating, or rejecting the emblematic

case method involved a complicated set of jurisprudential, ideological,
pedagogical, self-interested, and circumstantial factors, which often combined
in complex ways in each individual school. In general, the schools converting
to the case method believed that inductive teaching was more effective in
stimulating students' interest and in preparing them for professional practice
in a case-law system. They also believed that adopting the innovation
contributed to their intellectual legitimacy and academic prestige.
In contrast, many of the schools refusing case method during the
determinative period between 1890 and 1915 doubted the possibility of
theorizing a national jurisprudence and denied the Austinian positivism
underlying case method. In addition, proprietary schools with part-time
faculty and students considered the case method to be ineffective or inefficient
in preparing students for practice or in covering subject matter. These
schools also viewed case method, and the associated meritocratic model, as
expensive and elitist. Finally, a few, aspiring, national schools, while mindful
of some of the objections above, rejected case method due to a kind of
reverse snobbery.
The 24 percent of law schools that partially accommodated case
method between 1890 and 1915 comprised mixed cases combining the
opposing rationales, in line with the "'mixed' system"2 of teaching that they
employed. Even these partial accommodations nevertheless indicated the
predominance of "Mr. Langdell's method." By 1915 the case method
movement had mounted into a tidal wave sweeping across the landscape of
legal education and coursing into higher education at large. Professors at
various medical schools were borrowing and advocating case method teaching,
as were those at Harvard's Business School, from which a modified version
would subsequently spread into many academic fields. By the end of the
determinative period between 1890 and 1915, Langdell's "abomination"
had proliferated through legal education and beyond and become a legitimate
practice in the pedagogy of American higher education.
II. INCEPTION OF CASE METHOD TEACHING

Dean Christopher C. Langdell introduced case method teaching during
the fall of 1870 in his course on contracts at Harvard Law School (HLS).3
After joining the HLS faculty in January, 1870, Langdell was elected dean
2Robert F. Boden, "The Milwaukee Law School: 1892-1928," bound typescript, [c.
1977]), 19, Marquette University Law School Library.
Tangdell's originality is discussed and demonstrated in Bruce A. Kimball, "The Langdell
Problem: A Century of Historiography in Light of the Sources," Law and History Review 22
(Summer 2004): 335-7.
194 Histoiy of Education Quarterly
in September and served in that office for the next twenty-

as the most significant reformer in the history of Americ
One early student described Langdell's practice of his no
method in these words:
A list of references is given out by an instructor in his particular su

a student must read before ... [class]. These references are not to te
abstract statements of principle, which have been formulated from
They are references to the cases themselves, in reading which th
digests them that he can give in the class room the facts, the deci
grounds of the decision. When a case has been stated to the class, d
freely encouraged under the [questioning] of the instructor. The me
of the court is never accepted as final. In fact, chief justices and ch
frequently overruled with surprising nonchalance. Decisions are co
investigation along lines of cases is directed. When a series of cases
subject has been examined, the law governing these cases is formul
the student can read treatises understandingly, and can appreciate
statements made by text writers. He has worked out legal principles
the same way in which [the authors] have worked them out.4
During the 1870s and 1880s, case method was oft

Langdell's Method" not only because "it should justly bea
inventor,"5 but also because most inside HLS and virtually
distrusted, if not disdained, this inductive pedagogy. Th
precipitously in his early courses taught by case method, w
an "abomination," as the Centennial History of Harvard Law
in 1914.6 Professors throughout American higher edu
preferred either the lecture method or the textbook or rec
The former was, of course, a verbal exposition transmitting
students. The latter consisted of a "catechetical analys
professor quizzed the students on the material assigned and
before coming to class.
In 1890 Langdell's method began to spread beyond H
twenty-five years, these "three distinct methods of instru
schools, namely: the lecture system, the text-book sys
4M., "Correspondence to the Editors," Columbia Law Times 1 (Oc

A reconstruction of LangdelPs teaching, based on archival research,
Kimball, '"Warn Students That I Entertain Heretical Opinions, Wh
Take as Law': The Inception of Case Method Teaching in the Classroo
Langdell, 1870-1883," Law and History Review 17 (Spring 1999): 57-14
5"The Increasing Influence of the Langdell Case System of Instruct
Review 5 (May 1891): 90.
6The Centennial History of the Harvard Law School, 1817-1917 (Cam
School Association, 1918), 35.
7Columbian [George Washington] University, Annual Bulletin.. .Law
4.
system"8 competed for predominance in legal education. A great deal more

was at stake in this competition than classroom technique. Case method
entailed a complex of academic, meritocratic reforms that Langdell and his
colleagues instituted at HLS during the 1870s and 1880s. Those reforms
included extending the degree course to three years; requiring a bachelor's
degree for admission and then selecting among qualified applicants; conducting
written examinations for promotion and graduation; grading and sequencing
the curriculum among first-, second-, and third-year courses; transforming
the library from a textbook repository into a scholarly resource; and hiring
full-time instructors who regarded the professorate as their career. Case
method entailed these meritocratic reforms because teaching with original
sources required both stronger academic preparation and a much greater
time commitment on the part of both students and faculty. Hence, "case
method led to many of the organizational characteristics" of the meritocratic
law school and implied "Langdell's general theory of legal education."9
Beyond that functional link to meritocratic reforms, case method
assumed a powerful symbolic role in the movement for higher academic
standards. Case method became the "emblem" of Langdell's model, that
is, "the specific figure which concentrates and intensifies a much more
general reality." Being "emblematic" in this way,'0 case method acquired
by the turn of the century the status that Erwin Panofsky called "iconological.""
Though not a material element of iconography, case method nevertheless
"embod[ied] cultural values and messages"12 underlying and issuing from
Langdell's model of legal education. Case method thus became "the badge
of 'modernism' in the teaching world" and "like the caste mark of the
Brahmin, . . . the cachet of the crack law school."'3 Adopting case method
8John B. Stetson University, Department of Law Annual Announcement..., 1901-1902,

13.
9Quotations are, respectively, from William R. Johnson, Schooled Lawyers: A Study in
the Clash of Professional Cultures (New York: New York University Press, 1978), 126; Charles
Warren, History of the Harvard Law School and of Early Legal Conditions in America (New York:
Lewis, 1908), v. 2: 511, 504-514.
10Quotations are from Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1977), 101-102.
nErwin Panofsky, "Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of
Renaissance Art," in Meaning in the Visual Arts: Papers in and on Art History (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1955), 26-54.
12Steven C. Bullock, '"Sensible Signs': The Emblematic Education of Post-Revolutionary
Freemasonry," A Republic for the Ages, ed. Donald R. Kennon (Charlottesville: University of
Virginia Press, 1999), 180.
13Quotations are, respectively, from Marion R. Kirkwood and William B. Owens, "A
Brief History of the Stanford Law School, 1893-1946" (unpublished typescript, March 1961),
16, Stanford Law School Library, Mar. 1961); Frederick C. Hicks, Yale Law School: 1895
1915... (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938), 45. See, also, Calvin Woodward, "Dimensions
of Social and Legal Change: The Making and Remaking of the Common Law Tradition in
Nineteenth-century America," New Literary History 17 (Winter 1986): 246.
196 Histor!y of Education Quarterly
signified that a law school had allied itself with the HLS-led mo
infuse legal education with the policies and practices of academic me
This alliance, though attractive to some, became for others a m
to defend lecturing and recitation, to oppose "the Langdellian law c
... slavishly followed in the prestigious 'national' law schools,"'4
word, to resist "Harvardizing" themselves.'"
The years from 1890 to 1915 in legal education have lo
discounted as "singularly unproductive of new ideas."''6 But this pe
1890 to 1915 did resolve the question whether case method and, conc
academic meritocracy would proliferate in legal education and, ulti
in professional education throughout the United States. Study of the
proliferation during this period reveals the means, the faction
reasons associated with "extending that system [of teaching] by wh
[lawyers] can be trained."'7 By the end of this period, the cour
toward the day when "it is difficult for us to conceive any oth
teaching the law ... [slo complete has been the victory of the ca
of instruction in North American law schools."'8
The determinative period begins in 1890 because prior to th
the practice and discussion of case method were virtually confined t
Langdell's senior colleagues on the HLS faculty-John C. Gray
B. Thayer-embraced the new pedagogy only in the late 1880s, w
began to write their own casebooks.'9 The adoption of case method
law schools commenced after 1890, notwithstanding attempt
mavericks in the late 1 880s. It was also in 1890 that the Committee
14Boden, "The Milwaukee Law School: 1892-1928," 16.

15David A. Frank, "Harvardizing the University [of Texas], "Alcalde 10 (F
1807-1809. On the exemplary status and influence of HLS, see Samuel Willist
Law: An Autobiography (Boston: Little Brown, and Co., 1940), 206; Joel Seligm
Citadel: The Influence of Harvard Law School (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Co., 1978), 3
"Dimensions of Social and Legal Change," 245; Laura Kaiman, Legal Realism a
1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 100.
l6Alfred Z. Reed, Training for the Public Profession of the Law (New York
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1921), 392. In 1913 the Commit
Education and Admissions to the Bar of the American Bar Association petitioned
Foundation, which had sponsored the Flexner Report, "to have a similar investig
by the Carnegie Foundation into the conditions under which the work of legal e
carried on in this country." Henry S. Pritchett, "A Study of Legal Education," A
School Review 3 (Winter 1913): 267.
17John H. Wigmore to Charles W. Eliot, 10 March 1900, box 135A, file 104
W. Eliot Presidential Papers, Harvard University Archives.
18Thomas G. Barnes, "Introduction" to Christopher Columbus Langdell, S
Cases on the Law of Contracts (reprint of 1871 edition; Birmingham, AL: Legal Cl
1983), 4.
19Louis D. Brandeis, "The Harvard Law School," Green Bag 1 (January 1889): 21;
Eugene Wambaugh, "Professor Langdell?A View of His Career," Harvard Law Review 20
(November 1906): 3.
Education of the American Bar Association (ABA) departed from its "record
of masterly inactivity" and began to analyze existing practices in legal
education, including methods of instruction.20
The determinative period ends in 1915 because by that year "the
Langdell method"-and the concomitant academic reforms-had been
"adopted in whole or in part in a majority of the schools of the country,
and in nearly all the best schools," as Josef Redlich observed in his report
to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.21 By 1915
a newly charted law school, such as that at Emory University, could scarcely
ignore the fact that "the case method ... now prevails in all the leading law
schools of this country."22 A contemporaneous report for the United States
Bureau of Education reached the same conclusion, which the West Publishing
Company cited in 1915 in revising the standard preface for its American
Casebook Series.23 In addition, enrollments in law schools rapidly declined
after 1915 as World War I drew law students into the military, reducing
the revenue of nearly all schools and threatening the existence of many.
This threat shifted the focus of attention from pedagogy to economic
survival.24
While this essay focuses upon the original proliferation of case method
in law schools, that development was related to other educational and
professional disputes in several important ways. Within legal education,
the extension of case method occurred amid debates over whether study in
law school or apprenticeship in a law office should have priority in training
lawyers. Although many law professors considered the question resolved
in their favor by 1895,25 the issue remained disputed because the bar and
the professorate continued to debate their relative status and control over
20American Bar Association, "Report of the Committee on Legal Education," Proceedings

of the American Bar Association 13 (1890): 327.
21Redlich was quoting and affirming the judgment of James Barr Ames. Josef Redlich,
The Common Law and the Case Method in American University Law Schools (New York: Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1914), 14. See, too, Robert Stevens, Law School:
Legal Education in America from the 1850s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1983), 117.
22Emory University, Bulletin, Lamar School of Law, 1916-1917, 9-10.
"Henry M. Bates, "Recent Progress in Legal Education," Report of the U.S. Bureau of
Education (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1914), v. 1: 235; Douglas W.
Lind, "An Economic Analysis of Early Casebook Publishing," Law Library Journal 96 (2004
2006): 110.
24The decline in enrollments was noted at many schools across the country. See John
D. Lyons, "The First Fifty Years of the College of haw" Arizona Law Review 7 (Spring 1966):
175; David C. Smith, The First Century: A History of the University of Maine 1865-1965
(Orono, Maine: University of Maine Press, 1979), 108-109; Jane Yandell, "Millsaps Law
School: 1896-1917" (bound typescript, [n. d.]), 1, 12Millsaps College Library,.
25Henry W. Rogers, "Address [on The Present State of Legal Education]," Proceedings
of the American Bar Association 17 (1894): 394.
198 History of Education Quarterly
entry to the profession.26 WTithin the larger realm of profes

physicians and medical professors faced analogous question
as did practitioners and professors in various emerging profe
engineering, business, education, and social work.27 Consequen
proliferation in law of the view that academic merit defin
merit-for which case method was emblematic-anticipated
of the analogous question and conflict in other profession
the early decades of the twentieth century.
Within the broader pedagogical context, the prolifera
method teaching belonged to a widespread movement tow
teaching. The nineteenth century was "the great age of in
of scientific method," usually associated with the leading scie
and the intellectual perspective known as Baconianism, loosely
the thought of Francis Bacon.28 The most widely read Ameri
of science in the mid nineteenth century, attorney Samuel Ty
his chief works to "the Baconian Philosophy" and "Philosophic
Enthusiasm for induction suffused every field, even theo
the publication of such works as The Organon of Scripture: O
Method of Biblical Interpretation (1860) by a clergyman fr
the new social sciences emerging in the late nineteenth centu
reasoning was seen as the antithesis of deductive reasoning
as the goal of all forward-looking disciplines."30 Thus, psycho
James declared in 1907, "One of the most successfully cult
of philosophy in our time is what is called inductive logic, th
conditions under which our sciences have evolved.""3
The enthusiasm for induction inevitably influenced th
literature about teaching method. Educators from many
26Stevens, Law School, 92-103; Jerold S. Auerbach, "Enmity and Ami

and Practitioners, 1900-1922," Perspectives in American History 5 (1971):
"Kenneth M. Ludmerer, Learning to Heal: The Development of American M
(New York: Basic Books, 1985), 210-215; Bruce A. Kimball, The uTrue Pr
America (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992), 199-300.
28J. R. Milton, "Induction before Hume," British Journal of the Philosop
(1987), 50n. See George H. Daniels, American Science in the Age of Jackson (Ne
University Press, 1968), 63-85; Julie A. Reuben, The Making of the Modern Un
Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality (Chicago: Universit
1996), 36-39.
"Samuel Tyler, A Discourse of the Baconian Philosophy (1844), rev. ed. (New York: Baker
and Scribner, 1850); Tyler, "On Philosophical Induction," American Journal ofScience and Arts,
2nd ser. 5 (1848): 329-337; Theodore D. Bozeman, Protestants in an Age of Science: The Baconian
Ideal and Antebellum American Religious Thought (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1977), 63-8, 144, passim.
30Paul H. Buck, "Introduction," in Social Sciences at Harvard, 1860-1920: From Inculcation
to the Open Mind (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 3.
"William James, "What Pragmatism Means," (1907), in Pragmatism: A New Name for
Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907; New York: Longmans, Green, Co., 1925), 48-9.
considered how "the inductive or scientific method" could be integrated

with education32 and how "the laws of scientific induction might become
the laws for the education of the soul," entailing the "translation of the
maxims of the Baconian logic into pedagogical rules."33 Foremost among
the "right methods of teaching," demanded by scientific education, was
"the inductive method," which "requires the highest teaching ability,"
according to a treatise for normal school professors in the United States
and England.34
In the field of history, "scientific history" was introduced and "most
clearly defined ... as a teaching method" based on the belief "that truth
about the past does not lie in books already written, but in ... original and
specific data that historians must gather and interpret."35 "Instituted on the
basis of the inductive philosophy," this approach was sometimes called the
historic method because it "used historical facts as the source from which
inductions were made," but it was adopted by other fields as well, such as
political economy.3" In the teaching of classical languages, the future president
of the University of Chicago, William R. Harper, and his coauthor meanwhile
declared that their "inductive" textbook "will arouse enthusiasm; it will
increase results."37 With a similar rationale, William J. Sutherland offered
"An Illustrative Inductive Lesson" in The Teaching of Geography.38 From the
University of Illinois in 1904, the Dean of the College of Science maintained
"Wesley Mills, "The Natural or Scientific Method in Education," Popular Science

Monthly 42 (November 1892): 11. See also Henry, L. Clapp, "The Scientific Method with
Children," Popular Science Monthly 44 (November 1894): 57-68; Henry E. Armstrong, "Scientific
Method in Board Schools," Popular Science Monthly 46 (March 1894-95): 614-21; S. A. Forbes,"
The Teaching of the Scientific Method," Addresses and Journal of Proceedings of the National
Educational Association (June-July 1904): 879-888.
"Gabriel Compayr?, The History of Pedagogy, translated with an introduction by William
H. Payne, 2d. ed. (1886; Boston: D. C. Heath, 1890), 123-4. Payne's translation went through
four editions by 1900.
34John Gill, Systems of Education: A History and Criticism of the Principles, Methods,
Organization, and Moral Discipline Advocated by Eminent Educationists (London: Longmans,
Green, Co., 1876), 260.
"Deborah L. Haines, "Scientific History as a Teaching Method: The Formative Years,"
Journal of American History 63 (March 1976): 893, 896.
36Oscar J. Craig, "Liberal Education in the Twentieth Century," Addresses and Journal
of Proceedings of the National Educational Association (June-July 1908), 673. See also John Gill,
Systems of Education: A History and Criticism of the Principles, Methods, Organization, and Moral
Discipline Advocated by Eminent Educationists (London: Longmans, Green, Co., 1876), 260.
"William R. Harper and William E. Waters, An Inductive Greek Method (New York:
American Book Co., 1888), vii. The approach was widely adopted in modern foreign language
teaching under the term "direct method," meaning to teach language "inductively as it arises
from the text read and in the spoken sentence." S. A. Richards, "The Direct Method in Modern
Language Teaching," in Educational Movements and Methods, ed. John Adams (Boston: D. C.
Heath, [1914?]), 77.
38WilliamJ. Sutherland, The Teaching of Geography (Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1909),
149.
200 History of Ediucation Quarterly
that "without inductive teaching we entirely miss one of the

a science course,"39 and the Dean of the School of Applied Indu
Carnegie Technical Schools argued the same point regardin
education.40 Writing concurrently in a book that sold out in f
Charles A. McMurry proposed a general method of teachi
"the process of induction or concept-building," arguing tha
a natural, psychological method of acquiring and unifying kno
interesting way. "41
The enthusiasm for inductive teaching extended into
education. In 1900 a group of medical professors convened
promote "the inductive method applied to [teaching] med
same year the principal of the State Normal School of Penn
in induction "the one comprehensive law" of "systematic m
designed to rationalize and harmonize teaching processes."4
University's law school, the dean-a Langdell student-
"Inductive Method in Legal Education" in a widely reprinted
Josef Redlich in his Carnegie Foundation report of 1914 m
"professors of the leading American law schools ... understand
method' is nothing but the application of the universal sci
of induction to law in particular."45
Redlich, a German-trained jurist, oversimplified th
relationship posited here, which was far more mediated an
a straightforward "application." Nevertheless, case method
rooted in the intellectual movement of inductive science, and
of the latter supported the proliferation of the former. At th
the legitimacy of inductive method contributed to resolving,
professors, the conflict between practitioners and academ
relative status and authority.
But all this lay in the future. In 1890 the emblematic case
virtually confined to HLS. Prior to describing and analyzing it
39Forbes, "The Teaching of the Scientific Method," 887.

