The Jeffersonian Vision of Legal Education

Journal of Legal Education

Volumn 51, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 185-211

  Douglas, Davison M ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0035567762     PISSN: 00222208     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (190)

1. See, e.g., Mary A. Glendon, A Nation Under Lawyers: How the Crisis in the Legal Profession Is Transforming American Society (New York, 1994); Anthony T. Kronman, The Lost Lawyer: Failing Ideals of the Legal Profession (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); Sol M. Linowitz & Martin Mayer, The Betrayed Profession: Lawyering at the End of the Twentieth Century (New York, 1994); Deborah L. Rhode, In the Interests of Justice: Reforming the Legal Profession (New York, 2000).
2. See, e.g., Mary A. Glendon, A Nation Under Lawyers: How the Crisis in the Legal Profession Is Transforming American Society (New York, 1994); Anthony T. Kronman, The Lost Lawyer: Failing Ideals of the Legal Profession (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); Sol M. Linowitz & Martin Mayer, The Betrayed Profession: Lawyering at the End of the Twentieth Century (New York, 1994); Deborah L. Rhode, In the Interests of Justice: Reforming the Legal Profession (New York, 2000).
3. See, e.g., Mary A. Glendon, A Nation Under Lawyers: How the Crisis in the Legal Profession Is Transforming American Society (New York, 1994); Anthony T. Kronman, The Lost Lawyer: Failing Ideals of the Legal Profession (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); Sol M. Linowitz & Martin Mayer, The Betrayed Profession: Lawyering at the End of the Twentieth Century (New York, 1994); Deborah L. Rhode, In the Interests of Justice: Reforming the Legal Profession (New York, 2000).
4. See, e.g., Mary A. Glendon, A Nation Under Lawyers: How the Crisis in the Legal Profession Is Transforming American Society (New York, 1994); Anthony T. Kronman, The Lost Lawyer: Failing Ideals of the Legal Profession (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); Sol M. Linowitz & Martin Mayer, The Betrayed Profession: Lawyering at the End of the Twentieth Century (New York, 1994); Deborah L. Rhode, In the Interests of Justice: Reforming the Legal Profession (New York, 2000).
5. Kronman, supra note 1, at 5.
6. Harvard dean Roscoe Pound was quite dismissive of these early efforts at university-based legal education in a 1927 article, noting that these early professorships "were not meant to be professional training in law. They were part of the general education of gentlemen, not part of the professional education of lawyers. They were lectures for college students generally and for the community at large." The Law School and the Professional Tradition, 24 Mich. L. Rev. 156, 160 (1926-27). Pound's comments have greater application to the professorships of James Wilson at the College of Philadelphia and James Kent at Columbia University during the 1790s than to George Wythe and St. George Tucker at the College of William and Mary during the 1780s and 1790s. Pound's assessment of legal education at William and Mary and the other eighteenth-century colleges may have been motivated by his desire to cement Harvard Law School's claim to primacy in legal education. Pound claimed that Harvard Law School, founded in 1817, was the "first university school of law in the English-speaking world," a claim - depending on one's definition of "school of law" - at odds with the legal education offered at both William and Mary and Transylvania. Pound, supra, at 161. Robert B. Stevens, Law Schools and Legal Education, 1879-1979: Lectures in Honor of 100 Years of Valparaiso Law School, 14 Valparaiso L. Rev. 179, 189 (1980) ("These early experiments in legal education were not profound [and were not] a success."); Amy M. Colton, Eyes to the Future, Yet Remembering the Past: Reconciling Tradition with the Future of Legal Education, 27 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 963, 966-67 (1994) (early law teaching at William and Mary and other colleges was "not successful"). Not all scholars are as dismissive of these early efforts of university-based legal education. Erwin Griswold wrote in 1974: "There can be no doubt that Wythe and [SL George] Tucker [at William and Mary] were engaged in a substantial, successful and influential venture in legal education, and that their effort can fairly be called the first law school in America." Law and Lawyers in the United States 39 (Cambridge, Mass., 1974). See also Brainerd Currie, The Materials of Law Study, 3 J. Legal Educ. 331, 331 (1951) ("The William and Mary professorship marked the beginning of professional legal education in American universities); Charles R. McManis, The History of First Century American Legal Education: A Revisionist Perspective, 59 Wash. U. L.Q. 597, 617 (1981) ("the professorships at William and Mary and Transylvania University . . . were on the whole quite successful [and] were to outlive the most successful of the early proprietary law schools").