40Clifford B. Connelly, "The Conservation of Educational Methods,"
Journal of Proceedings of the National Educational Association (July 1910): 620.
41 Charles A. McMurry, The Elements of General Method: Based on the Prin
rev. ed. (New York: MacMillan, Co., 1903), 215, 255. McMurry's The Method
(1897), was reprinted or revised six times by 1921, while advocating "the fu
developing approach" to teaching. (New York: MacMillan, Co., 1921), 13.
42"Some Advances in Medical instruction," Boston Medical and Surgical J
1900): 557, 557-571.
43Andrew T. Smith, Systematic Methodology, Designed to Rationalize and H
Processes (New York: Silver Burdett Co., 1900), 9.
'"William A. Keener, "Inductive Method in Legal Education," Proceedings of
Bar Association 17 (1894): 473-490; reprinted in Law Student Helper [Detr
201; American Law Review [St. Louis] 28 (Feb. 1894): 709.
45Redlich, The Common Law and the Case Method, 16.
during the determinative period from 1890 to 1915, it will be helpful to say
a word about historiography and about the methodology of this study.
Soon after the turn of the century, scholars attempted to track and
explain the spread of case method, but they relied on incomplete surveys
or self-reports and generally focused on the well-known, national, university
law schools and provided little analysis of the types of schools or different
forces impelling them for or against case method.46 Recent accounts of the
extension of case method have examined primarily the well-known schools
having scholarly, published histories, such as Columbia University,
Northwestern University, or the University of Chicago.47 Consequently,
the prohferation of emblematic case method has not been thoroughly studied,
although it reveals insights into the receptiveness or resistance to academic
meritocracy in legal education, and higher education more broadly, during
this determinative period.
A significant, initial problem exists even in identifying the schools to
be studied between 1890 and 1915. The records of many of the law schools
at that time are difficult to find, in part because a number of those schools
have since closed, moved, or merged. The very existence of some of the law
schools has been forgotten at their own institutions.48 Moreover, different
sources give different numbers and lists of schools during the period in
question.
Among the various sources, the list of 142 degree-granting law schools
compiled by Alfred Z. Reed for his 1921 study for the Carnegie Foundation
appears most rehable and has been used as the basis of this study.49 Eliminated
from Reed's list were schools founded after 1915, the year taken as the
endpoint of this study for reasons discussed above. In order to avoid giving
^See Ralph W. Gloag, "Christopher Columbus Langdell," Albany Law Journal 68 (Aug.
1906): 232; Ernest W. Huffcut, "A Decade of Progress in Legal Education," Proceedings of the
American Bar Association 25 (1902): 529-44; "Appendix: List of Law Schools in the United
States" in American Bar Association, "Report of the Committee on Legal Education and
Admissions of the Bar," Proceedings of the American Bar Association 31 (1907): 593-8; Warren,
History of the Harvard Law School, v. 2: 504-514; Roscoe Pound, "The Law School, 1817-1929,"
in The Development of Harvard University since the Inauguration of President Eliot 1869-1929, ed.
Samuel E. Morison (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930), 493.
47The most extensive discussion is found in Robert B. Stevens, "Law Schools and Legal
Education, 1879-1979: Lectures in Honor of 100 Years of Valparaiso Law School," Valparaiso
University Law Review 14 (Winter 1980): 179-259, which discusses some twenty-three, mostly
elite, law schools and provides most of the data on this issue found in Stevens, Law School.
Similarly, see William P. LaPiana, Logic and Experience: The Origin of Modern American Legal
Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 92-99, 145-9; W. Burlette Carter,
"Reconstructing Langdell," Georgia Law Review 32 (Fall 1997): 34-39, 81-93; Steve Sheppard,
"An Introductory History of Law in the Lecture Hall," in The History of Legal Education in the
United States, ed. Sheppard (Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 1999), v. 1: 31-34.
48As happened, for example, with McKendree College Law School, in Lebanon, Illinois,
and Wilmington Law School in Wilmington, North Carolina.
49Reed, Training for the Public Profession of the Law, 423-430.
202 Histoiy of Education Quarterly
undue weight to marginal schools that existed only for

decided to eliminate institutions that had not operated
least ten years between 1890 and 1915 or that had not o
if founded after 1905. Apart from these criteria, ot
list had to be eliminated because no record could be fou
or even their existence.50 The resulting, 118 degree-gra
in this study (not counting Harvard) are listed in Appe
Bibliographical searches into the history of each sch
scholarly articles or books, as indicated in the document
in the majority of cases, reliable secondary sources cou
and archivists provided the available catalogs, other off
published or unpublished accounts left by early pro
sometimes did not address teaching methods, and jud
of case method rely upon the books assigned for the co
descriptions of faculty members, and any indications o
characteristics, such as admission requirements.
Since 1999, about 250 librarians, deans, or profess
contacted and asked for information about the history
Of those, the 1 16 who sent materials or responded exte
are listed in Appendix 2. This study could not have been
their generous help, for which the author is extremely
III. SCHOOLS ADOPTING CASE METHOD

For nearly two decades after 1870, Langdell's case m
notice beyond Harvard because outside observers
appreciate" his idiosyncratic "hobby."52 In addition
throughout his career from promoting, defending,
pedagogical innovation.53 In 1888 and 1889 a series o
American Law Register and American Law Review in
professional debate regarding the new pedagogy. Ove
more discussion of case method appeared in a series
law schools published in the first two volumes of the G
editors of the Harvard Law Review applauded "The In
50These schools include Indiana Central Law School, Jeffe

Kentucky, Northern Illinois College of Law, Northwestern C
University of Memphis in Tennessee (unrelated to the current Uni
51I am grateful to a number of research assistants over the past f
bibliographical searches or pursued sources about the schools: Chri
Kenny Miller.
""[Review of] Langdell's Selected Cases on Contracts... 1879," Southern Law Review,
n.s. 5 (February 1880): 872-3.
"James B. Ames, "Christopher Columbus Langdell, 1826-1906," in Great American
Lawyers, ed. William D. Lewis (Philadelphia: John C. Wilson, 1909), v. 8: 484; Charles W.
Eliot, "Langdell and the Law School," Harvard Law Review 33 (February 1920): 523.
the Langdell Case System of Instruction" evidenced by its adoption or praise

by English law professors.54 In 1891 the American Bar Association (ABA)
Committee on Legal Education observed the intensifying controversy over
case method teaching and, though declining to take a position, made their
reservations clear by denying that law could be learned by reading cases
alone.55
From that point, case method swept "like Kudzu" over and through
certain sectors of American legal education.56 The proliferation occurred
primarily through these modes: the individual initiative of reforming university
presidents, the "missionary" efforts of graduates of case method schools,
particularly HLS, and the indirect emulation of HLS by unrelated schools.
The motives and reasons underlying these three modes are identified and
discussed at the end of this section.
Several law schools claimed to initiate the adoption of case method,
and the competing claims demonstrate the need for caution in sorting
through the often partisan literature and in developing an overall analysis
of the proliferation. The earliest conversion to case method actually appears
to have occurred in Japan. Prompted apparently by Japanese graduates of
HLS from the 1870s, the president of the Imperial University in Tokyo
wrote to President Charles W. Eliot in 1888 requesting the nomination of
a professor to teach Anglo-American jurisprudence according to the "method
followed in the instruction" at Harvard. Ehot complied, and an HLS graduate
duly traveled to Tokyo to introduce case method early in 1889.57
In the United States, the earliest adoption of case method has been
attributed to the University of Iowa law school during the 1880s.58 However,
early historians of that law school do not support this claim; and then-Dean
Emlin McClain later noted his own reservations about case method, as well
54"The Increasing Influence of the Langdell Case System of Instruction." Harvard Law
Review 5 (May 1891): 89-90. The four articles were: Sydney G. Fisher, "The Teaching of Law
by the Case System," American Law Register n.s. 27 (July 1888): 416-421; Joel B. Bishop, "The
Common Law as a System of Reasoning...," American Law Review 22 (January 1888): 1-29;
James C. Gray, "Cases and Treatises" American Law Review 22 (September 1888): 756-764;
James Schouler, "Cases without Treatises," American Law Review 23 (January 1889): 1-10. See
the bibliography on case method teaching in The Centennial History of the Harvard Law School,
365-71.
"American Bar Association, "Report of the Committee on Legal Education," Proceedings
of the American Bar Association 14(1891): 332. In 1893 Harvard advocates came to dominate
this ABA Committee, which remained quiedy supportive for the next decade while case method
began to proliferate. Stevens, Law School, 59.
56Sheppard, "An Introductory History of Law in the Lecture Hall," 33.
"President Hiromato Watanabe to Charles W. Eliot, 28 August 1888; Alexander Tison
to Charles W. Eliot, 10 March 10 1889, box 76, file "1888-1889," Charles W. Eliot Presidential
Papers.
58Warren, History of the Harvard Law School, v. 2: 506; Paul D. Carrington, "Hail!
Langdell!" Law and Social Inquiry 20 (Summer 1995): 735-6; Dorsey D. Ellis, Jr., "Legal
Education: A Perspective on the last 130 Years of Legal Training," Washington University
Journal of Law and Policy 6 (2001): 164-166.
204 Histo;y, of Eduication QuarterIly
as the political barrier presented by opposition in the University

Another early conversion has been attributed to Albany
the advocacy of George W. Kirchwey, who served as dean th
until 1891 6L But case method did not survive Kirchwey's d
because he regarded the discussion of cases as a means
students more than advancing their analysis and "presided o
he were a master of ceremonies at a banquet.""6
Nevertheless, due to Kirchwey's enthusiasm for case met
University President Seth Low appointed him to the fa
school in 1891. In the previous year Low had recruited W
from the HLS faculty and appointed him dean in 1891 in or
the HLS reforms."2 In this way, Columbia exemplifies the a
of institutions in which "active university presidents
modernizing their law schools" during this period.63 An
here means adopting the emblematic case method and signif
of the HLS model. Nine of the 118 law schools between
belong to this category of presidential initiative.
Following Seth Low's example at Columbia, Northwes
President Henry W. Rogers arrived in 1891 from the Unive
and began to establish the HLS model by recruiting rece
for the faculty. Although the adoption of case method at N
been described as fairly smooth, letters from the HLS g
their former professorJames B. Thayer indicate that they
considerable opposition from students during the mid 1
when Western Reserve University opened in Cleveland i
Arthur W. Thwing sought an HLS alumnus to upgrade hi
59Emlin McClain, "Law Department of the State University of Io

(Nov. 1889): 383; Millard W. Hansen, "The Early History of the Co
University of Iowa, 1865-1884," Iowa Law Review 30 (November 1944
to James B. Thayer, 2 April 1895, box 17, file 1; Emlin McClain to J
December 1891, box 20, file 2; Emlin McClain to James B. Thayer, 12 Ma
2, James Bradley Thayer Papers, Harvard Law School Library Special
'"Irving Browne, "The Albany Law School," Green Bag 2 (April 1
W. Kirchwey, "Law, Education for the," A Cyclopedia of Education,
York: MacMillan, Co.,1912), v. 3: 662.
6'Quotation is from Julius Goebel, Jr. A History of the School of Law,
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), 166. Andrew V Clements,
1851-1951," Albany Law Review 15 Qanuary 1951): 154; Elizabeth K. Alle
Albany Law School 1851-2001: A Tradition of Change (Albany, New York
in association with Mount Ida Press, 2000), 60-61.
62Goebe\,AHisto7joftheSchoolofLaw, Columbia University, 136-15
63LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 149.
64Blewett Lee to James B. Thayer, 12 October 1893, 30 January 18
26 March 1895, box 17, files 1-2, Thayer Papers; John H. Wigmore t
December 1894, box 13 8A, file 1244, Charles W. Eliot Presidential Paper
and Kurt Schwerin, Northwestern University School of Law?A Short History
University School of Law, 1960), 14-18.
and, despite a false start and local opposition, Thwing's plans were realized
in 1898 with the appointment of Evan H. Hopkins, an HLS alumnus, as
dean.65
The University of Illinois contemporaneously adopted case method
when reform-minded President Arthur S. Draper served as dean of the law
school for the first two years after it opened in 1897. Although neither of
the other two law professors had attended law school, they were college
graduates, held full-time appointments, and were "committed, with enthusiasm,
to the case system," as one wrote to HLS Professor Thayer.66 Meanwhile, at
the University of California, the new president, Benjamin Ide Wheeler,
began to upgrade the Department of Jurisprudence in 1899 by appointing
four full-time faculty members, three of whom were HLS graduates. Even
the non-HLS graduate observed to Thayer at HLS, "I have used, in all my
courses .., the excellent collections [of cases], prepared by the Professors of
the Harvard Law School."67 Initiative was exercised, often despite opposition
from the local bar, by University of Montana President Clyde A. Duniway
in 191 1, University of Minnesota President George Vincent in 1912, and
University of Alabama President John W. Abercrombie, who appointed a
dean "to bring existing studies more in line with nationally popular methods
by introducing the case-study technique to the Law School" in 1913.68
By that point, this kind of presidential initiative had reached its apogee
at the University of Chicago, whose president, William R. Harper, gave a
talk about his new law school to the Harvard law faculty and beseeched
them, quoting words addressed to the Apostle Paul, "Come over into
Macedonia and help us." President Harper then went so far as to borrow
an HLS professor, Joseph H. Beale, to serve as the founding dean of the
University of Chicago Law School in 1902.69
65Eugene Wambaugh to James B. Thayer, 17 Feb. 1892, box 20, file 2, Thayer Papers;
Clarence H. Cramer, The Law School At Case Western Reserve University: A History 1892-1977
(Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University Law School, 1977), 31, 38.
66Quotation is from George E. Gardner to James B. Thayer, 15 Sept. 1897, box 16,
file 9, in Thayer Papers. Emphasis in original. See James B. Scott to James B. Thayer, 12
September 1900, box 16, file 10, Thayer Papers; Law in the Grand Manner, 1897-1967: A
Popular History of the College of Law at the University of Illinois (Urbana: University of Illinois,
1967), 5, 9.
67Louis T. Hengstler to James B. Thayer, 5 Feb. 1900, box 17, file 2,Thayer Papers.
See Sandra P. Epstein, Law at Berkeley: The History ofBoalt Hall (Berkeley: University of
California, Institute of Governmental Studies Press, 1997), 31, 36, 41-44.
68Robert H. McKenzie, "Farrah's Future: The First One Hundred Years of the University
of Alabama Law School, 1872-1972," Alabama Law Review IS (Fall 1972): 137. See 132-135;
William S. Pattee to James B. Thayer, 17 Dec. 1894, box 17, file 2, in Thayer Papers; Robert
A. Stein, In Pursuit of Excellence: A History of the University of Minnesota Law School (St. Paul:
Mason Publishing Co., 1980), 37-38; Dedication and History: School of Law, Montana State
University (Bozeman: Montana State University Law School, 1961), 26-27. The law school of
the University of Montana was originally founded at Montana State University.
69Frank L. Ellsworth, Law on the Midway: The Founding of the University of Chicago Law
School (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 54-79. Quotation is from 63.
206 History of Ediucation Quarterly
Although such efforts by university presidents ha

"missionary" work on behalf of the HLS model,70 thi
applies more accurately to the second mode of proliferatio
teaching. At schools in this second category, graduates of
Columbia or Chicago joined the faculty of other law school
for case method and other HLS reforms. The first categor
minded presidents recruited advocates of the emblem
sometimes overlapped this second category where an
graduate "missionized" an institution. But the latter gro
of the 118 institutions, is still distinct in as much as "
appointments" initiated by individual professors "help
method" throughout the country.
Among the twelve, the earliest missionary effort o
when the University of Cincinnati law school was reorgani
in a city with "a larger number of Harvard graduates than
city."72 Due to the presence of these alumni in the loc
faculty, the school "decided that its wisest course would b
course and methods of study prevailing at the Harvard
1898 the University of Iowa appointed as dean HLS gr
Richards, "a thoroughly indoctrinated Langdellian" who lau
for full-time faculty trained in Langdell's case metho
realized the earlier hopes to convert Iowa to case method,
to the University of Wisconsin law school in 1903, achieve
there.74 Meanwhile, the University of North Dakota la
1899 and appointed a recent HLS graduate as the first
faculty member; he immediately introduced and establ
In 1902 Dickinson School of Law in Pennsylvania hire
graduate as the second, full-time faculty member, who
70Paul D. Carrington, "The Missionary Diocese ofChicago,"Journal

44 (Dec. 1994): 467-518; Stevens, Law School, 60. See John H. Wigmor
6 May 1894, box 18, file 2, in Thayer Papers, box 18.
71 The First 125 Years, An Illustrated History of The Georgetown Un
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Law Center, 1995), 85. T
has long been considered the primary, even sole mode of disseminatio
Warren, History of the Harvard Law School, v. 2: 511-512; John H.
Harvard Founders and the American Legal Realists: The Professionali
Law Professor," Journal of Legal Education 36 (Sept. 1985): 314-315; Shep
History of Law in the Lecture Hall," 31.
72M. F. Force, [Broadside Appeal from the Harvard Club of Cin
Graduates'...] 11 December 1872, box 67, file "1872 Harvard," Charle
Papers.
73 Warren, History of the Harvard Law School, v. 2: 509. See Stanley A. Samad, "A History
of Legal Education in Ohio" (Bound typescript, University of Akron Library, 1972., 135;
Reginald C. McGrane, University of Cincinnati (New York: Harper and Row, Co., 1963), 129;
Joseph D. Brannan to James B. Thayer, 3 June 1897, box 17, file 2, in Thayer Papers.
74Quotation is from Boden, "The Milwaukee Law School: 1892-1928," pt. 4, pages
unnumbered. See Johnson, Schooled Lawyers, 106-122.
case method "met with immediate and enthusiastic approval by the faculty
and student body." In 1903 the University of Nebraska law school "embraced
the Langdellian system and its chief attribute, the case method" when a
former HLS student, Roscoe Pound, became dean and extended the earlier
efforts of HLS graduates on the faculty.75 In that same year, recent graduates
of Harvard, Columbia, and other case method schools began to join the
faculty at the University of Missouri; and by 1904-5, two-thirds of the
courses were taught with casebooks.76
During the 1905-1906 academic year, two southern law schools-at
Richmond and Tulane-hired alumni of their undergraduate colleges who
had studied at Harvard or Columbia law schools and brought back case
method with them. At the University of Louisville, two graduates of Harvard
and Chicago joined the law school faculty in 1908, and the arrival of two
more HLS alumni in 1910 bolstered their efforts to introduce case method
and HLS system.77 Meanwhile, in 1907 a recent HLS alumnus went to
Fordham University's law school as vice-dean and introduced the case
system, "replacing the 'lecture and quiz' method which had originally been
employed." A number of HLS graduates on the faculty "prevailed on behalf
of the case method" in 1915 at the University of Southern California, the
last school in this missionary category.78
Apart from presidential initiatives or direct effort by HLS missionaries,
the evident success of Harvard in increasing its academic standards, prestige,
and enrollments by the 1890s induced other law schools to adopt the
emblematic case method and significant attributes of the meritocratic
system.79 This group, adopting case method through indirect emulation of
HLS, comprised some twenty-six schools. They are discussed below in the
approximate chronological order of converting to case method.
75Quotations are, respectively, from Burton R. Laub, The Dickinson School of Law - Proud
and Independent (Carlisle, PA: Dickinson School of Law, 1976), 62; "1903 & 1946: The Making
and Remaking of the University of Nebraska College of Law," Nebraska Law Review 57 (1978):
55. See Charles L. Cram, "The History of the University of North Dakota School of Law,"
North Dakota Law Review 35 (January 1959): 8-9.
76William F. Fratcher, The Law Barn: A Brief History of the School of Law, University of
Missouri-Columbia, 2d ed. (Columbia: School of Law, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1988),
107.
77David J. Mays, The Pursuit of Excellence: A History of the University of Richmond Law
School (Richmond: University of Richmond, 1970), 19, 17-2 3; John P. Dyer, Tulane: The
Biography of a University, 1834-1965 (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 138-9; [Barbara B.
Lewis et al.], An Aim High and a Vision Broad: A Sesquicentennial History of the University of
Louisville School of Law 1846-1996 (Louisville: University of Louisville School of Law, 1996),
113,147.
78Quotations are, respectively, from: William H. Mulligan, "The Fiftieth Anniversary
of Fordham University School of Law," The Catholic Lawyer 2 (July 1956): 209; John G.
Tomlinson, Jr., "Intellectual Adventures: A Century of Faculty Thought and a Law School
Permanent in Nature," USC Law (Spring2000): 8.
79Stevens, Law School, 39, 59.
208 Histo;y of Edlucation Quar-teIly
In San Francisco, Hastings College of Law was founded in

its first professor, John N. Pomeroy, has been credited with ori
practice of teaching inductively with cases. But Pomeroy em
transmission of a system of legal doctrine via lectures and print
and assigned cases not inductively but illustratively-to demo
points already made in his lectures and syllabi. In the mid 1890s,
of professors who were not HLS graduates introduced inductive c
at Hastings. The conversion was completed in 1901 when a r
graduate was hired because he "knows thoroughly the Harvar
law teaching."80 Nearby, Stanford University law school in 1894
a partial law course that grew into a full professional departmen
and from the beginning, "the case method of instruction was em
all of the full time teachers.""8
Cornell University law school had offered a few classes t
casebooks since its founding in 1886, but professors did not
method predominantly until 1892, when Ernest W. Huffcut
University law school to join the faculty of his alma mater.82 Contem
case method arrived at New York University, which incorpor
and a day law school and appointed Austin Abbott as dean in 1891
teaching anomalously combined the three prevailing metho
conversion to case method and meritocratic standards came i
1896 with the appointment of a new dean who had no personal c
to a case method school. At the University of Pennsylvania, the
began to raise its academic requirements and convert to case
after the appointment of a new dean in 1896, completing the pro
a decade.83 Boston University law school-founded in 1873 in dire
80Quoted in Thomas G. Barnes, Hastings College of Law: The First Century (S

Hastings College of the Law Press, 1978), 157. See 90-91,101-102,111-112,12
W. Slack, "Hastings College of the Law," Green Bag 1 (November 1889): 5
Hogan, "History of Hastings College of Law," HastingsLaw Journal4 (Spring
T. Hengstler to James B. Thayer, 5 Feb. 1900, box 17, file 2, Louis T. Hengstler
Thayer, 27 July 1901, box 16, file 11, William B. Bosley to James B. Thayer
1900, box 16, file 10, in Thayer Papers.
8,Kirkwood and Owens, "A Brief History of the Stanford Law School, 18
Confirmed by Blewett Lee to James B. Thayer, 30 April 1894, box 17, file 2, in
82Edwin H. Woodruff, "History of the Cornell Law School," Cornell Law
(June 1919): 104; Harry B. Hutchins, "The Cornell University Law School,"
(Nov. 1889): 483; Colleen K. Pauwels, "Inferior to None," Indiana University
Bill of Particulars (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1992): 19.
83Charles W. Thompson, "Methods of Instruction at American Law Sc
University of the City of New York," Columbia Law Times 6 (February 189
Reid, "Some Pages from the History of New York University School of Law,"
Journal 36 (February 1964): 16-19; Austin Abbot to James B. Thayer, 17 Feb
file 1, in Thayer Papers; Derek Davis, "A Living Science and a Present Art: A H
University of Pennsylvania Law School" (unpublished typescript: University of
Law School, 2000), 40-42.
against Langdell's reforms-began to introduce teaching with cases in 1891,

much to the satisfaction of the editors of the Harvard Law Review. By the
turn of the century, case method was freely employed there.84
In 1898, the University of Maine law school indirectly emulated the
HLS model by recruiting its first dean from the University of Illinois. He
believed that "[n]obody now seriously doubts that [case method] is the better
way."85 In the following year, the University of Denver began to adopt case
method and steadily continued this effort for the next decade while raising
its academic standards.86 At Indiana University, Bloomington, the law school
began to embrace the I{LS model in 1902 and announced in 1905, "Instruction
is given principally by the case method."87 Also in 1905, the University of
Note Dame law school eliminated restrictions on teaching by case method,
and the University of Utah law school and the predecessor of Duke University
law school were established with a mutual commitment to case method "in
keeping with the major national law schools." At New York Law School
founded in 1891 through an exodus of former Columbia University professors
fleeing the reforms of William Keener-the lecture and textbook systems
were being supplanted by case method by 1906.88
By 1910 the University of Kentucky law school, the University of
Oklahoma law school, and the proprietary forerunners of the law schools
at DePaul University (Chicago) and Indiana University, Indianapolis,
84"Boston University Law School?Case System Adopted," Harvard Law Review 5

(February 1892): 345-6. See George R. Swasey, "Boston University Law School," Green Bag
1 (February 1889): 58-59; A Selection of Cases for Study in the Course in Contracts ...for the Use
of students in the Boston University Law School (Boston: Boston University, 1899); Franklin G.
Fessenden to Charles W. Eliot, 19 March 1920, box 382, file 1919, A-J, Charles W. Eliot
Presidential Papers, Second Chronological Correspondence Series, 1909-1926,.
85Quotation is from .. A Popular History of the College of Law at the University of Illinois,
5. See George E. Gardner to James B. Thayer, 1 Sept. 1898, box 16, file 9, in Thayer Papers;
Merritt C. Fernald, History of the Maine State College and the University of Maine (Orono, ME:
University of Maine, 1916), 310-311.
86Phillip E. Gauthier, Lawyers from Denver: A Century of Service to the West and the Nation:
A Centennial History of the University of Denver College of Law, 1892-1992 (Denver: University
of Denver College of Law, 1995), 16; Lucius W. Hoyt to James B. Thayer, 11 Sept. 1899,
box 16, file 9, in Thayer Papers.
87Indiana University, Bulletin...Catalogue 1905, 196. See Indiana University,
Bulletin...Catalogue... 1902-3, 167-176; Pauwels, "Inferior to None," 19-20.
88Quotation is from Donald N. Zillman, "The University of Utah College of Law: An
Analytical History Part I," Res Gestae 5 (Spring 1983): 15. Philip S. Moore, A Century of Law
at Notre Dame (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 26-27'. Cf. Arthur L.
Hubbard to James B. Thayer, 30 September, 1899, box 16, file 9, in Thayer Papers; Bryan
W. Bolich, "Duke Law School: The First Hundred Years," [unpublished typescript, 1968]
reprinted as "History of Duke Law School" in Duke Law School Alumni Directory, 1868-1972
(Raleigh, NC: Duke Law School and Duke Law Alumni Association, 1972), xvii; James A.
Wooten, "Law School Rights: The Establishment of New York Law School, 1891-1897,"
New York Law Review 36, no. 3 (1991): 341-345; Gloag, "Christopher Columbus Langdell,"
232.
210 Histoy of Educationz Quarterly
Table 1:
Chronological distribution of forty-seven law schools
adopting case method, 1890-1915
Time Period School State Mode of

Adoption
1890-1894: 4
Columbia U. 1892 New York President
Cornell U. 1892 New York Indirect
*Stanford U. 1894 California Indirect
*Northwestern U. 1890s Illinois President
1895-1899: 9
*U. Cincinnati 1896 Ohio Missionaries
New York U. 1896 New York Indirect
U. Pennsylvania 1896 Pennsylvania Indirect
*U. Illinois 1897 Illinois President
*Western Reserve U. 1898 Ohio President
U. Iowa 1898 Iowa Missionaries
*U. Maine 1898 Maine Indirect
U. Denver 1899 Colorado Indirect
*U. North Dakota 1899 North Dakota Missionaries
1900-1904: 10
Boston U. 1900 Massachusetts Indirect
*U. California 1900 California President
Has*ings C. 1901 Califohia Indirect
*U. Chicago 1902 Illinois President
*Dickinson C. 1902 Pennsylvania Missionaries
U. Wisconsin 1903 Wisconsin Missionaries
U. Nebraska 1903 Nebraska Missionaries
U. Missouri 1904 Missouri Missionaries
U. Richmond 1904 Virginia Missionaries
Tulane U. 1904 Louisiana Missionaries
1905-1909: 10
Indiana U. 1905 Indiana Indirect
U. Notre Dame 1905 Indiana Indirect
*U. Utah 1905 Utah Indirect
*Duke U. 1905 North Carolina Indirect
Newv York Law School 1906 New York Indirect
Lordhamu U. 1907 NewnYork Missionaries
*U. Kentucky 1909 Kentucky Indirect
*U. Oklahoma 1909 Oklahoma Indirect
DePaul U. 1909 Illinois Indirect
Indiana U. Indiana Indirect
Indianapolis 1909
1910-1915: 14
U. Louisville 1910 Kentucky Missionaries
U. Colorado 191 0 Colorado Indirect
Table 1: continued
Time Period School State Mode of

Adoption
1910-1915: 14
George Washington U. 1910 Washington, D.C.
*U. Idaho 1910 Idaho Indirect
*U. Montana 1911 Montana President
U. Minnesota 1912 Minnesota President
*U. Detroit 1912 Michigan Indirect
U. Alabama 1913 Alabama President
Southern California U. 1915 California Missionaries
*Southwestern U. 1915 California Indirect
*U. Arizona 1915 Arizona Indirect
Valparaiso U. 1915 Indiana Indirect
U. Oregon 1915 Oregon Indirect
U. West Virginia 1915 West Virginia Indirect
*Asterisk indicates that the law school was recently established or re-opened and re-or
introduced case method and rapidly extended it to all the principal cou
Early in the 19 1Os, the law schools at the University of Colorado,
Washington University, and the University of Idaho established the emb
case method, "generally recognized now as the best method of g
thorough instruction in the Common Law."89 By 1915 six more, d
universities began to emulate the HLS pedagogy: University of Det
run byjesuits; Southwestern University, located in Los Angeles; Univer
of Arizona, where law instruction was given in the College of Letters,
and Sciences; Valparaiso University in Indiana, which expressed con
reservations; the University of Oregon, which converted its law schoo
moving it from Portland to Eugene; and West Virginia University,
enthusiastically adopted the method "that has been used with em
89University of Idaho, Annual Catalog, 1913-1914, 214. See W. T. Lafferty,

Founding of the College of Law of the University of Kentucky," Kentucky Law Journal 1
1923): 57. See Ronald W. Polston, "History of the Indiana University School of Law-Indian
Indiana Law Review 28, no. 2 (1995): 175; Dave R. McKown, The Dean: The Life of J
Monnet (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973), 110,195; Lester Goodchild, "Am
Catholic Legal Education and the Founding of DePaul's College of Law," DePaulLaw
37 (Spring 1988): 390-2; Edward C. King, "A History of the University of Colorado
of Law," DICTA 36 (Winter 1959): 139; William E. Davis, Glory Colorado: A History
University of Colorado 1858-1963 (Boulder, Colorado: Pruett Press, 1965), 87, 154;
Washington University, Bulletin.. .Department of Law, 1910-11, 6; Shirle A. Debenham,
the Law School's Past: 1821-1962," Amicus Curiae [of George Washington University la
11 (May 1962): 4.
2 12 History of Education Quarterly
success for nearly a generation in the leading law scho