7. Harvard dean Roscoe Pound was quite dismissive of these early efforts at university-based legal education in a 1927 article, noting that these early professorships "were not meant to be professional training in law. They were part of the general education of gentlemen, not part of the professional education of lawyers. They were lectures for college students generally and for the community at large." The Law School and the Professional Tradition, 24 Mich. L. Rev. 156, 160 (1926-27). Pound's comments have greater application to the professorships of James Wilson at the College of Philadelphia and James Kent at Columbia University during the 1790s than to George Wythe and St. George Tucker at the College of William and Mary during the 1780s and 1790s. Pound's assessment of legal education at William and Mary and the other eighteenth-century colleges may have been motivated by his desire to cement Harvard Law School's claim to primacy in legal education. Pound claimed that Harvard Law School, founded in 1817, was the "first university school of law in the English-speaking world," a claim - depending on one's definition of "school of law" - at odds with the legal education offered at both William and Mary and Transylvania. Pound, supra, at 161. See also Charles Warren, A History of the American Bar 357 (Boston, 1911) (none of the early law professorships "attempted to afford a complete or practical education for law students"); See also Charles Warren, A History of the American Bar 357 (Boston, 1911) (none of the early law professorships "attempted to afford a complete or practical education for law students"); Amy M. Colton, Eyes to the Future, Yet Remembering the Past: Reconciling Tradition with the Future of Legal Education, 27 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 963, 966-67 (1994) (early law teaching at William and Mary and other colleges was "not successful"). Not all scholars are as dismissive of these early efforts of university-based legal education. Erwin Griswold wrote in 1974: "There can be no doubt that Wythe and [SL George] Tucker [at William and Mary] were engaged in a substantial, successful and influential venture in legal education, and that their effort can fairly be called the first law school in America." Law and Lawyers in the United States 39 (Cambridge, Mass., 1974). See also Brainerd Currie, The Materials of Law Study, 3 J. Legal Educ. 331, 331 (1951) ("The William and Mary professorship marked the beginning of professional legal education in American universities); Charles R. McManis, The History of First Century American Legal Education: A Revisionist Perspective, 59 Wash. U. L.Q. 597, 617 (1981) ("the professorships at William and Mary and Transylvania University . . . were on the whole quite successful [and] were to outlive the most successful of the early proprietary law schools").
8. Harvard dean Roscoe Pound was quite dismissive of these early efforts at university-based legal education in a 1927 article, noting that these early professorships "were not meant to be professional training in law. They were part of the general education of gentlemen, not part of the professional education of lawyers. They were lectures for college students generally and for the community at large." The Law School and the Professional Tradition, 24 Mich. L. Rev. 156, 160 (1926-27). Pound's comments have greater application to the professorships of James Wilson at the College of Philadelphia and James Kent at Columbia University during the 1790s than to George Wythe and St. George Tucker at the College of William and Mary during the 1780s and 1790s. Pound's assessment of legal education at William and Mary and the other eighteenth-century colleges may have been motivated by his desire to cement Harvard Law School's claim to primacy in legal education. Pound claimed that Harvard Law School, founded in 1817, was the "first university school of law in the English-speaking world," a claim - depending on one's definition of "school of law" - at odds with the legal education offered at both William and Mary and Transylvania. Pound, supra, at 161. See also Charles Warren, A History of the American Bar 357 (Boston, 1911) (none of the early law professorships "attempted to afford a complete or practical education for law students"); Robert B. Stevens, Law Schools and Legal Education, 1879-1979: Lectures in Honor of 100 Years of Valparaiso Law School, 14 Valparaiso L. Rev. 179, 189 (1980) ("These early experiments in legal education were not profound [and were not] a success."); Robert B. Stevens, Law Schools and Legal Education, 1879-1979: Lectures in Honor of 100 Years of Valparaiso Law School, 14 Valparaiso L. Rev. 179, 189 (1980) ("These early experiments in legal education were not profound [and were not] a success."); Not all scholars are as dismissive of these early efforts of university-based legal education. Erwin Griswold wrote in 1974: "There can be no doubt that Wythe and [SL George] Tucker [at William and Mary] were engaged in a substantial, successful and influential venture in legal education, and that their effort can fairly be called the first law school in America." Law and Lawyers in the United States 39 (Cambridge, Mass., 1974). See also Brainerd Currie, The Materials of Law Study, 3 J. Legal Educ. 331, 331 (1951) ("The William and Mary professorship marked the beginning of professional legal education in American universities); Charles R. McManis, The History of First Century American Legal Education: A Revisionist Perspective, 59 Wash. U. L.Q. 597, 617 (1981) ("the professorships at William and Mary and Transylvania University . . . were on the whole quite successful [and] were to outlive the most successful of the early proprietary law schools").