States."90
Table 1 presents the forty-seven schools converting predominantly
to case method in the seminal period between 1890 and 1915. The chronological
distribution of the forty-seven schools indicates that the pace of proliferation
rose after the first five-year period from 1890 to 1894 and increased slightly
again after 1899. With respect to the mode of proliferation, presidential
initiative was exercised primarily before 1900, followed by missionizing
between 1900 and 1905, and then indirect emulation primarily after 1905.
This sequence is likely explained by the expanding network of converted
institutions, which, over time, reduced the necessity for direct personal
intervention by presidents and missionaries. The geographical distribution
of the forty-seven schools in Table 2 and Figure 1 indicates that law schools
in the southeastern states adopted case method and the concomitant changes
more slowly and less extensively. Schools in the Great Lakes Region were
particularly receptive, a factor likely explained by the high concentration
of HLS alumni in that region.9' The data for these two tables is drawn from
the sources cited in Section III at the point where the respective institution
is discussed.
A number of interrelated reasons led these institutions to adopt case
method. First, schools certainly desired to elevate their status or to avoid
appearing retrograde, as indicated repeatedly in quotations above. In
particular, the missionaries of HLS, Columbia, and Chicago wished to see
their own model and influence extended. The founding of the Harvard Law
School Association in 1886 supported this motive by formalizing the most
extensive and powerful alumni network of any professional school in the
country at the time. By 1890 that Association comprised 1,390 alumni
distributed over 43 states and territories, three Canadian provinces, and
four foreign countries.92 Explicit testimony of this reason appears in a letter
90West Virginia University, Bulletin...College of Law, 1915-1916, 230. See University

of Detroit, Catalogue ... Law Department, 1912-1913, 15-21; Southwestern University, Official
Announcement... School of Law, 1919-1920, 5-6; John D. Lyons, "The First Fifty Years of the
College of Law," Arizona Law Review 1 (Spring 1966): 173; William T. Doherty, Jr. and Festus
P. Summers, West Virginia University: Symbol of Unity in a Sectionalized State (Morgantown:
West Virginia University Press, 1982), 98; Valparaiso University, Bulletin ... Department of
Law ... 1915-1916, 8; Mary S. Lawrence, "The University of Oregon School of Law 1884
1903: The Thornton Years," Oregon Law Review 59, nos. 2 and 3 (1980): 261-3, 271-4; Nancy
P. Fadeley, A History of the University of Oregon School of Law (Eugene: University of Oregon,
1988), 7, 17.
91Louis D. Brandeis, "Harvard Law School Association [Pamphlet]" (Cambridge:
Harvard Law School, 12 June 1890), 1.
92Louis D. Brandeis, "Harvard Law School Association," 3. See Schouler, "Cases without
Treatises," 2; Warren, History of the Harvard Law School, v. 2: 504; "Notes," Harvard Law
Review v. 2 no. 1 (15 April 1888): 43, v. 2 no. 3 (15 October 1888): 144, v. 5 no.5 (15 Dec.
1891): 238.
from James Barr Ames to President Eliot reporting that the president of
Cornell University was "evidently much pleased at having secured a good
Harvard man for their Law School."93 Indeed, Ames-Langdell's leading
student and successor as dean of HLS-was chiefly responsible for extending
case method by arranging "such 'missionary' appointments."94
But the proliferation cannot be explained merely by the desire to
increase prestige and reputation. Additionally, case method presented,
secondly, an approach to teaching suitable for "the law conceived as an
inductive science," analogous to the biological sciences. This analogy
imparted to case method the legitimacy of the preeminent, nineteenth
century natural science. In the preface to his first casebook and two published
statements about case method, Langdell had made this analogy,95 which was
credited and considered one of the primary reasons for the success of case
method byJosef Redlich in his Carnegie Foundation report of 1914. "Again
and again," Redlich wrote, "in conversations with professors of the leading
American law schools, have I been given to understand that the "case method"
is nothing but the application of the universal scientific method of induction
to law in particular."9f This analogy has often been disparaged by late
twentieth-century scholars as "'absurd,' 'mischievous,' 'in error,' .
wrongheaded, nonsensical, or simplistic,"97 but its role in legitimating case
method for many in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is not
disputed.
Thirdly, inductive method engaged students far better than lectures
or recitations. Charged with the responsibility for interpreting original
sources, students became active participants, rather than passive vessels, in
the classroom. "Properly employed, it became a powerful means of stimulating
the interest of the student," observed George Kirchwey at Columbia
93James B. Ames to Charles W. Eliot, 14 August 1895, box 100, file 4, Charles W. Eliot
Presidential Papers.
94Quotation is from The First 125 Years, An Illustrated History of The Georgetown University
Law Center, 85. "Memoir of James Barr Ames," in James B. Ames, Lectures on Legal History
and Miscellaneous Legal Essays (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1913), 6-7; The Centennial
History of the Harvard Law School, 81-82, 185-6. By 1917, Harvard had sent graduates to the
faculties of 67 American law schools. Mary B. MacManamon, "The History of the Civil
Procedure Course: A Study in Evolving Pedagogy," Arizona State Law Journal 30 (Summer
1998): 412n66.
95C. C. Langdell, A Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts with References and
Citations...prepared for Use as a Text-Book in Harvard Law School (Boston: Little, Brown, 1871),
pref; Langdell, "[Annual Report of the Law School]," m Annual Report of the President of Harvard
College, 1813-14 (Cambridge: John Wilson, 1875), 67; Langdell, "Address," in Harvard Law
School Association, Report of the Organization and of the First general Meeting, 1886 (Boston:
Harvard Law School Association, 1887), 49-50.
96Redlich, The Common Law and the Case Method, 15, 16.
97Quotation is from Barnes, "Introduction," 13. On the source of this analogy for
Langdell, see Bruce A. Kimball, "Young Christopher Langdell: The Formation of an Educational
Reformer, 1S26-1S54." Journal of Legal Education 52 (March/June 2002): 210-215.
214 Histowy of Education Quarterly
Table 2:
Geographical distribution of forty-seven law schools
adopting case method, 1890-1915
Section of Country School Date State Mode of

Adoption
Northeast
(10 schools, 4 states
and the D.C.) _
Columbia U. 1892 New York President
Cornell U. 1892 New York Indirect
New York U. 1896 New York Indirect
U. Pennsylvania 1896 Pennsylvania Indirect
U. Maine 1898 Maine Indirect
Boston U. 1900 Massachusetts Indirect
Dickinson C. 1902 Pennsylvania Missionaries
New York Law School 1906 New York Indirect
Fordham U. 1907 New York Missionaries
George Washington U 1910 Washington, D.C. Indirect
Southeast
(7 schools, 11 states)
U. Richmond 1904 Virginia Missionaries
Tulane U. 1904 Louisiana Missionaries
Duke U. 1905 North Carolina Indirect
U. Kentucky 1909 Kentucky Indirect
U. Louisville 1910 Kentucky Missionaries
U. Alabama 1913 Alabama President
U. West Virginia, 1915 West Virginia Indirect
Great Lakes
Region
Northwestern U. 1890s Illinois President
U. Cincinnati 1896 Ohio Missionaries
U. Illinois 1897 Illinois President
Western Reserve U. 1898 Ohio President
U. Chicago 1902 Illinois President
U. Wisconsin 1903 Wisconsin Missionaries
U. Notre Dame 1905 Indiana Indirect
DePaul U. 1909 Illinois Indirect
Indianapolis
U. Minnesota 1912 Minnesota President
U. Detroit 1912 Michigan Indirect
Valparaiso U. 1915 Indiana Indirect
Table 2: continued
Section of Country School Date State Mode of

Adoption
Great Plains
U. Iowa 1898 Iowa Missionaries
U. North Dakota 1899 North Dakota Miss
U. Nebraska 1903 Nebraska Missionaries
U. Missouri 1904 Missouri Missionaries
U. Oklahoma 1909 Oklahoma Indirect
Rocky Mountains
and West Coast
(12 schools, 11 states
Stanford U. 1894 California Indirect
U. Denver 1899 Colorado Indirect
U. California 1900 California President
Hastings C. 1901 California Indirect
U. Utah 1905 Utah Indirect
U. Idaho 1910 Idaho Indirect
U. Colorado 1910 Colorado Indirect
U. Montana 1911 Montana President
U. Arizona 1915 Arizona Indirect
Southern California U. 1915 California Missiona
Southwestern U. 1915 California Indirect
U. Oregon 1915 Oregon Indirect.
University. In addition to the inductive aspect, the "large admixture of th

Socratic method ... may keep a large class upon the alert," wrote Cha
Eliot.98
A fourth reason was the professional utility of case method teaching.
In 1914 Redlich summarized the two aspects of this rationale in observing
that, in the Anglo-American case-law system, case method prepares law
students to read and analyze cases and to discipline their minds in the legal
mode of thinking.99 Though often presented and challenged in different
ways, as discussed below, the rationale of professional utility thus served as
a significant justification for advocates of case method.
Reinforcing those four rationales, two complementary developments
in jurisprudence contributed to the advancement of case method: the
enormous increases in the publication of law reporters and in the citation
98Kirchwey, "Law, Education for the," 662; Charles W. Eliot, Annual Report of the
President...of Harvard College, 1879-80 (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1880), 15-16.
"Redlich, The Common Law and the Case Method, 18-25, 37, 40.
2 16 Hiivtoy oJ'Editcation Quarterly
ci~~~~~~~~~~qI
C~~~~~~~~~~~~~~C
of precedents in legal arguments. These virtually inseparable developments

occurred commensurately with the spread of case method teaching during
the final third of the nineteenth century. Due to the expanding number of
reported cases and the practice of citing them, learning the technique of
reading and analyzing cases became increasingly valuable. Thus, "instruction
by the case method . .. was a better method of preparation for the actual
practice of the law in a legal world swamped by reported cases.'9100
A third contextual development contributing to the proliferation of
case method was the publication of casebooks. A new pedagogy needed
suitable materials, and, although Langdell ceased producing casebooks by
the end of his "early period" in 1883,101 an increasing number appeared after
1890 and served as "the thin edge of the wedge" for advancing case method.102
Ames's and Keener's casebooks purportedly exercised the greatest influence
in this regard,103 but few references to their casebooks appeared in the
research conducted for this essay. Far more influential were the casebooks
of HLS Professor James B. Thayer.
Thayer published only two casebooks: one on evidence in 1892 and
another on constitutional law in 1894-5.104 His influence stemmed not from
the number of his casebooks, but from his novel strategy of accommodating
his readers. Approaching the casebooks as work "that will bring in money,"'l05
he was apparently the first HLS casebook author who "kept in mind the
fact that it might be used elsewhere."'106 This attention to his audience
appeared in his expressed desire to limit the size of his casebooks. While
his colleague, John C. Gray, was issuing Cases on Property in six heavy tomes,
Thayer dehberately limited his Cases on Evidence to a single volume. Reflecting
his background as a literary figure and reviewer, Thayer also attended to
his readers by expanding the explanatory commentary in order to help the
student understand the cases. Whereas Langdell and Ames confined their
100William P. LaPiana, "Just the facts: The Field Code and the Case Method," New
York Law School Law Review 36 Qune 1991): 335. See 327-335. See, too, Kimball, "'The Highest
Legal Ability in the Nation': Langdell on Wall Street, 1855-1870," Law and Social Inquiry
(Winter 2004): 80-83. Douglas Lind has demonstrated the correlated growth of case reporting
and casebook publication in "An Economic Analysis of Early Casebook Publishing," 100-102.
101Kimball, "... The Inception of Case Method Teaching in the Classrooms of the
Early C.C. Langdell, 1870-1883," 62-66.
102Eugene Wambaugh to James B. Thayer, 17 February 1892, box 20, file 2, in Thayer
Papers. See Eugene Wambaugh, The Study of Cases: A Course of Instruction in Reading and Stating
Reported Cases... (Boston: Little, Brown, 1891).
103 The Centennial History of the Harvard Law School, 81-82; Goebel, A History of the School
of Law, Columbia University, 140-141; Stevens, Law School, 56.
104James B. Thayer, Select Cases on Evidence at the Common Law (Cambridge: C. W.
Sever, 1892); Thayer, Cases on Constitutional Law, with Notes (Cambridge: Charles W. Sever,
1894-1895), 2 vols.
105James B. Thayer to Sophie Thayer, 17 June 1883, in Memoranda Books, v. 6: 4-5,
in Thayer Papers.
106Thayer, Cases on Evidence, iii. See also Thayer, Cases on Constitutional Law, iv.
218 History of Educationi Quarterly
notes and explanatory prefaces to less than 1 percent of thei

Gray to less than 3 percent, Thayer increased his explanat
to nearly 20 percent of his casebooks. In addition, whereas th
relied on classical or older authorities for their few notes, Th
mostly current authorities-in fact, mostly his own arti
inform the reader about the cases.107 Finally, Thayer adopted
tactic to promote his casebooks. He drew up a list of interest
law professors regarding his topic and had his publisher
copies of his casebooks.l08 The strategy bore fruit among law
England and Austraha and undergraduate instructors at Ameri
including Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of
Knox College.'09 As a result of this overall strategy, Tha
became "the most successful" of those published by HLS prof
the beginning of the twentieth century"0 and initiated
correspondence between himself and other law profe
considering case method or seeking to promote its use at
indicated by Thayer's letters cited in this essay.
The expansion in the publication of casebooks and its corr
the proliferation of case method appear in new research b
whose data have been reformatted into Table 3."'
Table 3 reveals that, after Langdell stopped publishing
1880, the number declined during the subsequent decade w
HLS professors published casebooks. As case method began
in the 1890s, the production of casebooks sharply increas
aggregate and in the number of non-HLS authors. In the
1890s, the Johnson and West publishing companies aggre
the casebook market, driving up the number of casebooks." 2
resulted in a brief decline in pubhcation after 1900, while the
the excess supply. The increase in casebooks then resumed
continued through 1915.
,07These calculations are based on my own review of these casebooks. See

box 16, fs. 9-10; Thayer, Cases on Constitutional Law, vi. Cf. John C. Gray, Se
Authorities on the Law of Property (Cambridge: Charles W. Sever, 1888-1
108James B. Thayer to Charles W. Sever, 13 Aug. 1892, box 16, file 9, in
See also box 16, files 9-11; box 17, files 1-2.
109Letters to James B. Thayer from Boston Book Co., 18 April 1901
31 March 1894, Charles F. A. Currier, 20 March 1895, Abner C. Goodell, J
Robert J. Sprayal, 22 March 1901, box 17, files 1-2, Thayer Papers.
110James C. Gray, "James Bradley Thayer," Harvard Law Review 15 (
See Abner C. Goodell, Jr., to James B. Thayer, 26 March 1895, box 17
Papers; George E. Gardner to James B. Thayer, 1 Sept. 1898, box 16, file
11'I am grateful to Douglas Lind for sending me a copy of his va
Economic Analysis of Early Casebook Publishing," and for generously s
unpublished data on the publication of casebooks between 1908 and 1915. R
have been eliminated from Lind's data.
112Lind, "An Economic Analysis of Early Casebook Publishing," 105-
Table 3: Numbers of Casebooks Published, 1890-1915
Dates Casebooks Casebooks Total Comment

published by published by Casebooks
HLS Faculty non-HLS Casebooks
Faculty published
1870-79 7 0 7 Langdell's and
Ames's early works.
1880-89 5 0 5 Langdell ceases, and
only HLS faculty
produce casebooks.
1890-94 15 17 32 Casebook production
expands beyond
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ ___ H L S.
1895-99 9 53 62 Publishers Johnson

and West flood the
market.
1900-1904 16 17 33 Casebook market
absorbs excess supply.
1905-1910 13 42 55 Growth resumes.
1910-1915 21 119 140 Growth sharply
increases.
SOURCE: see note 112 in text.
A fourth contextual development contributing to proliferation of case

method lay in the institutional growth in legal education. The number of
degree-granting law schools doubled between 1890 and 1910. This growth
enhanced the proliferation of case method because these new schools, as
well as those reopening or being reorganized, could freely consider a
pedagogical innovation without having to overcome the resistance of
entrenched faculty committed to traditional ways of teaching."13
A fifth contextual development was the founding in 1900 of the
Association of American Law Schools (AALS). This organization of elite
university law schools provided support and motivation for institutions to
elevate their academic standards in legal education. AALS members agreed
that the HLS reforms associated with case method provided the best way
113Financial efficiency has been cited as a reason for the adoption of case method. Robert
B. Stevens, "Law Schools and Legal Education, 1879-1979," 217-219; Stevens, Law School,
63. But it is difficult to see how case method is more cost-effective than large lecture classes.
In addition, the "modern law school was obviously expensive. In contrast to the nineteenth
century law department, the expenditures for the faculty and library alone were enormous."
Johnson, Schooled Lawyers, 131.
220 Histo;y of Edutcation Quarterly
to achieve that elevation, as shown by the fact that "it w

by all the [AALS] delegates that Professor Uames B.] Th
first president."'l14
In sum, the four reasons that law schools adopted case
this period included (i) its association with prestigious
legitimation by inductive natural science, (iii) its cap
students, and (iv) its effectiveness in students and in p
professional practice in a case-law system.'15 Those reason
by certain contextual developments, including (i) the incr
of reported cases, (ii) the increasing citation of precedent
(iii), the publication of more and more casebooks, (iv) t
law schools being founded, reopened, or reorganized and,
the opportunity to choose a new pedagogy without h
predecessor, and (v) the founding of AALS in 1900, pro
of an association and an alliance for schools adopting c
HLS reforms.
IV. PARTIAL ACCOMMODATION

Apart from the 47 schools, out of 118, that converted pre
method between 1890 and 1915, some schools partially
new inductive pedagogy. The paucity of sources for some o
make it difficult to specify the number in this category,
by definition, blurred or ambiguous. Nevertheless, 29 sch
be classified here; and their accommodation, however atten
another dimension of the proliferation of case metho
1915.
Most of these schools were proprietary, meaning that they operated
for the profit of the professors, who were paid directly out of students' fees.
Whether proprietary or not, these schools generally did not have high status
but wished to appear up-to-date in order to attract students. The schools,
therefore, tried to incorporate the emblematic case method but compromised
or curtailed that effort in significant ways. Sometimes the invocation of case
method in the catalog introduction had little relation to the courses being
taught, as at the Chase Law School of the Cincinnati Young Men's Christian
Association (YMCA) or the Washington College of Law, later incorporated
into American University."6 At other schools, the appointment of an HLS
,14Reed, Training for the Public Profession of the Law, 392, 443. See the schools marked
by an asterisk in Table 1.
115James B. Ames, "James Bradley Thayer," Harvard Law Review 15 (April 1902): 600.
See Proceedings of the American Bar Association 23 (1900): 448-58, 569-75.
116The Night Law School of the Young Men's Christian Association, Cincinnati,
Announcement of its Twenty-Sixth Year 1918-1919, 6-10; Samad, "A History of Legal Education
in Ohio" 134-135; Mary L. Clark, "The Founding of the Washington College of Law: The
alumnus prompted a brief or half-hearted flirtation with case method that

was rebuffed, as at NewJersey Law School at Newark, Creighton University
law school, University of Texas law school, Buffalo Law School, and
Washburn College in Topeka.1"7
Still other schools coopted the inductive pedagogy into what they
called "illustrative case method," as atJohn Marshall Law School in Chicago.
By this approach, professors imported doctrine through lectures and textbooks
and then discussed cases "illustrating the subject under consideration," as
Atlanta Law School announced. Similarly, St. Louis Law School of Washington
University stated, "most of the topics of the curriculum are taught by going
through a text-book first and following the text-book with a collection of
cases or 'case-book.".'118 Through this cooption, the school endorsed teaching
with cases, but transformed the inductive, discovery model of pedagogy
into illustrating and confirming previously stated doctrine."9
This "illustrative case method" often accompanied an express devotion
to a "'mixed' system" of teaching.120 Given the dispute over pedagogy, "a
judicious combination" of methods was said to be the best course. But such
a mixture or combination almost always involved "a general survey of the
whole topic through the use of text-books and treatises ... alternating with
... the study of illustrative cases... only a comparatively small number of
[which] need be studied," as at National University law school, which later
merged with George Washington University.12' The same attempt "to
First Law School Established by Women for Women." The American University Law Review
47 (February 1998): 662n273.
117Hugh F. Bennett, "A History of the University of Newark, 1908-1946" (PhD diss.,
New York University, 1956), 34-42; Steven P. Frankino and C. Benjamin Crisman, "An
Historical Look at the Creighton University School of Law," Creighton Law Review 9 (1975):
228-9, 231; David A. Frank, "Harvardizing the University [of Texas], "Alcalde 10 (February
1923), 1807-1809; Leon Green, "Use of Case Books and Texas Law School", Alcalde 10 (March
1923), 1882-1892; [Testimonials to Ira P. Hildebrand,] Texas Law Review 21 (Dec. 1942): 211
215; 23 (December 1944): 51-52; Maulsby Kimball to James B. Thayer (17 September 1898),
Thayer Papers, box 17, f. 2; Robert Schaus and James Arnone, University at Buffalo Law School:
100 Years 1887-1987 (Buffalo: University at Buffalo Law Alumni Association, 1992), 48;
Washburn College, Yearbook, Ichabodian, 1865-1915 (Topeka, KS: Washburn College, 1914),
73-74; Washburn College, Bulletin, Register for 1914-1915, 78; Ellen Sue McLane, "A Home
at Last: A History of Washburn School of Law," Washburn Alumnus, Law School Edition 3
(September 1969): 4-5, 8.
118Quotations are, respectively from William Wleklinski, A Centennial History of The
John Marshall Law School (Chicago: John Marshall Law School, 1999), 34; Adanta Law School,
Annual Announcement... 1891-92, 8; Washington University, Catalog of the Law Department
(St. Louis Law School, 1910, 15. Emphasis in original.
119The popularity of this co-option is demonstrated by the fact that all but one of 33
casebooks published by the West. Publishing Co. in their Hornbook Series from 1912 to 1943
are entitled "Illustrative Cases in..." I am grateful for Douglas Lind for sending me his index
of the Hornbook Series.
120Boden, "The Milwaukee Law School: 1892-1928," 19.
121Quotations are from National University, The Law School, Announcement, 1917
1918, 17. See National University, The Law School, Announcement: 1916-1917, 11-12, 17-19.
combine the advantages of all approved systems and

transforming inductive cases into illustrative cases, a
Kent College of Law, Brooklyn College of Law, Bento
St. Louis, Omaha Law School, Stetson University
University in Philadelphia, and Northeastern College o
YMCA.'22 Mixing or combining methods contravened the
of Langdell's method.
A distinct subgroup among the twenty-nine advoc
combined methods and incorporating "illustrative cases" c
university law schools. Due to their traditional commitm
law jurisprudence underlying Thomistic philosophy,
disagreed in principle with the inductive, positivistic juri
by case method. Additionally, the eleven Catholic scho
prided themselves on their "practical" bent and comm
working class through part-time evening classes taugh
of the bench and bar. In contrast, the HLS model was
they believed; and their belief received confirmation in t
HLS did not include a single Catholic institution on its lis
bachelor's degrees qualified graduates for automatic a
HLS held all Catholic colleges to be deficient in prepar
legal education.'23
As a result, these eleven Catholic universities went
accommodating the new pedagogy by endorsing "mi
text-book and lecture system is followed throughout the
reference is made to leading cases on the important poin
For example, Georgetown University's law school taug
lecture or recitation until 1899. Casebooks began to
but were normally accompanied by treatises until 1916 w
time, textbooks and casebooks were accorded equal sta
University of America's law school, upon its opening i
dean committed to the scholastic, European model of teac
a newly appointed dean "mixed" the pedagogy by intr
122Quotation is from "Chicago-Kent College of Law," Athena

(November 1899): 1. See Chicago-Kent College ofTaw, Annual Anno
1, 11; Jeffrey B. Morris, Brooklyn Law School: The First Hundred Years
Law School, 2001), 31-32; Benton College ofTaw, Announcements, 1
School ofTaw, Announcement for 1911-1912, 6-8; John B. Stetson Un
Law Annual Announcement and Bulletin, 1916-1911, 2-4; Henry Bor
First Seven Years of the Temple University School of Law," Temple L
1954): 417-419; Temple College, Law School...1915-1916, 5-6; Boston
Association, Evening Law School Catalog: 1909-1910, 17; Northeastern
Catalog: 1918-1919, 15.
123Kathleen A. Mahoney, Catholic Higher Education in America: The
in the Age of the University (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Pr
124Loyola University, New Orleans, Bulletin ... 1915-1916, 96.
Table 4: Twenty-nine Law Schools

Accommodating Case Method, 1890-1915
Law School State

Northeastern College of Law
Buffalo Law School New York
Brooklyn College of Law New York
New Jersey Law School NewJersey
Temple U. Pennsylvania
American U. Washington, D.C.
National U. Washington, D.C.
Atlanta Law School Georgia
Chase Law School Ohio
John Marshall Law School Illinois
Chicago-Kent Illinois
Washburn C. Kansas
Washington U. Missouri
Benton College of Law Missouri
Creighton U. Nebraska
Omaha Law School Nebraska
U. Texas Texas
Stetson U. Florida
Sub-group of Eleven Catholic Schools
Loyola U. Louisiana
Gonzaga U. Washington
Marquette U Wisconsin
Loyola U. Illinois
St. John's U. Ohio
Duquesne U. Pennsylvania
St. Louis U. Missouri
Santa Clara U. California
U. of San Francisco California
Georgetown U. Washington, D.C.
Catholic U. Washington, D.C.
cases.125 Varieties of this approach likewise appeared a

in New Orleans, Gonzaga University in Spokane, Marqu
Milwaukee, Loyola University in Chicago, St. John's Un
nsThe First 125 Years, An Illustrated History of The Georgetown Un

54-55; Francis E. Lucey, "The Story of Georgetown Law School," The C
1957): 131; C.Joseph Nuesse, The Catholic University of America: A Centen
D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1990), 44-50, 56.
224 History of Edulcation Quarterly
Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, St. Louis Universi

University, and the University of San Francisco.1'6
A summary of the schools accommodating the emblematic
is presented in Table 4, whose data is drawn from sources
IV where the respective institutions are mentioned.
V. REJECTING CASE METHOD

The schools rejecting case method during the determinative p
1890 and 1915 fell into several distinct groups, each with par
for their opposition. But certain overarching reasons also per
of these forty-two opponents, including two jurispruden
the one hand, being identified with the "science" of the com
method was associated with efforts to theorize a nationa
comprehending all jurisdictions. XVhile alluring to the "natio
this effort held no attraction for local law schools, such
Law School, that aimed to serve students "who wished to be s
for practice in Illinois."'27 Consequently, schools indiffere
a national legal science were unreceptive to case method.
On the other hand, jurisprudential opposition also ar
particular kind of national legal science identified with case m
an inductive science locating truth in the particularities of ev
than in general, permanent principles. Historian William
associated this inductive conception with Austinian positivism
its opponents with "those who thought of law as the expressi
principles." At stake here was not only the epistemology of th
126Wilfred P. Schoenberg, Gonzaga University: Seventy-five Years 188

Lawton Printing Company, 1963), 224, 223; Boden, "The Milwaukee
1928," 19-23; Johnson, Schooled Lawyers, 134-136; William D. Miller, "Mar
The First Twenty Years," Marquette Law Review 74 (Spring/summer 1
W. McCormack, "The School of Law: An Historical Sketch," Loyola Univ
School of Law 1984 Alumni Directory (White Plains, NY: Bernard C. Harris,
"A History of Legal Education in Ohio," 170-171; Harry First, "Legal Ed
School of the Past: A Single-Firm Study" Toledo Law Review 8 (Fall 19
Rishel and Paul Demilio, The Spirit That Gives Life: The History ofDuquesn
1996 (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1997), 13-15, 32; "The Law
Duquesne Monthly (June 1914): 377-8; Mark Neilson, "A History of the Sai
School of Law," (unpublished typescript of "preliminary draft," St. Louis
13-14, 35; University of Santa Clara, College of Law, Announcements 1941-
of Santa Clara, School of Law 1977-78 Bulletin, 28; Eric Abrahamson, The
Francisco School of Law: A History 1912-1987 (San Francisco: University of
of Law, 1987), 29-30, 41, 50. The University of Notre Dame had also fol
until 1900. Philip S. Moore, A Century of Law at Notre Dame (South Bend:
Dame Press, 1969), 25-26.
127M. H. Hoeflich, "The Bloomington Law School," Property Law and
Essays in Honor of John E. Cribbet, ed. Peter Hay and Michael H. Hoeflich
of Illinois Press, 1988), 205.
but also "its conformity to absolute morality and even revelation, incorporated
into history and the common law." Those believing that common law was
grounded in and validated by fundamental moral principles thus opposed
case method. During the determinative period addressed in this essay, this
group supposedly "found a home ... at the law school of Yale College,"
which "became the citadel of alternative legal science" and "resisted the
case method and tried to provide a broad legal education designed to train
society's leaders."1128
While some national schools and spokesmen opposing case method
may have regarded Yale as exemplary, the research for this essay found few
references to Yale or these jurisprudential reasons in the curricular materials
or catalogs at law schools. Instead, opponents most often cited the overarching
reason that case method did not prepare students well for legal practice.
Defenders of case method extolled its great value in precisely this regard,
as discussed above, so this contradiction reveals that the utility of case
method was a complicated and disputed issue. In view of this dispute, LaPiana
has made the chronological distinction that, until about 1890, case method
was criticized as impractical, due to "its origin in and perpetuation of
Langdell's supposedly excessive theorizing. The premises of discussion
about methods in legal education changed about the time of the changes
at Columbia [in 1891]. By then the principal complaint was that case method
was too practical," as seen in criticism of the "case lawyer."1129
Although this chronological shift may appear among the opponents
at national law schools or national professional meetings, the literature from
the broad spectrum of schools does not evidence the shift. Consistently,
throughout the determinative period from 1890 to 1915, professors at
institutions opposing case method, such as the Detroit College of Law,
declared that "the study of good textbooks in private, followed by the quizzes
and explanations of the recitation room," with occasional lectures, were the
best preparation for "the practice of an ordinary lawyer."130 Nevertheless
LaPiana's substantive distinction is clarifying. Some critics dismissed case
method as too theoretical and impractical;"3' others charged that the case
128Quotations are, respectively, from LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 138, 143, 142, 141.
See 122-147; William P. Aiken, "Methods of Instruction at American Law Schools. IV. Yale
University," Columbia Law Times 6 (May 1893): 223-4. The English jurist John Austin (1790
1859) was the leading figure in the Anglo-American school of analytic jurisprudence that
flourished in the second half of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.
129LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 132. Emphasis in original. Stevens does not systematize
the disputes over the utility of case method. Law School, 51-56, 120-121.
130Gwenn B. Samuel, The First Hundred Years are the Hardest: A Centennial History of the
Detroit College of Law (Detroit: Detroit College of Law, 1992), 41. See Chicago Kent College
ofTaw, Annual Announcement... 1905-1906, 8.
131Jerome Frank, "Why Not a Clinical Lawyer-School," University of Pennsylvania Law
Review 81 (June 1933): 907-908; James W. Hurst, The Growth of American Law: The Law Makers
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1950), 269-270.
226 Histogy of Education Quarterly
system was too practical because it "tended to produce mere 'case-lawyers, 1'132
"a reprehensible subspecies of the profession who devoted themselves to
the mindless collection of precedents in an attempt to win judgments for
their clients based only on the assumed weight of the collected cases, rather
than appeal to the principles of the common law."'33 This latter charge
transformed a practical benefit cited by case method advocates into a
detriment. 'Whereas case method advocates regarded the skill of reading
and interpreting cases as highly useful in a case-law system, critics charged
that for "a mere 'case lawyer' ... [c]ases are ... studied as if they were so
much legal ammunition."'I4 In response, Wllliam Keener and others maintained
that this criticism derived from misunderstanding case method, and that
the study of abstract principles in textbooks produced the academic "case
lawyer." Instead, Keener held, case method admirably synthesized both the
scientific and practical sides of law.'3'
The most significant distinction regarding the utility of case method
concerns the pedagogical goal of coverage. The criticism of case method
as impractical most often referred not to the preparation of students for
legal practice but to the method's efficacy in covering subject matter. Case
method required "abundance of time." In contrast, "the time, research, and
highly trained mind ... of the text writer or instructor is utilized as a labor
saving machine to extract the true principle from an examination of the
cases at large."'36 Consequently, critics argued "that the exclusive study of
judicial decisions is impractical; a waste of the student's time." These critics
presupposed the instructional goal of covering the subject matter and
maintained that case method necessitated "a large increase in the time
required to cover the ordinary subjects." Even proponents of case method
regretfully observed, "the time is not sufficient to permit me to go over the
ground in the thorough way" that a casebook would require. This frequent
objection that case method did not permit coverage of subject matter
appeared in catalogs, in professional presentations, and in personal
correspondence. "'
132Quotations are, respectively, from Kenneth Waltzer, "The Harvard Law School
Under Langdell and Eliot: example and Leadership in the Professionalization of Legal Education
1870-1900," (Unpublished seminar paper, Harvard University Archives, 1965), 16.
133LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 133.
134M., "Correspondence, to the Editors," Columbia Law Times 1 (October 1887): 25.
135William A. Keener, "inductive Method in Legal Education," American Law Review
28 (September 1894): 718.
136Aiken, "Methods of Instruction at American Law Schools," 223.
137Quotations are, respectively, from Reid, "Some Pages from the History of New York
University School of Law," 18; Kirchwey, "Law, Education for the," 662; Emlin McClain to
James B. Thayer, 2 April 1895, box 17, file 1, Thayer Papers. See [Duke University], Catalogue
of Trinity College, 1905-1906, 109-10; Edmund Whetmore, "Some of the Limitations and
Requirements of Legal Education in the United States," Proceedings of the American Bar Association
17 (1894): 407-9.
Here lies the reason why the utility of case method was defended most
often and effectively in these terms: that its purpose "is not to impart the
content of the law, not to teach the law, but rather to arouse, to strengthen,
to carry to the highest possible pitch of perfection a specifically legal manner
of thinking.'38 In other words, "the object of three years in law school" is
to acquire not "knowledge" but "the power of legal reasoning.' This claim
rebutted in one stroke the three criticisms that the method was professionally
impractical, professionally too practical, and pedagogically impractical. If
learning to "think like a lawyer" is the purpose of legal education and case
method, then protests against its theoretical character, its focus upon cases,
and its limited capacity to "cover" the subject become irrelevant objections.
For Ames at Harvard and for Keener at Columbia, the fundamental defense
of case method came to rest on the proposition that "it more effectively
trains the law student in legal ratiocination."''40
Apart from these overarching jurisprudential and practical reasons
for opposing case method, additional reasons corresponded with distinct
categories of schools rejecting case method. One such category comprised
four aspiring, national, university schools that envied Harvard's status and
attributed its leadership to the obsequiousness of its followers, alleging that
the proliferation of case method "is due not so much to any merit in the
system as to the fact that it is a system adopted by Harvard University.''l41
Paradoxically, these schools were positioned to lead the reform because,
like Columbia, they were among the most prominent in the country and
had been Harvard's peers in the mid nineteenth century. But for precisely
that reason they, unlike Columbia, begrudged the ascent of HLS, opposed
its reforms, and ultimately experienced "an adverse effect on the[ir] prestige
and reputation."''42
At Yale Law School, Simeon Baldwin "in the privacy of his
diary...fulminated against Harvard's reputation," and case method did not
gain full acceptance there until a new dean arrived in 1916.14' The University
of Virginia resisted Harvard's dominance and staunchly pursued the
transmission of a "system" of law by lectures and recitations into the 193 Os.
The University of Michigan first taught "illustrative" cases after the turn
138Redlich, The Common Law and the Case Method, 24.