9. Harvard dean Roscoe Pound was quite dismissive of these early efforts at university-based legal education in a 1927 article, noting that these early professorships "were not meant to be professional training in law. They were part of the general education of gentlemen, not part of the professional education of lawyers. They were lectures for college students generally and for the community at large." The Law School and the Professional Tradition, 24 Mich. L. Rev. 156, 160 (1926-27). Pound's comments have greater application to the professorships of James Wilson at the College of Philadelphia and James Kent at Columbia University during the 1790s than to George Wythe and St. George Tucker at the College of William and Mary during the 1780s and 1790s. Pound's assessment of legal education at William and Mary and the other eighteenth-century colleges may have been motivated by his desire to cement Harvard Law School's claim to primacy in legal education. Pound claimed that Harvard Law School, founded in 1817, was the "first university school of law in the English-speaking world," a claim - depending on one's definition of "school of law" - at odds with the legal education offered at both William and Mary and Transylvania. Pound, supra, at 161. See also Charles Warren, A History of the American Bar 357 (Boston, 1911) (none of the early law professorships "attempted to afford a complete or practical education for law students"); Robert B. Stevens, Law Schools and Legal Education, 1879-1979: Lectures in Honor of 100 Years of Valparaiso Law School, 14 Valparaiso L. Rev. 179, 189 (1980) ("These early experiments in legal education were not profound [and were not] a success."); Amy M. Colton, Eyes to the Future, Yet Remembering the Past: Reconciling Tradition with the Future of Legal Education, 27 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 963, 966-67 (1994) (early law teaching at William and Mary and other colleges was "not successful"). Amy M. Colton, Eyes to the Future, Yet Remembering the Past: Reconciling Tradition with the Future of Legal Education, 27 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 963, 966-67 (1994) (early law teaching at William and Mary and other colleges was "not successful"). See also Brainerd Currie, The Materials of Law Study, 3 J. Legal Educ. 331, 331 (1951) ("The William and Mary professorship marked the beginning of professional legal education in American universities); Charles R. McManis, The History of First Century American Legal Education: A Revisionist Perspective, 59 Wash. U. L.Q. 597, 617 (1981) ("the professorships at William and Mary and Transylvania University . . . were on the whole quite successful [and] were to outlive the most successful of the early proprietary law schools").
10. Harvard dean Roscoe Pound was quite dismissive of these early efforts at university-based legal education in a 1927 article, noting that these early professorships "were not meant to be professional training in law. They were part of the general education of gentlemen, not part of the professional education of lawyers. They were lectures for college students generally and for the community at large." The Law School and the Professional Tradition, 24 Mich. L. Rev. 156, 160 (1926-27). Pound's comments have greater application to the professorships of James Wilson at the College of Philadelphia and James Kent at Columbia University during the 1790s than to George Wythe and St. George Tucker at the College of William and Mary during the 1780s and 1790s. Pound's assessment of legal education at William and Mary and the other eighteenth-century colleges may have been motivated by his desire to cement Harvard Law School's claim to primacy in legal education. Pound claimed that Harvard Law School, founded in 1817, was the "first university school of law in the English-speaking world," a claim - depending on one's definition of "school of law" - at odds with the legal education offered at both William and Mary and Transylvania. Pound, supra, at 161. See also Charles Warren, A History of the American Bar 357 (Boston, 1911) (none of the early law professorships "attempted to afford a complete or practical education for law students"); Robert B. Stevens, Law Schools and Legal Education, 1879-1979: Lectures in Honor of 100 Years of Valparaiso Law School, 14 Valparaiso L. Rev. 179, 189 (1980) ("These early experiments in legal education were not profound [and were not] a success."); Amy M. Colton, Eyes to the Future, Yet Remembering the Past: Reconciling Tradition with the Future of Legal Education, 27 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 963, 966-67 (1994) (early law teaching at William and Mary and other colleges was "not successful"). Not all scholars are as dismissive of these early efforts of university-based legal education. Erwin Griswold wrote in 1974: "There can be no doubt that Wythe and [SL George] Tucker [at William and Mary] were engaged in a substantial, successful and influential venture in legal education, and that their effort can fairly be called the first law school in America." Law and Lawyers in the United States 39 (Cambridge, Mass., 1974). Not all scholars are as dismissive of these early efforts of university-based legal education. Erwin Griswold wrote in 1974: "There can be no doubt that Wythe and [SL George] Tucker [at William and Mary] were engaged in a substantial, successful and influential venture in legal education, and that their effort can fairly be called the first law school in America." Law and Lawyers in the United States 39 (Cambridge, Mass., 1974). Charles R. McManis, The History of First Century American Legal Education: A Revisionist Perspective, 59 Wash. U. L.Q. 597, 617 (1981) ("the professorships at William and Mary and Transylvania University . . . were on the whole quite successful [and] were to outlive the most successful of the early proprietary law schools").
11. Harvard dean Roscoe Pound was quite dismissive of these early efforts at university-based legal education in a 1927 article, noting that these early professorships "were not meant to be professional training in law. They were part of the general education of gentlemen, not part of the professional education of lawyers. They were lectures for college students generally and for the community at large." The Law School and the Professional Tradition, 24 Mich. L. Rev. 156, 160 (1926-27). Pound's comments have greater application to the professorships of James Wilson at the College of Philadelphia and James Kent at Columbia University during the 1790s than to George Wythe and St. George Tucker at the College of William and Mary during the 1780s and 1790s. Pound's assessment of legal education at William and Mary and the other eighteenth-century colleges may have been motivated by his desire to cement Harvard Law School's claim to primacy in legal education. Pound claimed that Harvard Law School, founded in 1817, was the "first university school of law in the English-speaking world," a claim - depending on one's definition of "school of law" - at odds with the legal education offered at both William and Mary and Transylvania. Pound, supra, at 161. See also Charles Warren, A History of the American Bar 357 (Boston, 1911) (none of the early law professorships "attempted to afford a complete or practical education for law students"); Robert B. Stevens, Law Schools and Legal Education, 1879-1979: Lectures in Honor of 100 Years of Valparaiso Law School, 14 Valparaiso L. Rev. 179, 189 (1980) ("These early experiments in legal education were not profound [and were not] a success."); Amy M. Colton, Eyes to the Future, Yet Remembering the Past: Reconciling Tradition with the Future of Legal Education, 27 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 963, 966-67 (1994) (early law teaching at William and Mary and other colleges was "not successful"). Not all scholars are as dismissive of these early efforts of university-based legal education. Erwin Griswold wrote in 1974: "There can be no doubt that Wythe and [SL George] Tucker [at William and Mary] were engaged in a substantial, successful and influential venture in legal education, and that their effort can fairly be called the first law school in America." Law and Lawyers in the United States 39 (Cambridge, Mass., 1974). Not all scholars are as dismissive of these early efforts of university-based legal education. Erwin Griswold wrote in 1974: "There can be no doubt that Wythe and [SL George] Tucker [at William and Mary] were engaged in a substantial, successful and influential venture in legal education, and that their effort can fairly be called the first law school in America." Law and Lawyers in the United States 39 (Cambridge, Mass., 1974). Charles R. McManis, The History of First Century American Legal Education: A Revisionist Perspective, 59 Wash. U. L.Q. 597, 617 (1981) ("the professorships at William and Mary and Transylvania University . . . were on the whole quite successful [and] were to outlive the most successful of the early proprietary law schools").
12. Harvard dean Roscoe Pound was quite dismissive of these early efforts at university-based legal education in a 1927 article, noting that these early professorships "were not meant to be professional training in law. They were part of the general education of gentlemen, not part of the professional education of lawyers. They were lectures for college students generally and for the community at large." The Law School and the Professional Tradition, 24 Mich. L. Rev. 156, 160 (1926-27). Pound's comments have greater application to the professorships of James Wilson at the College of Philadelphia and James Kent at Columbia University during the 1790s than to George Wythe and St. George Tucker at the College of William and Mary during the 1780s and 1790s. Pound's assessment of legal education at William and Mary and the other eighteenth-century colleges may have been motivated by his desire to cement Harvard Law School's claim to primacy in legal education. Pound claimed that Harvard Law School, founded in 1817, was the "first university school of law in the English-speaking world," a claim - depending on one's definition of "school of law" - at odds with the legal education offered at both William and Mary and Transylvania. Pound, supra, at 161. See also Charles Warren, A History of the American Bar 357 (Boston, 1911) (none of the early law professorships "attempted to afford a complete or practical education for law students"); Robert B. Stevens, Law Schools and Legal Education, 1879-1979: Lectures in Honor of 100 Years of Valparaiso Law School, 14 Valparaiso L. Rev. 179, 189 (1980) ("These early experiments in legal education were not profound [and were not] a success."); Amy M. Colton, Eyes to the Future, Yet Remembering the Past: Reconciling Tradition with the Future of Legal Education, 27 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 963, 966-67 (1994) (early law teaching at William and Mary and other colleges was "not successful"). Not all scholars are as dismissive of these early efforts of university-based legal education. Erwin Griswold wrote in 1974: "There can be no doubt that Wythe and [SL George] Tucker [at William and Mary] were engaged in a substantial, successful and influential venture in legal education, and that their effort can fairly be called the first law school in America." Law and Lawyers in the United States 39 (Cambridge, Mass., 1974). See also Brainerd Currie, The Materials of Law Study, 3 J. Legal Educ. 331, 331 (1951) ("The William and Mary professorship marked the beginning of professional legal education in American universities); Charles R. McManis, The History of First Century American Legal Education: A Revisionist Perspective, 59 Wash. U. L.Q. 597, 617 (1981) ("the professorships at William and Mary and Transylvania University . . . were on the whole quite successful [and] were to outlive the most successful of the early proprietary law schools"). Charles R. McManis, The History of First Century American Legal Education: A Revisionist Perspective, 59 Wash. U. L.Q. 597, 617 (1981) ("the professorships at William and Mary and Transylvania University . . . were on the whole quite successful [and] were to outlive the most successful of the early proprietary law schools"). correctly notes that "Wythe's teaching career may be assessed . . . as consequential beyond comparison to that of any successor in American university law teaching." The Revolutionary Idea of University Legal Education, 31 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 527, 538 (1990).