139James Barr Ames, "Discussion," Proceedings of the American Bar Association 31 (1907):
1025.
140Goebel, A History of the School of Law, Columbia University, 155.
141 Albert Coates, "The Story of the Law School at the University of North Carolina,"
North Carolina Law Review 47 (October 1968): 46.
142John Ritchie, The First Hundred Years: A Short History of the School of Law of the University
of Virginia for the Period 1826-1926 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978), 56.
See Coates, "The Story of the Law School at the University of North Carolina," 34.
143Quotation is from: LaPiana, Logic and Experience, 144. See Hicks, Yale Law School:
1895-1915, 43-45; Kaiman, Legal Realism at Yale, 1927-1960, 99-100.
228 History of Edlucation Quarterly
of the century in conjunction with textbooks and treatises and as
unaccompanied casebooks in only a few courses until the 1920s. A
University of North Carolina, which had national aspirations, a ne
attempted in 1910 to make an abrupt transition from textbooks to cas
However, he met firm resistance to the new pedagogy and to up
academic standards, and the first professor trained at a case method s
was not hired until 1929.*1?
A second category of schools resisting case method consis
independent or proprietary schools whose faculty comprised par
members of the local bench and bar and whose students had relatively
academic preparation, worked full-time, and aspired to be local practit
Several particular reasons applied to this group of eleven schools.
First, the Langdell model disparaged the financial interest of
professors receiving fees from students in proprietary law scho
dictated that the faculty should consist of full-time, salaried professo
displacement of the former arrangement with the latter had been a h
of the transformation at Columbia University law school, as the Co
Law Times noted, "Those [professors] who have... attained, financi
professional position under the older methods, may hesitate in sanc
the innovation which retires any method by which they acquired affluen
In addition, the Langdell system expected part-time law professors no
to relinquish their fees but also to subordinate themselves to fu
professors."' Thirdly, the students in the HLS model had to be well-pr
academically and to attend full time. Thus, a reason routinely cited ag
adopting case method, even at national university law schools su
Columbia and Michigan, was that case method worked well with su
students but poorly with average students.147 The founding dean
University's law school cogently expressed the prevailing view of the t
off: "a man of mediocre ability will not learn as much by [case] metho
he will by other methods, and a dull man, though he might acquir
144Ritchie, ... A Short History of the School of Law of the University of Virginia,
Elizabeth Gaspar Brown, Legal Education at Michigan: 1859-1959 (Ann Arbor: Univ
Michigan, 1959), 200, 209; Coates, "The Story of the Law School at the University
Carolina," 36-42; Louis R. Wilson, The University of North Carolina, 1900-1930: Th
of a Modern University (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1957), 551-
145S. Stanwood Menken, "Methods of Instruction at American law Schools. II. Co
College, in the City of New York," Columbia Law Times 6 (March 1893): 168. Em
original. See also The Centennial History of the Harvard Law School, 42-3.
146Reed, Training for the Public Profession of the Law, 254-270; Jerold S. Auerbach
Justice: Lawyers and Social Change in North America (New York: Oxford University Press
74-101.
147 Goebel, A History of the School of Law, Columbia University, 144; Brown, Legal Education
at Michigan: 1859-1959, 207; Henry W. Rogers, "Law School of the University of Michigan,"
Green Bag 1 (May 1889): 194.
fair knowledge of law by other methods, will waste his time in attempting
to learn by the case method. A bright man will learn the law by any method,
but will probably be a much better lawyer if taught by the case method."'148
A fourth reason for the resistance to case method by independent or
proprietary schools lay in assumptions about the kind of legal education
and practice appropriate for students of particular socioeconomic and ethnic
backgrounds.149 Case method schools tended to be more expensive, and
their professors complained unsympathetically that "every new Harvard
textbook we introduce here is met by a chorus of growls from the impecunious. '150
These socioeconomic norms implied by the emblematic case method naturally
discomfited, if not insulted, the professors and students at local, part-time,
independent or proprietary schools; and these professors and students usually
expressed a strong preference for textbooks and lectures.
As a result, eleven of these local, independent schools firmly resisted
case method through at least 1915, including Suffolk Law School in Boston,
Cleveland Law School, Detroit College of Law, Wilmington Law School
in North Carolina,151 and Chattanooga College of Law, which proudly
announced its goal to train "second lieutenants in the legal profession, not
profound jurists; ... to prepare them to receive their commissions as junior
officers in the great forensic army."'152 This group also included Bloomington
148Samuel F. Mordecai quoted in Bryan W. Bolich, "Duke Law School: The First
Hundred Years," [unpublished typescript, 1968] reprinted as "History of Duke Law School"
in Duke Law School Alumni Directory, 1868-1912 (Raleigh: Duke Law School and Duke Law
Alumni Association, 1972), xvii. See Valparaiso University, Announcement ... Department of
Law ... 1909-1910, 11; David J. Mays, The Pursuit of Excellence: A History of the University of
Richmond Law School (Richmond: University of Richmond, 1970), 31; Redlich, The Common
Law and the Case Method, 40. With the inception of case method at HLS, "the presence in the
recitation rooms of a considerable proportion of persons whose minds were rude and unformed
became at once a serious impediment." Charles W. Eliot, Annual Report of the President.. .of
Harvard College, 1814-15 (Cambridge: John Wilson, 1876), 25.
149Auerbach, Unequal Justice, 102-129; Johnson, Schooled Lawyers, 120-153; Stevens,
Law School, 74-84.
IS0Blewett Lee to James B. Thayer, 30 Jan. 1894, box 17, file 2, in Thayer Papers.
151David L. Robbins, "Opportunity's Haven: The Ambiguous Heritage of Suffolk
University Law School," Suffolk University Law School Journal: 15th Anniversary Edition
(Orientation Issue 1981): 8-9, 12; "History of Cleveland-Marshall Law School," Cleveland
Marshall Law Review 2 (Spring 1953): 8; Samad, "A History of Legal Education in Ohio," 182
7; Gwenn Bashara Samuel, The First Hundred Years are the Hardest: A Centennial History of the
Detroit College of Law (Detroit: Detroit College of Law, 1992), 11, 41; Crockette W. Hewlett
and Leora H. McEachern, Attorneys of New Hanover County 1124-1918 (Wilmington, North
Carolina: n.p., 1979), 183; Bill Reaves, "Inside Old Wilmington," Wilmington Morning Star
(16 Jan. 1975): 11-C. John Marshall School in Cleveland was founded in 1916.
152"Grant University Law Department," The University Echo (11 January 1907). See
"Chattanooga Law College Ends Successful Year," Chattanooga Times (4 June 1911); "Annual
Sermon Today Starts Commencement for Graduates of Chattanooga College of Law,"
Chattanooga Times (5 June 1927); "College of Law Has No Freshmen," Chattanooga Times (3
September 1943); Gilbert E. Govan and James W. Livingood, The University of Chattanooga:
Sixty Years (Chattanooga, TN: University of Chattanooga, 1947), 87-89.
2 30 Histo?y of Education Quarterly
Law School in Illinois, Kansas City School of Law in Missou

of Law and Finance in St. Louis, St. Paul College of Law
San Francisco Law School, and San Francisco YMCA law s
The third and largest group of schools rejecting case
twenty-seven university and collegiate schools that operated
and norms of local, proprietary schools. In fact, the dist
these two groups was obscured by the practice of some unive
their law schools or medical schools to local practitio
autonomously for a profit. Vanderbilt University, for examp
a twenty-five year "lease" arrangement with three local atto
its law school, beginning in 1875.154 This symbiotic relat
the profile of and attracted additional students both to th
to the university's other degree programs. Even where s
not exist, universities often followed the comfortable practice
law faculties with part-time, local members of the bench and
whom did not have either an undergraduate degree or a law
they might have built up a respectable practice. Comme
admission standards were low, the term of study brief, a
requirements undemanding.
The largest subgroup of these university law schools with
school policies and practices comprised fourteen schools in
where James B. Thayer's efforts to solicit interest in his case
bear fruit.155 In Virginia, Washington and Lee University law
to "experiment with the Harvard case method" only in
University of Maryland converted in the 1920s.156 In Nor
15'Illinois Wesleyan University, Circular of the Bloomington Law School o

University, 1894-95, 6; Illinois Wesleyan University, College of Law.. .Anno
1917, 10; Hoeflich, "The Bloomington Law School," 205; Robert C. Dow
Years UMKC School of Law: An Abridged History," 64 UMKC Law Rev
669-679; Missouri College of Law [later City College of Law and Finance,] Circ
and Catalogue, 1901-02, 1,9-12; "College to Erect New Building," Greater S
of the Chamber of Commerce and American Retailers Assoc] (December 1
Heidenreich, With Satisfaction and Honor: William Mitchell College of Law
William Mitchell College of Law, 1999), 1-13,25; Barnes, Hastings Colleg
Nagel T. Miner, The Golden Gate University Story (San Francisco: Gol
Press, 1982), v. 1:5,8-9.
154Jon W. Bruce and D. Don Welch, "Vanderbilt Law School in the Nin
Its Creation and Formative Years," Vanderbilt Law Review 56 (March 2
See Mark Bartholomew, "Legal Separation: The Relationship Between t
the Central University in the Late Nineteenth Century," Journal of Legal Ed
2003): 368-403.
155Charles A. Graves to James B. Thayer, 9 May, 1895, box 17, file 1;
to Charles W. Sever, 27 January 1896, box 17, file 2; C. A. [Graves] to
Sept. 1900, box 16, file 10, in Thayer Papers.
156Quotation is from Charles V. Laughlin, "Edwin Merrick Dodd," Le
Virginia, 1779-1979: A Biographical Approach, ed. W. Hamilton Bryso
The Proliferation of Case Method Teaching in American Law Schools 2 3 1
founding dean of Wake Forest University law school opposed teaching with
cases and only used them illustratively toward the end of his term in the
1920s. At the University of South Carolina law school, the effort to upgrade
academically and convert to case method came after its accreditation was
threatened in 1920. In Georgia, neither Mercer University nor the University
of Georgia made the change until the 192 Os. At the University of Florida,
as of 1915, only about one-sixth of the courses in the two-year course of
study employed casebooks, one-third employed a textbook and "selected
cases," and about half of the courses did not refer to studying cases.157 In
Mississippi, the law school operated by Millsaps College until 1917 did not
adopt case method, nor did the law faculty teaching the one-year law course
at the University of Mississippi."58 At Louisiana State University law school,
the predominant, civil law tradition militated against interest in case method
until at least 1920.159 In Tennessee, Cumberland University Law School
followed a "relentlessly practical" one-year course and "vigorously and
repeatedly" proclaimed the virtues of its own particular textbook-recitation
method, as did Walden University in Nashville. Vanderbilt University law
school committed itself to case method only in 1916, the same year that
University of Virginia Press, 1982), 203. See Washington and Lee University, Annual Catalog,
1916-1917, 154-5; Ollinger Crenshaw, "The School of Law, 1849-1949: A Century Revisited,"
Washington and Lee Law Review 6 (March 1949): 33-34. Since early records about Maryland
are missing, the judgment is inferred from Eugene F. Cordell, University of Maryland, 1807
1907, vol. 1 (New York: Lewis Publishing Co., 1907), 360-361; George H. Callcott, A History
of the University ofMaryland (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1966), 211-213, 331.
157J. Edwin Hendricks, Wake Forest University School of Law: One Hundred Years of Legal
Education 1894-1994 (Wake Forest University, 1994), 14, 21; Edwin Luther Green, A History
of the University of South Carolina (Columbia, SC: State Co., 1916), 237; Daniel Walker Hollis,
University of South Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1951), v. 2: 117,
208-209, 239, 276-7; Orville A. Park, "History of the Mercer Law School" (Typescript in
Mercer University Law School archives, Macon, Georgia, June 1930), 2-6; Gwen Y. Wood,
A Unique and Fortuitous Combination: An Administrative History of the University of Georgia School
of Law (Athens: University of Georgia Law School Association, 1998), 49; Robert P. Brooks,
The University of Georgia: Under Sixteen Administrations 1785-1955 (Athens: University of
Georgia Press, 1956),162-163; University of Florida College of Law, University Record 1914
1915, 22-28; "Florida Man to be Law Dean," Washburn Review (18 August 1915): 1.
I58Millsaps College, Register ...for 1911-1912, 96-101; Yandell, "Millsaps Law School:
1896-1917," 1-2; Daniel J. Meador, "Lamar and the Law at the University of Mississippi,"
Mississippi Law Journal 34 (May 1963): 240; Robert J. Farley, "The School of Law?Since
1854," Mississippi Law Journal 20 (May 1949): 250. The attribution of case method to Lucius
Q. C. Lamar at the University of Mississippi law school is not supported by the evidence. Cf.
Wirt A. Cate, Lucius Q.C. Lamar: Secession and Reunion (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina, 1935), 123; Parham H. Williams, Jr., "The University of Mississippi School of Law:
1854-1973," Mississippi Law Journal 44 (September 1973): 586.
159Due to the loss of original records, this judgment is inferred from other factors
reported in Paul M. Hebert, "Historical Sketch of the Louisiana State University Law School,"
Louisiana Reports 245 (May 1964): 141.
232 History of Edlucation Quarterly
the University of Tennessee law school appointed its first ca

advocate, who became dean in 1920.160
Outside of the Southeast, another smaller group of univer
schools with proprietary school policies and practices were cl
Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and upstate New York. These
included the University of Toledo, whose law school opened i
part of the YMCA; Ohio Northern University, whose law schoo
authorized to grant degrees until 1895; and the law school at
University, founded on a proprietary model in 1891.161 To the
University of Pittsburgh did not hire its first full-time professor
Syracuse University taught by lectures and textbooks until 19
graduate of Columbia University law school was hired; and A
School rejected case method for several decades after Kirchwey
Columbia in 189.162
Finally, there were seven other widely distributed univer
collegiate, law schools following proprietary policies and prac
Washington, D.C., Howard University law school operated as a
evening school with admissions standards below those of its underg
college until 1923.163 In Illinois, McKendree College establishe
arrangement with a group of practicing lawyers teaching by recita
lectures until it closed in 1905; and the same arrangement obtai
State University in Indiana from 1902 to 1928. Both the Univ
Kansas and University of South Dakota law schools maintained low a
160Quotations are from David J. Langum and Howard P. Walthall, From Ma