13. George Wythe's William and Mary students assumed an extraordinary variety of executive, legislative, and judicial offices, including secretary of state (John Marshall); attorney general of the United States (John Breckinridge); U.S. senator (James Brown, Louisiana; John Brown, Kentucky; John Breckinridge, Kentucky; John Eppes, Virginia; William Branch Giles, Virginia; Wilson Cary Nicholas, Virginia; Littleton Waller Tazewell, Virginia; Buckner Thruston, Kentucky); justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (Marshall, chief; Bushrod Washington, associate); governor of Virginia (William Branch Giles, Wilson Cary Nicholas, and Littleton Waller Tazewell); and many members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Moreover, 25 of the 43 judges on the Virginia Court of Appeals before the Civil War received their legal education at William and Mary. Thomas Hunter, The Teaching of George Wythe, in The History of Legal Education in the United States: Commentaries and Primary Sources, ed. Steve Sheppard, 138, 151-53, 166 n.141 (Pasadena, 1999). James Monroe, the nation's fifth president, may have also studied briefly with Wythe at William and Mary, but the historical record is not clear. Id. at 150 (noting that most scholars have concluded that Monroe did study with Wythe, but that "there is no conclusive proof one way or the other."). Paul D. Carrington
14. correctly notes that "Wythe's teaching career may be assessed . . . as consequential beyond comparison to that of any successor in American university law teaching." The Revolutionary Idea of University Legal Education, 31 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 527, 538 (1990).
15. Quoted in Benjamin R. Barber, Education and Democracy: Summary and Comment, in Thomas Jefferson and the Education of a Citizen, ed. James Gilreath, 134, 148 (Washington, 1999) [hereinafter Jefferson and Education].
16. James Willard Hurst, The Growth of American Law: The Law Makers 258 (Boston, 1950).
17. Quoted in David N. Mayer, Citizenship and Change in Jefferson's Constitutional Thought, in Jefferson and Education, supra note 5, at 221, 237.
18. The demand for legal services from the colonies' growing commercial interests raised the status of the colonial lawyer and drew increasing numbers of young men into the profession. McManis, supra note 3, at 601.
19. Quoted in Warren, supra note 3, at 79. Timothy Dwight described law practice for the Yale graduating class of 1776 as "[t] hat meanness, that infernal knavery, which multiplies needless litigations, which retards the operation of justice, . . . which artfully twists the meaning of law to the side we espouse, which seizes unwarrantable advantages from the prepossessions, ignorance, interests and prejudices of a jury."
20. Quoted in Maxwell Bloomfield, American Lawyers in a Changing Society, 1776-1876 at 39-40 (Cambridge, Mass., 1976).
21. Oxford and Cambridge had previously taught canon law and civil law, but by the middle of the eighteenth century these lectures had ceased. William Holdsworth, 12 A History of English Law 83-85 (London, 1938).
22. The Inns of Court were particularly popular with aspiring lawyers from South Carolina; indeed, almost half of the American lawyers educated at the Inns of Court between 1760 and the end of the Revolution came from South Carolina. Warren, supra note 3, at 188.
23. Charles R. McKirdy, The Lawyer as Apprentice: Legal Education in Eighteenth Century Massachusetts, 28 J. Legal Educ. 124, 126 (1976). The English legal historian William Holdsworth has noted that in the latter half of the seventeenth century "all public teaching of English law [at the Inns of Court] was stopped for nearly a century and a half." 6 A History of English Law 493 (Boston, 1924).
24. Herbert A. Johnson, Thomas Jefferson and Legal Education in Revolutionary America, in Jefferson and Education, supra note 5, at 107;
25. Id. at 312. The five-year term was reduced to three years in 1778. Paul M. Hamlin, Legal Education in Colonial New York 120 (New York, 1939). see also Holdsworth, supra note 10, at 79. New Jersey required a five-year apprenticeship, with one year of credit given for a college degree. Bailey, supra note 20, at 312.
26. McKirdy, supra note 12, at 127 n.13.
27. The most common book studied in the colonies was Sir Edmund Coke's commentary on Sir Thomas Littleton's Tenures, or Coke on Littleton as it was known. After the Revolution Blackstone's Commentaries would displace Coke as the most important law book in America. Id. at 131.
28. Warren, supra note 3, at 164.
29. St. George Tucker, ed., 1 Blackstone's Commentaries: With Notes of Reference to the Constitution and Laws of the Federal Government of the United States; and of the Commonwealth of Virginia at iv (New York, 1803, 1969) [hereinafter Blackstone's Commentaries]. Tucker complained that Virginia had never compiled a complete set of its laws, either before or after the Revolution, and instead distributed its newly enacted laws in loose sheets. Id. at v.
30. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Turpin (Feb. 5, 1769), in 1 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, 23-24 (Princeton, 1950) [hereinafter Jefferson Papers].
31. Quoted in Bloomfield, supra note 9, at 25.
32. In many of the colonies, a college education and a law-office apprenticeship were becoming the norm for lawyers by 1740. Mark Warren Bailey, Early Legal Education in the United States: Natural Law Theory and Law as a Moral Science, 48 J. Legal Educ. 311, 312 (1998).