Mainstream: Cumberland School of Law, 1847-1997 (Athens: University of Georgia
33, 106-107. William Osburn, Biographical Sketch ... of Rev. John Braden, D.D.: La
of Central Tennessee College (Nashville: n.p., 1900), 10; W. E. B. DuBois, and Augus
Dill, The College-Bred Negro American (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 191
Training for the Public Profession of the Law, 425; Vanderbilt University, Law De
Announcement, 1915-1916, 19. See Bruce and Welch, "Vanderbilt Law School," 543;
The University of Tennessee College of Law Building, Knoxville, April 14, 1950,"
University of Tennessee, 1950), 2-5.
"'First, "Legal Education and the Law School of the Past," 135-167; Ohio
University, Annual Catalogue ... 1914-1915, 99; Eugene N. Hanson, "History o
W. Petit College of Law...," Ohio Northern University Law Review 1 (1973): xii; H.
"Founding of the College of Law of the Ohio State University," Ohio State Univer
10 (February 1906): 19-41; Ohio State University, Catalogue.. for 1895-1896, 1
State University, Catalogue of the College of Law, 1900-1901, 18-19; Ohio State U
Catalogue of the College of Law, 1910-1911, 24-25.
162W. Edward Sell, The Law Down: A Century Remembered?A 100 Year Hist
University of Pittsburgh School of Law (Pittsburgh, 1995), 5-38; Jeffrey A. Unaiti
Perspective: The Syracuse University College of Law ... ," Syracuse Law Revie
1985): 895-898; Clements, "Albany Law School 1851-1951," 154; Allen and Wa
Law School 1851-2001,61.
163 Walter Dyson, Howard University: The Capstone of Negro Education, A Hist
1940 (Washington, D.C.: Howard University, 1941), 225; Rayford W. Logan, Howard
The First Hundred Years 1867-1967 (New York: New York University Press, 19
The Proliferation of Case Method Teaching in American Law Schools 23 3
Table 5: Forty-two Schools Rejecting Case Method, 1890-1915
4 aspiring, national, State

university schools
Yale U. Connecticut
U. Virginia Virginia
U. Michigan Michigan
U. North Carolina North Carolina
11 local, independent
schools
Suffolk Law School Massachusetts
Cleveland Law School Ohio
Detroit College of Law Michigan
Wilmington Law School North Carolina
Chattanooga College of Law Tennessee
Bloomington Law School Illinois
Kansas City School of Law Missouri
City College of Law and Finance Missouri
St. Paul College of Law Minnesota
San Francisco Law School California
San Francisco YMCA law school California
27 university schools
operating as local,
proprietary schools.
14 in the southeast
Washington and Lee U. Virginia
U. Maryland Maryland
Wake Forest U. North Carolina
U. South Carolina South Carolina
Mercer U. Georgia
U. Georgia Georgia
U. Florida Florida
Millsaps C. Mississippi
U. Mississippi Mississippi
Louisiana State U. Louisiana
Cumberland U. Law School Tennessee
Walden U. Tennessee
Vanderbilt U. Tennessee
U. Tennessee Tennessee
6 in Ohio, Pennsylvania
and upstate New York
U. Toledo Ohio
Ohio Northern U. Ohio
Ohio State U. Ohio
U. Pittsburgh Pennsylvania
Syracuse U. New York
Albany Law School New York
Table 5: Continued
7 widely distributed
| Howard U. Washington, D.C.
| McKendree College Illinois
Tri-State U. Indiana
U. Kansas Kansas
U. South Dakota South Dakota
Willamette U. Oregon
U. Washington Washington
standards, a part-time faculty of practitioners, and the textbook and recitati

method, until the end of World War 1.164 In Oregon, Willamette University
did not employ case method until the 192 Os, and the frequent moves of th
University of Washington kept academic requirements relatively low un
World War I, when the decline of enrollments ended any impulse for
reform. 165
The forty-two schools rejecting case method during the determinative
period between 1890 and 1915 can be categorized into a number of distin
groups, as set forth in Table 5, whose data is drawn from sources cited
Section V where the respective institutions are discussed. The overarching,
jurisprudential reasons for their resistance were the association of ca
method with efforts to theorize a national jurisprudence comprehendin
all jurisdictions and, more specifically, with Austinian positivism, whi
undermined claims to identify fundamental, permanent, particularly moral
principles of law. As a result, eleven law schools devoted to training in t
particular doctrine of a local jurisdiction or to inculcating a moral vision of
164E. L. Owen, Jr., to Noble W. Lee, 9 November 1964, box BD, file 26, McKendre
College Archives; McKendree College, Annual Catalogue... 1882-83; 1894-95; 1900-190
1904-1905 (Lebanon, IL: McKendree College); Elizabeth Brown Orlosky, From Carriage
Computer: The First One Hundred Years ofTri-State University (Angola, IN: Tri-State University
1984), 64; Alice Ann Parrott, History of Tri-State College, 1884-1956 (Angola, IN: Tri-St
College, [c.1959]), 78; Paul E. Wilson, "Centennial Footnotes," Kansas Law Review 27 ( F
1979): vii-xiv; William Kelly, "The University of Kansas School of Law," Requisite Learn
and Good Moral Character, ed. Robert Richmond (Topeka: Kansas Bar Association, 1982), 112
116; Donald N. Meeks, "A History of the University of South Dakota School of Law" (M.
thesis, University of South Dakota, 1967), 44-45
165Eric D. Swenson. Willamette University College of Law, The First Hundred Years: A
Illustrated History (Salem, OR: Willamette University College of Law, 1987), 28; J. Grat
O'Bryan, "History of University of Washington School of Law." (typescript, University
Washington, Seattle, Library, 1938), 8-12; Elisa Murray, "John T Condon: Profile of a Dean,
in Profile: "University of Washington School of Law: Celebrating 100 Years" special issue of t
University of Washington Law School Alumni Magazine 11 (2001)., 44Teaching and curricula
materials are scarce from this early period according to Professor William B. Stoebuck, wh
is now writing a history of the University of Washington Law School.
The Proliferation of Case Method Teaching in American Law Schools 2 3 5
the legal profession opposed case method. In addition, proprietary schools

with part-time faculty and students aiming to train local practitioners
considered case method, and the associated HLS model, to be inefficient
or ineffective in covering subject matter, as well as expensive and elitist.
More than two dozen university and collegiate law schools that operated
with the policies and norms of these proprietary schools also rejected case
method for similar reasons.
VI. CONCLUSION
Case method teaching was first introduced into American higher education
in 1870 by Dean Christopher Langdell of Harvard Law School, where it
became closely associated with a complex of academic meritocratic reforms.
"Mr. Langdell's method" became, in fact, emblematic, "creating and
embodying cultural values and messages"1166 of the HLS reforms. Generally
dismissed as an "abomination," case method and the associated reforms
were largely confined to Harvard for the next two decades. The ensuing
determinative period between 1890 and 1915 then resolved the question as
to whether case method teaching-and the conconmitant, academic meritocratic
reforms-would predominate in legal education and, ultimately, professional
education in the United States.
By the beginning of World War 1, 40 percent of American law schools
had adopted the emblematic case method. Another 24 percent had partially
accommodated Langdell's method with the clear prospect of complete
adoption on the horizon. Of the 36 percent of law schools that still rejected
case method, the great majority were marginal, less influential, or rapidly
losing influence in American legal education; and most of these would
convert during the next decade. The numerical totals of these three groups
and their subgroups are summarized in Table 6.
The explanation for the position taken by individual schools regarding
the emblematic case method involves a complicated set of jurisprudential,
ideological, pedagogical, self-interested, and circumstantial reasons, which
often combined in complex ways in each separate instance. In general, the
sources indicate that schools converting to case method expected that the
affiliation with the HLS-led movement would contribute to their prestige
and the association with inductive natural science would contribute to their
intellectual legitimacy. In addition, they attributed to the case method a
greater capacity to stimulate students' interest and to prepare them for
professional practice in a case-law system. That capacity was enhanced by
changing professional circumstances, including the increasing publication
of reported cases and citation of precedents in legal arguments. The publication
166Bullock, "'Sensible Signs,'" 180.
2 36 Histor)y of Edutcation Quarterly
Table 6: Numerical Summary of Proliferation
of Case Method in 118 Law Schools, 1890-1915
Position taken on case method Sub-categories

47 adopted
(40 percent)
9 by presidential initiative
12 by HLS missionaries
26 by indirect emulation
29 partially accommodated
(24 percent)
18 proprietary and university schools
11 Catholic universities
42 rejected
(36 percent)
4 national schools
11 proprietary schools
27 university-proprietary schools
14 southeast
6 Ohio, Penn., NY
7 scattered
of more and more casebooks, especially those of James B. Thayer, helped

to facilitate and promote the spread of case method. Furthermore, the
founding, reopening, or reorganizing of many law schools provided the
opportunity for those schools to choose a new pedagogy without having to
displace a predecessor. Finally, the founding of the American Association
of Law Schools in 1900 provided the support of an association and an alliance
for schools adopting case method and the HLS reforms.
In contrast, many of the schools rejecting case method during the
determinative period between 1890 and 1915 did not value efforts to theorize
a national jurisprudence comprehending all jurisdictions and rejected
Austinian positivism, which undermined claims to identify fundamental,
permanent, especially moral, principles of law. In addition, proprietary
schools with part-time faculty and students considered case method to be
ineffective or inefficient in preparing students for practice or in covering
subject matter. These schools also viewed case method, and the associated,
meritocratic model, as expensive and elitist. More than two dozen university
and collegiate law schools operating with the policies and norms of these
proprietary schools also rejected case method for similar reasons. Finally,
a few, aspiring, national schools, while mindful of some of the objections
above, rejected case method largely out of a kind of reverse snobbery or
jealousy of Harvard's success. Perhaps the preponderance of southeastern
law schools rejecting case method is partially explained by some generalized

feeling along these lines.
The law schools partially accommodating case method between 1890
and 1915 appear, like their "'mixed' system" of teaching, to be mixed cases
which embraced jurisprudential, ideological, pedagogical, self-interested,
and circumstantial reasons applying to both categories. For example, the
significant subgroup of Catholic university law schools desired both to
elevate their institution's prestige and to serve the working class, which
created dissonance about adopting the emblematic case method. Similarly,
these Catholic schools were torn between adhering to their tradition of
natural law jurisprudence founded in scholasticism and the attraction of
modernity represented by inductive jurisprudence with its positivist
implications. The Catholic institutions also demonstrate the influence of
particular circumstances given that HLS had earned their antipathy by
depreciating their undergraduate education through its admission policies.
Nevertheless, even these partial accommodations indicate the pervasiveness
of Langdell's "abomination." By the end of the determinative period between
1890 and 1915 case method dominated in legal education and was making
inroads beyond. Between 1900 and 1915 certain medical educators began
to borrow the case method from law schools. Medicine, of course, had long
had "cases," and one might, therefore, expect case method teaching to be
easily and rapidly adopted there, if not even to precede law in this regard.
But no formally defined case method teaching in medicine existed through
the late nineteenth century. Among the leaders of American medical education
up to that point, the watchword was "clinical instruction," that is, practice
in interrelating medical science and experience through bedside instruction
in the hospital. Such "clinical instruction" was clearly distinguished from
identifying and codifying written "cases" as the unit of teaching and learning,
as the early advocate of medical case method, Walter B. Cannon, observed.167
While studying at Harvard Medical School in the late 1890s, Cannon
roomed with a student from HLS and, through him, encountered the legal
practice of teaching and studying from written cases. Much impressed,
Cannon, who went on to become a renowned medical scientist, published
a noted article in January, 1900, proposing "the case method of teaching
167Walter B. Cannon, "The Case Method of Teaching Systematic Medicine," Boston

Medical and Surgical Journal 142 (fan. 1900): 31-6. "William Osier [of Johns Hopkins Medical
School] then dean of clinical instruction in the United States" politely thanked Cannon for
sending him this article and, without explicitly contradicting Cannon, nevertheless equated
the study of "cases" with clinical instruction, thus dismissing the very innovation that Cannon
was trying to establish. Saul Benison, et al., Walter B. Cannon: The Life and Times of a Young
Scientist (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 66. The distinction between case
method and clinical instruction in law was later emphasized by Frank, "Why Not a Clinical
Lawyer-School?" 907-923; Jerome Frank, "A Plea for Lawyer-Schools," Yale Law Journal 56
(Sept. 1947): 1303-1344.
2 3 8 Histoiry of Ediucation Quarter-ly
systematic medicine." Cannon explicitly modeled this new meth

that of law: "This analogy [between cases in law and medicine] .
to the applicability in medical instruction of a method which has pr
such great value in the teaching of law. The idea of using printe
of cases as centres of interest in studying medicine occurred to
two years ago. Since that time I have been watching carefully f
possible opportunity to apply the method ... in teaching medicin
May, 1900, the Boston Society for Medical Improvement gave con
to Cannon's proposal at a meeting attended by President Eliot, Dean
and several medical professors, all of whom spoke on behalf of "the
method applied to medicine."169 Cannon's suggestion was soon
practice by a number of medical professors at Harvard, as wel
elsewhere, such as J. William White at the University of Pennsy
C. Eugene Riggs at the University of Minnesota. In addition, these in
published a number of medical casebooks in the first decade of the t
century.'70 Among the most notable converts was Richard C. Ca
observed in the introduction to his 1911 medical casebook: "To g
a practice in thinking and working one's way into the mastery of a
disease...is my object in the following chapters. They follow the met
case-teaching which I have used for eight years at the Harvard Medica
applying there a method long employed at the Harvard Law Sc
Thus, by 1915, the prospect for medical case method appeared auspic
Meanwhile, the genesis of "collegiate" business education-postseco
business education offered by colleges or universities-occurred d
168This quotation is from Cannon's subsequent article in May 1900: "The Cas
System in Medicine," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 142 (May 1900): 563.
169Charles W. Eliot, "The Inductive Method applied to Medicine," Boston Med
Surgical Journal 142 (May 1900): 557-8; Walter T. Councilman, "The Course in
at the Harvard Medical School," Boston Medical and Surgical JournalH2 (May 1900)
Herbert L. Burrell, "A Personal Experience in the Teaching of Surgery," Boston
Surgical Journal 142 (May 1900): 565-7; James B. Ames, "Discussion" on Report of
of May 5,1900, of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement on "Some Advances
Instruction," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 142 (May 1900): 568.
170Cannon, "The Case Method of Teaching Systematic Medicine," 31-6; ide
Case System in Medicine," 563-4; idem.,"The Use of Clinic Records in Teaching
Bulletin of the American Academy of Medicine 5 (1900-2): 203-13.
171Emphasis in original. Richard C. Cabot, Differential Diagnosis: Presented th
Analysis of 383 Cases (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1911), 19. See idem., Case T
Medicine, lsted. (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1906); idem., Case Histories in Medicine, 2d ed
W. M. Leonard, 1912); Walter B. Cannon, "Dr. R. C. Cabot's 'Case Teaching in
Harvard Graduates' Magazine 14 (June 1906): 609-610.
172Although I have found no record of medical casebooks being published aft
the influence of medical case method persevered through the beginning of the twe
century in the form of the weekly feature of "case records" appearing in New Engl
of Medicine, which superseded Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. Robert E. Scull
Weekly Clinico-pathological Exercises Founded by Richard C. Cabot," New Engla
of Medicine 342 (13 January 2000): 115.
determinative period from 1890 to 1915. In the 1890s three such business
schools were founded, followed by nine in the 1900s, nearly ninety more
during the 1910s and 1920s, and another twenty in the 1930s. 73 Among
these business schools, the one founded at Harvard, in 1908, came to be
the largest, wealthiest, and most influential and led the movement to borrow
case method from legal education, as was announced in its very first course
catalogue. The explicit rationale for this borrowing was to acquire "esteem"
and attract students. This goal is revealed in the policies of the first dean
of the Business School, Edwin F. Gay, an economic historian from the
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, as later recalled by his
assistant:
The decision to have instruction 'as far as practicable' take the form of classroom
discussion of specific problems was prompted by the example of the Harvard
Law School. The Law School, in fact, was by far the most serious competitor
which the new Business School had to face. For some years numerous college
graduates had been attending the Law School to prepare for business careers.
The Law School training was highly esteemed in influential business circles,
and that training was effectuated by the use of the case method of instruction.
Hence, Dean Gay decided that instruction in the Business School should be
patterned on the method used with such conspicuous success in the Law School.174
Strongly supporting Gay in this decision was not only President Eliot, who
enthusiastically endorsed inductive teaching throughout his tenure, but also
Eliot's successor Abbott Lawrence Lowell. An HLS graduate who had
studied with Langdell, Lowell wanted to see business education elevated
to a respectable, professional education and believed that adopting case
method was the best means to legitimize the fledgling collegiate business
schools.175 Dean Gay was not successful in fostering case method at the
business school; but he established the precedent, and in 1919 Lowell
appointed another HLS graduate, Wallace B. Donham, to be dean. Under
Donham, case method flourished at the business school despite the resistance
that he, like Langdell, encountered from traditional faculty who preferred
lectures and textbooks.'76
The subsequent, contested dissemination and transformations of case
method in medical education, business education, and many different
173Robert Gordon and James Howell, Higher Education for Business (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1959), 20.
174Melvin T. Copeland, "The Genesis of the Case Method in Business Instruction," in
The Case Method at the Harvard Business School, edited by Malcolm P. McNair (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1954), 25.
175Author's interview with former Harvard Business School Assistant Dean John C.
Baker, (19-20 October 1995) Essex Falls, New Jersey.
176Melvin T. Copeland, And Mark an Era: The Story of the Harvard Business School (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1958), ch. 9.
240 Histo;y of Edlucation Quarterly
fields77 -as well as its relationships to clinical instruct

method"-are beyond the scope of this essay. This ana
proliferation of case method within legal education has at
and explain the means, the factions, and the reasons assoc
step in the massive pedagogical shift toward case teaching
twentieth-century higher education.
177See, for example, George Clarke Cox, "The Case Method in th

of HL??cs," Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods 10
Henry A. Overstreet, "Professor Cox's 'Case Method' in Ethics," Journal o
and Scientific Methods 10 (Fall 1913): 464-6; Thomas Reed Powel
Judgments by the Case Method," Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, a
(Fall 1913): 484-94; George Clarke Cox, "The Case Method in Ethics a
of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods 11 (Winter 1914): 16-2
Appendix 1
1 18 Law Schools included in the Study