33. Id. at 312. The five-year term was reduced to three years in 1778.
34. Paul M. Hamlin, Legal Education in Colonial New York 120 (New York, 1939).
35. Id. at 308-10. For example, in 1779 the New York legislature suspended the law licenses of all New York attorneys licensed before April 1777 and then reinstated the licenses only of those who could establish their loyalty to the American cause. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts enacted similar laws. New Jersey required a five-year apprenticeship, with one year of credit given for a college degree. Bailey, supra note 20, at 312.
36. In the early nineteenth century most states required an apprenticeship, but by 1860 many states had abolished the apprenticeship requirement. Robert B. Stevens, Law School: Legal Education in America from the 1850s to the 1980s 7-8 (Chapel Hill, 1983).
37. McKirdy, supra note 12, at 127.
38. Id. at 128.
39. Warren, supra note 3, at 166;
40. Hurst, supra note 6, at 256.
41. McKirdy, supra note 12, at 133-35.
42. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Turpin (Feb. 5, 1769), in 1 Jefferson Papers, supra note 18, at 23-24. See also Letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Garland Jefferson (June 11, 1790), in 16 Jefferson Papers, supra note 18, at 480 ("It is a general practice to study the law in the office of some lawyer. This indeed gives to the student the advantages of his instruction. But I have ever seen that the services expected in return have been more than the instructions have been worth.").
43. Knowledge of pleading, of course, was of great importance to any lawyer. Before 1848 and the adoption of David Dudley Field's Code of Civil Procedure, learning rules of pleading was extraordinarily difficult for the aspiring lawyer. Bailey, supra note 20, at 315. Roger Taney, later chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote of his apprenticeship in late eighteenth-century Annapolis: My reading in the office of a judge, instead of a practising lawyer . . . gave me no instruction in the ordinary routine of practise, nor any information as to the forms and manner of pleading. In that day, strict and nice technical pleading was the pride of the bar and I might almost say of the court. . . . Nor was it so easy in that day for an inexperienced young lawyer to satisfy himself upon a question of special pleading. Quoted in
44. Warren, supra note 3, at 183.
45. For example, William Blackstone, in his Commentaries, criticized the training of English lawyers, arguing that a lawyer must learn "the elements and first principles upon which the rule of practice is founded" without which he could "seldom expect to comprehend, any arguments drawn a priori, from the spirit of the laws and the natural foundations of justice." Quoted in Holdsworth, supra note 10, at 97. William Holdsworth observed that the eighteenth-century English lawyer "acquired a severely practical knowledge of the law from the angle of the pleader and the conveyancer," but "[w]hether or not he gained any knowledge of legal principle depended partly on his abilities and industry, and partly on the capacity and willingness of his master to teach him." As a result, the education of most English lawyers of the eighteenth century "was so defective that it was comparatively few who were more than mere practitioners." Id. at 88.
46. Quoted in Warren, supra note 3, at 167.
47. Id. at 168 (quoting William Livingston). A few apprentices were more gracious toward their mentors, most prominently Thomas Jefferson toward George Wythe and John Quincy Adams toward Theophilus Parsons. Adams was effusive: It is of great advantage to us to have Mr. Parsons in the office. He is in himself a law library, and a proficient in every useful branch of service; but his chief excellency is, that no student can be more fond of proposing questions than he is of solving them. . . . I am persuaded that the advantage of having such an instructor is very great, and I hope I shall not misimprove it as some of his pupils have done. Quoted in id. at 169.
48. Craig Evan Klafter, The Influence of Vocational Law Schools on the Origins of American Legal Thought, 1779-1829, 37 Am. J. Legal Hist. 307, 308 (1993).
49. Id. at 308-10. For example, in 1779 the New York legislature suspended the law licenses of all New York attorneys licensed before April 1777 and then reinstated the licenses only of those who could establish their loyalty to the American cause. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts enacted similar laws.
50. Id. at 309.
51. Quoted in Adrienne Koch, Introduction in The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, ed. Adrienne Koch, 28 (New York, 1965).
52. Douglass G. Adair, The Intellectual Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy: Republicanism, the Class Struggle, and the Virtuous Farmer, ed. Mark E. Yellin, 5 (Lanham, 2000).
53. Pennsylvanian Benjamin Rush spoke of the creation of a uniform system of education that would convert people into "republican machines." Quoted in Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The National Experience 1783-1876 at 2 (New York, 1980).
54. Id. at 2. Jefferson equated republicanism with citizen participation in government: Purely and simply, [a republic means] a government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally, according to the rules established by the majority; and that every other government is more or less republican in proportion as it has in its composition more or less of this ingredient of the direct action of its citizens.
55. Quoted in Jean M. Yarbrough, American Virtues: Thomas Jefferson on the Character of a Free People 134 (Lawrence, Kan., 1998). Montesquieu, who had a significant impact on Jefferson's thought, wrote in The Spirit of Laws: "It is in a republican government that the whole power of education is required."