Alabama Iowa
U. Alabama U. Iowa
Arizona Kansas
U. Arizona Washburn C.
California U. Kansas
Hastings C. Kentucky
Southern California U. U. Kentucky
Southwestern U. U. Louisville
San Francisco Law School Louisiana
San Francisco YMCA law school Louisiana State U.
Santa Clara U. Loyola U.
Stanford U. Tulane U.
U. California Maine
U. of San Francisco U. Maine
Colorado Maryland
U. Colorado U. Maryland
U. Denver Massachusetts
Connecticut Boston U.
Yale U. Northeastern College of Law
Florida Suffolk Law School
Stetson U. Michigan
U. Florida Detroit College of Law
Georgia U. Detroit
Atlanta Law School U. Michigan
Mercer U. Minnesota
U. Georgia St. Paul College of Law
Idaho U. Minnesota
U. Idaho Mississippi
Illinois Millsaps C.
Bloomington Law School U. Mississippi
Chicago-Kent Missouri
DePaul U. Benton College of Law
John Marshall City College of Law and Finance
Loyola U. Kansas City School of Law
McKendree C. St. Louis U.
Northwestern U. U. Missouri
U. Chicago Washington U.
U. Illinois Montana
Indiana U. Montana
Indiana U., Bloomington Nebrask
Indiana U., Indianapolis Creighton U.
U. Notre Dame Omaha Law School
Tri-State U. U. Nebraska
Valparaiso U.
242 Histoiy, of Edutcation Quarterly
New Jersey South Carolina

New Jersey Law School U. South Carolina
New York South Dakota
Albany Law School U. South Dakota
Brooklyn College of Law Tennessee
Buffalo Law School Chattanooga College of Law
Columbia U. Cumberland U. Law School
Cornell U. U. Tennessee
Fordham U. Vanderbilt U.
New York Law School Walden U.
New York U. Texas
Syracuse U. U. Texas
North Carolina Utah
Duke U. U. Utah
U. North Carolina Virginia
Wake Forest U. U. Richmond
Wilmington Law School U. Virginia
North Dakota Washington
U. North Dakota Gonzaga U.
Ohio Washington, D.C.
Chase Law School American U.
Cleveland Law School Catholic U.
Ohio Northern U. George Washington U.
Ohio State U. Georgetown U.
St. John's U. Howard U.
U. Cincinnati National U.
U. Toledo U. Washington
Western Reserve U. Washington and Lee U.
Oklahoma West Virginia
U. Oklahoma U. West Virginia
Oregon Wisconsin
Willamette U. Marquette U.
U. Oregon U. Wisconsin
Pennsylvania
Dickinson C.
Duquesne U.
Temple U.
U. Pennsylvania
U. Pittsburgh
Appendix 2
RESOURCE PERSONS
The author gratefully acknowledges the following individuals who responded to
numerous inquiries; provided copies of catalogs, contemporaneous publications,
and unpublished secondary sources; and often indicated the best available secondary
sources on the history of their law schools.
Rebecca Alexander, Reference Librarian, Charles Brown, Reference Librarian,

Washburn University law school, University of Missouri Mercantile
Topeka, KS. Library, St. Louis, MO.
Sally Curtis Askew, Reference Librarian, Nancy Buchanan, Reference L

University of Georgia law school, Northern Kentucky Univer
Athens, GA. school, Highland Heights, KY.
Alice Bell, Reference Librarian, Ohio Pamela Burdett, Assistant Librarian for
State University law school, Columbus Public Services, John B. Stetson
OH. University law school, De Land, FL.
Mark Bernstein, Deputy Director, Duke Lewis Burke, Professor of Law, U

Universitylawschoollibrary,Durham, of South Carolina law sch
NC. Columbia, SC.
Beverly Cummings Agnew, Reference Su
Librarian, University of Colorado law Libr
school, Boulder, CO. School, Newark, NJ.
Dorie Bertram, Public Services Denise Carpenter, Reference Librarian,
Department, Washington University Cleveland State University law school,
law school, St. Louis, MO. Cleveland, OH.
Diana Botluk, Reference Librarian, Olivia Chen, Research Specialist, Chicago
Catholic University of America law Historical Society, Chicago, IL.
school, Washington, D.C.
Anna Cherry, Reference Librarian,
Lisa Bowles, Circulation Librarian, University of Minnesota law school.
University of Oklahoma law school, Minneapolis, MN.
Norman, OK
Elizabeth Cooper, Reference Librarian,
Kristina Brewer, Director of the Library, Loyola University law school, Chicago,
Tri-State University, Angola, IN IL.
Ralph Brill, Professor, Chicago-Kent Jessie Cranford, Reference Librarian,

College of Law, Chicago, IL. University of Arkansas law school,
Little Rock, AR.
244 Histow of Eduication Quarterly
Helen Frazer,
Joseph A. Custer, Reference Public Services Librarian,
Librarian,
University of Kansas law school,
University of District of Columbia
Lawrence, KS. law school, Washington, D.C.
Kenneth Fredette,
Jean Davis, Reference Librarian, Brooklyn Reference Librarian,
Law School, Brooklyn, NY.
West Virginia University Law School,
Morganton, WV.
Susan R. Davis, University Archivist,
Indiana State University,Judith
Terra Friedrich,
Haute, Catalog Department,
IN. University of Missouri Mercantile
Library, St. Louis, MO
Ronald E. Day, Reference Librarian,
University of Pennsylvania law school, Ehzabeth Gemellaro, Reference Librarian,
Philadelphia, PA. Suffolk University law school, Boston,
MA.
Robert C. Delvin, Fine Arts Librarian,
Illinois Wesleyan University, David Genzen, Reference Librarian,
Bloomington, IL. Ohio State University law school,
Columbus, OH.
Andrew Dorchak, Reference Librarian,
Case Western Reserve law school, Sharrel Gerlach, Reference Librarian,
Cleveland, OH. Southwestern University law school,
Los Angeles, CA.
Melanie Dunn, Records Department,
University of Tennessee-Chattanooga Cecily A. H. Giardina, Associate Librarian,
Library, Chattanooga, TN. Dickinson School of Law of
Pennsylvania State University, Carlisle,
Stephanie Dyson, Reference Librarian, PA.
Howard University law school,
Washington, D.C. John Hagemann, Professor and Librarian,
University of South Dakota law school,
Anita Etheridge, Government Documents Vermillion, SD.
Librarian, Tennessee State University,
Nashville, TN. Katherine Hall, Reference Librarian,
Santa Clara University law school,
Gregory Ewing, Reference Librarian, San Jose, CA.
Syracuse University law school,
Syracuse, NY. William C. B. Harroff, Reference
Librarian, McKendree College,
Joan G. Finer, Reference Department, Lebanon, IL.
Baldwin-Wallace University library,
Berea, OH. Rosemary Hahn, Catalog Department,
Washington University law library,
Kathryn Fitzhugh, Special Collections St. Louis, MO.
Librarian, University of Arkansas law
school, Little Rock, AR. Margo Hagopian, Assistant Dean, Boston
University law school, Boston, MA.
Linda Harvey, Public Information office, John N. Jacob, Archivist, Washington

Brooklyn Law School, Brooklyn, NY. and Lee University law school,
Lexington, VA.
Janet Ann Hedin, Reference Librarian,
Detroit College of Law, Michigan Julia F. Jaet, Reference Librarian,
State University, Detroit, MI. Marquette University law school,
Milwaukee, WI.
Kathryn Hensiak, Research Librarian,
Northwestern University law school, Louise A. Jensen, Reference Librarian,
Chicago, IL. University of Maine law school,
Portland, ME.
Colleen Hickey, Associate Director,
University of Detroit law library, Jacquelyn Kasper, Reference Librarian,
Detroit, MI. University of Arizona law school,
Tucson, AZ.
Janet Hirt, Reference Librarian, Vanderbilt
University Law School, Nashville, Martha W. Keister, International Law
TN. Librarian, University of Denver law
school, Denver, CO.
Sarah Holterhoff, Reference Librarian,
Valparaiso University law school,Bruce Kleinschmidt, Reference Librarian,
Valparaiso, IN. Indiana University/Purdue University
at Indianapolis law school, Indianapolis,
Brian Huddleston, Reference Librarian, IN.
Loyola University law school, New
Orleans, LA. May Langmann, Local History and
Genealogy Librarian, Chattanooga
Yvonne Hudson, Director of Hamilton County Bicentennial Library,
Communications, New York Law Chattanooga, TN.
School, New York, NY.
Elizabeth Ann Larson, Reference Librarian,
Stan Huguenin, Communications Director, Indiana University law school,
University of Florida law school, Bloomington, IN.
Gainesville, FL.
Germaine L. Leahy, Reference Librarian,
Dennis Hyatt, Librarian, University of George Washington University law
Oregon law school, Eugene, OR. school, Washington, D.C.
Bertha Ihnat, Archivist, Ohio State

Anne Lesher, Reference Librarian, Catholic
University, Columbus, OH. University of America law school,
Washington, D.C.
Martha Imparato, Special Collections
Librarian, Washburn University, Michelle Light, Archives and Special
Topeka, KS. Collections, Northeastern University
Libraries, Boston, MA.
246 Histo;y of Education Quarterly
Helen Matthews, Reference Department,

Robert A. Pikowsky, Assistant Librar
University
Atlanta History Center library, Atlanta, of Idaho law scho
GA. Moscow, ID.
Pamela R. Melton, Law Reference

Stephanie Plowman, Special Collect
Librarian,
Librarian, University of South Carolina Gonzaga University l
law school Library, Columbia,
school,SC.
Spokane, WA.
Eugenia A. Minor, Catalog Librarian,

Kathleen Probasco, Academic Publicati
University of Mississippi Editor,
law school,
University of Idaho, Mosco
Oxford, MS. ID.
Cathy Lynn Mundale, Reference

John Reidelbach, Reference Librar
University
Department, Atlanta University Center of Nebraska at Omah
library, Atlanta, GA. Omaha, NE.
Kristen Nelson, Reference Librarian,

Larry Reilly, Reference Librarian, Temple
University of District of University
Columbia law school, Philadelphia,
Law school, Washington, PA. D.C.
Kristina L. Niedringhaus,
Marlene Electronic
Roesler, Reference Staff, Nebraska
Services Librarian, University of
State Historical Society, Lincoln, NE
Toledo, Toledo, OH.
Cindy Rutledge, Reference Department,
Christopher Noe, Assistant Director,
Danville Public Library, Danville, IN.
University of Mississippi law library,
Oxford, MS. Anne A. Salter, Archives and Records
Management, Georgia Tech
Laura O'Hara, Archives Project, Stanford
University, Atlanta, GA.
University law school library, Stanford,
CA. Sara Saunders, Reference Department,
Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA.
Ellen Ouyang, Reference Librarian,
University of Utah lawDavid E. Schoonover,
school, Salt Library
Lake City, UT. Administration, University of Iowa
Law School, Des Moines, IA.
Jerry Pamell, Reference and Information
David J.of
Services Librarian, University Seipp, Professor,
North Boston
Carolina, Wilmington, University
NC. Law School, Boston, MA.
Carol J. Parris, Reference

SpencerLibrarian,
Simons, Reference Librarian,
University of Kentucky Chicago
law Kent
school,
College of Law, Chicago,
Lexington, KY. IL.
John M. Perkins, Reference Librarian,

Lyle Slovick, University Archivist, George
Mercer University law school,
Washington Macon,
University, Washington,
GA. D.C.
The Proliferation of Case Method Teaching in American Law School 247
William Smith, Reference librarian, Leslie Vuylsteke, Reference Librarian,

University of Southern California law University of Cincinnati Library,
school, Los Angeles, CA. Cincinnati, OH.
Jason D. Stratman, Reference Departnent, Nancy Watkins, Reference Librarian,

Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Emory University Health Sciences
MO. Center, Atlanta, GA.
Valerie Weis, Graduate Assistant,

Nancy L. Strohmeyer, Associate Law
Librarian, Loyola University lawUniversity of Ilinois law school library,
school, New Orleans, LA. Urbana, IL.
Grace W. Taylor, Director, Legal

D. Don Welch, Professor, Vanderbilt
Information Center, University ofUniversity law school, Nashville, TN.
Florida law school, Gainesville, FL.
Michael Whiteman, Associate Director,
John G. Tomlinson, Jr., Associate Dean, University of Louisville law school
University of Southern California lawlibrary, Louisville, KY.
school, Los Angeles, CA.
Michael Widener, Rare Books Librarian,
Robert Truman, Electronic Information University of Texas law school, Austin,
Librarian, Lewis and Clark University TX.
law school, Portland, OR.
Steve Witt, Information Services Librarian,
Carl Van Ness, University Archivist, Illinois Wesleyan University,
University of Florida College of Law, Bloomington, IL.
Gainesville, FL.
Mark E. Young, Archivist, McKendree
Lorri Ungaretti, Reference Librarian, College, Lebanon, IL.
Golden Gate University law school,
San Francisco, CA.
Les Valentine, University Archivist,

University of Nebraska at Omaha,
Omaha, NE.

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The Proliferation of Case Method Teaching in American Law Schools: Mr.

Bruce A. Kimball (bkimball@its.rochester.edu) is writing a biography of Christopher C.

History of Education Quarterly Vol. 46 No. 2 Summer 2006

The reasons for adopting, accommodating, or rejecting the emblematic

II. INCEPTION OF CASE METHOD TEACHING

in September and served in that office for the next twenty-

A list of references is given out by an instructor in his particular su

During the 1870s and 1880s, case method was oft

4M., "Correspondence to the Editors," Columbia Law Times 1 (Oc

system"8 competed for predominance in legal education. A great deal more

8John B. Stetson University, Department of Law Annual Announcement..., 1901-1902,

14Boden, "The Milwaukee Law School: 1892-1928," 16.

20American Bar Association, "Report of the Committee on Legal Education," Proceedings

entry to the profession.26 WTithin the larger realm of profes

26Stevens, Law School, 92-103; Jerold S. Auerbach, "Enmity and Ami

considered how "the inductive or scientific method" could be integrated

"Wesley Mills, "The Natural or Scientific Method in Education," Popular Science

that "without inductive teaching we entirely miss one of the

39Forbes, "The Teaching of the Scientific Method," 887.

undue weight to marginal schools that existed only for

III. SCHOOLS ADOPTING CASE METHOD

50These schools include Indiana Central Law School, Jeffe

the Langdell Case System of Instruction" evidenced by its adoption or praise

as the political barrier presented by opposition in the University

59Emlin McClain, "Law Department of the State University of Io

Although such efforts by university presidents ha

70Paul D. Carrington, "The Missionary Diocese ofChicago,"Journal

In San Francisco, Hastings College of Law was founded in

80Quoted in Thomas G. Barnes, Hastings College of Law: The First Century (S

against Langdell's reforms-began to introduce teaching with cases in 1891,

84"Boston University Law School?Case System Adopted," Harvard Law Review 5

Time Period School State Mode of

Time Period School State Mode of

89University of Idaho, Annual Catalog, 1913-1914, 214. See W. T. Lafferty,

success for nearly a generation in the leading law scho

90West Virginia University, Bulletin...College of Law, 1915-1916, 230. See University

Section of Country School Date State Mode of

Section of Country School Date State Mode of

University. In addition to the inductive aspect, the "large admixture of th

of precedents in legal arguments. These virtually inseparable developments

notes and explanatory prefaces to less than 1 percent of thei

,07These calculations are based on my own review of these casebooks. See

Table 3: Numbers of Casebooks Published, 1890-1915

Dates Casebooks Casebooks Total Comment

1895-99 9 53 62 Publishers Johnson

SOURCE: see note 112 in text.

A fourth contextual development contributing to proliferation of case

to achieve that elevation, as shown by the fact that "it w

IV. PARTIAL ACCOMMODATION

alumnus prompted a brief or half-hearted flirtation with case method that

combine the advantages of all approved systems and

122Quotation is from "Chicago-Kent College of Law," Athena

Table 4: Twenty-nine Law Schools

Law School State

cases.125 Varieties of this approach likewise appeared a

nsThe First 125 Years, An Illustrated History of The Georgetown Un

Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, St. Louis Universi

V. REJECTING CASE METHOD

126Wilfred P. Schoenberg, Gonzaga University: Seventy-five Years 188

138Redlich, The Common Law and the Case Method, 24.

Law School in Illinois, Kansas City School of Law in Missou

15'Illinois Wesleyan University, Circular of the Bloomington Law School o

the University of Tennessee law school appointed its first ca

160Quotations are from David J. Langum and Howard P. Walthall, From Ma