56. Quoted in Robert A. Ferguson, Law and Letters in American Culture 49 (Cambridge, Mass., 1984).
57. Harold Hellenbrand, The Unfinished Revolution: Education and Politics in the Thought of Thomas Jefferson 14 (Newark, 1990).
58. Mayer, supra note 7, at 237. In his famous "Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge," which would have provided for universal public education for free children, Jefferson wrote: Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shown, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.
59. Quoted in Roy J. Honeywell, The Educational Work of Thomas Jefferson 199 (Cambridge, Mass., 1931). Jefferson placed special emphasis on the study of history to subvert the vise of tyranny: "History, by apprizing them of the past, will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views."
60. Quoted in Daniel J. Boorstin, The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson 218 (New York, 1948).
61. Quoted in Adrienne Koch, The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson 167 (New York, 1943). Koch has said of eighteenth-century republican attitudes toward education: "The system of public education and the intellectual climate encouraged by freedom of speech and press . . . furnish the real standing army of the functioning republic."
62. Id. at 166.
63. Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 at 53 (Chapel Hill, 1969).
64. Id. at 55.
65. Carrington, supra note 4, at 528; Johnson, supra note 13, at 106. Robert Ferguson has described Jefferson's recommended reading for aspiring lawyers as "virtual bibliographies of the Enlightenment, requiring fourteen hours of reading a day across a five-year period."
66. See, e.g., Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr. (Aug. 27, 1786), in 10 Jefferson Papers, supra note 18, at 306; Johnson, supra note 13, at 106. Robert Ferguson has described Jefferson's recommended reading for aspiring lawyers as "virtual bibliographies of the Enlightenment, requiring fourteen hours of reading a day across a five-year period." Cremin, supra note 36, at 2. Ferguson, supra note 37, at 28.
67. St. George Tucker, the great republican legal scholar, wrote in 1803: "An enlightened people, who have once attained the blessings of a free government, can never be enslaved until they abandon virtue and relinquish science." Blackstone's Commentaries, supra note 17, at xvii.
68. Although Jefferson favored some education for girls, he expected that men would be the leaders of the new nation.
69. Yarbrough, supra note 37, at 135. Jefferson drew a direct link between education and virtue: "Education generates habits of application, of order, and the love of virtue; and controls by force of habit, any innate obliquities in our moral organization." With a proper education, Jefferson believed, it is possible to improve that which "was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth."
70. Hellenbrand, supra note 38, at 59. Jefferson also worried about the effect of Blackstone - the primary source for studying the English common law - on young lawyers. In fact, he viewed Blackstone as an enemy of the American Revolution. McManis, supra note 3, at 610. Writing in 1826 to James Madison, Jefferson spoke of the influence of Blackstone among eighteenth- century lawyers: "when . . . the honeyed Mansfieldism of Blackstone became the students' hornbook, from that moment, that profession (the nursery of our Congress) began to slide into toryism, and nearly all the young brood of lawyers now are of that hue." Quoted in id. at 141. Jefferson embraced fundamental Enlightenment views concerning the ability of human institutions to induce appropriate behavior.
71. The Independence of Lawyers, 68 B.U. L. Rev. 1, 15-16 (1988). In 1803 William Wirt, the distinguished Virginia lawyer, could write of his generation: "Men of talents in this country . . . have been generally bred to the profession of law and indeed throughout the United States, I have met with few persons of exalted intellect, whose powers have been directed to any other pursuit." Quoted in Ferguson, supra note 37, at 12.
72. Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution 254 (New York, 1991).
73. See also Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 85, The Federalist Papers, ed. Andrew Hacker, 81 (New York, 1964) (noting that lawyers "feel a neutrality to the rivalships among the different branches of industry" and can thus serve as "an impartial aribiter between them" consistent with "the general interests of the community").
74. Honeywell, supra note 39, at 199-210.
75. Id. at 10-11.
76. Hellenbrand, supra note 38, at 90.
77. Jefferson called for an abolition of the law of entail: "The repeal of the laws of entail would prevent the accumulation and perpetuation of wealth, in select families, and preserve the soil of the country from being daily more and more absorbed in mortmain. The abolition of primogeniture, and equal partition of inheritances, removed the feudal and unnatural distinctions which made one member of every family rich, and all the rest poor, substituting equal partition, the best of all Agrarian laws." Autobiography, in The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, eds. Adrienne Koch & William Peden, 49-50 (New York, 1998) [hereinafter Life and Selected Writings]. Jefferson noted that under Saxon law feudal landholdings were unknown, and the Saxons held their lands in fee simple. The feudal landholding traditions had been introduced by the Normans; Jefferson argued that because America had not been conquered by the Normans, Norman law should not apply in this country.
78. Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, in Life and Selected Writings, supra, at 285. Letter from John Tyler to Thomas Jefferson (Nov. 12, 1810), in 1 The Letters and Times of the Tylers, ed. Lyon G. Tyler, 249 (Richmond, 1884).
79. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, in Life and Selected Writings, supra note 51, at 237.
80. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Wythe (Aug. 13, 1786), in 5 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, eds. Andrew A. Lipscomb & Albert Ellery Bergh, 396-407 (Washington, 1903) [hereinafter Jefferson Writings].
81. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Washington (Jan. 4, 1785), in 9 Jefferson Papers, supra note 18, at 151.
82. Thomas Jefferson, A Bill for Amending the Constitution of the College of William and Mary, and Substituting More Certain Revenues for Its Support, in 2 Jefferson Papers, supra note 18, at 535.
83. Autobiography, supra note 51, at 48.
84. Jefferson, supra note 55, at 539.
85. McManis, supra note 3, at 622.
86. Jefferson later explained: "the religious jealousies . . . of all the dissenters, took alarm lest this might give an ascendancy to the Anglican sect, and refused acting on that bill." Autobiography, supra note 51, at 48.
87. See id. at 50. The board formally established these new professorships on December 4, 1779; the new faculty began teaching on January 17, 1780. Susan H. Godson et al., 1 The College of William & Mary: A History 133, 135 (Williamsburg, 1993). To create these three new chairs and to stay within the mandate of the college's charter that permitted only six professorships, Jefferson directed the abolition of the two professorships of divinity and Oriental languages along with the abolition of the college's grammar school for younger students. With this change the college disposed of its more royalist faculty and shifted in the direction of teaching republicanism. Hunter, supra note 4, at 144-45.
88. Alfred Zantzinger Reed, Training for the Public Profession of the Law: Historical Development and Principal Contemporary Problems of Legal Education in the United States with Some Account of Conditions in England and Canada 116 (New York, 1921).
89. Quoted in id. at 114.
90. Id.
91. Id. at 134.
92. Stiles explained that the new chair in law was not geared towards educating Lawyers or Barristers, but for forming Civilians. Fewer than a quarter perhaps of the young gentlemen educated at the college, enter into either of the learned professions of Divinity, Law or Physic: The greater part of them after finishing the academic Course return home, mix in with the body of the public, and enter upon Commerce or the cultivation of their Estates. And yet perhaps the most of them in the Course of their Lifes are called forth by their Country into some or other of the various Branches of civil Improvement & the great public offices in the State. Quoted in Warren, supra note 3, at 563.
93. William Blackstone, 1 Commentaries on the Laws of England in Four Books 32 (1783).
94. Id. This favoring of legal apprenticeships over university legal training would persist in England. Albert Dicey, a subsequent Vinerian professor, commented in 1883 that if the question whether English law can be taught at the Universities could be submitted in the form of a case to a body of eminent counsel, there is no doubt whatever as to what would be their answer. They would reply with unanimity and without hesitation that English law must be learned and cannot be taught, and that the only places where it can be learned are the law courts and chambers. Quoted in William Holdsworth, Some Lessons from Our Legal History 171 (New York, 1928).
95. Blackstone, supra note 66, at 31.
96. See, e.g., Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr. (Aug. 27, 1786), in 10 Jefferson Papers, supra note 18, at 306;
97. Johnson, supra note 13, at 106. Robert Ferguson has described Jefferson's recommended reading for aspiring lawyers as "virtual bibliographies of the Enlightenment, requiring fourteen hours of reading a day across a five-year period."
98. Ferguson, supra note 37, at 28.
99. Jefferson was particularly fascinated by the Saxons of pre-Norman England and taught himself the Saxon language. He perceived a "golden age of Saxon freedom preceding Norman usurpation." Ferguson, supra note 37, at 52.
100. Johnson, supra note 13, at 107.
101. As Montesquieu had written, law must be developed "relative to the climate . . . soil . . . situation and bigness" of each people. Hellenbrand, supra note 38, at 59. Jefferson was an enthusiastic reader of Montesquieu; he encouraged aspiring lawyers to read his The Spirit of Laws and recommended it to students as "the best general book on the science of government." Ferguson, supra note 37, at 47.
102. Hellenbrand, supra note 38, at 59. Jefferson also worried about the effect of Blackstone - the primary source for studying the English common law - on young lawyers. In fact, he viewed Blackstone as an enemy of the American Revolution. McManis, supra note 3, at 610. Writing in 1826 to James Madison, Jefferson spoke of the influence of Blackstone among eighteenth-century lawyers: "when . . . the honeyed Mansfieldism of Blackstone became the students' hornbook, from that moment, that profession (the nursery of our Congress) began to slide into toryism, and nearly all the young brood of lawyers now are of that hue."
103. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison (Feb. 17, 1826), in 16 Jefferson Writings, supra note 53, at 155.
104. Quoted in Hellenbrand, supra note 38, at 60.
105. Jefferson described Wythe to a acquaintance who was considering sending his son to William and Mary to learn law: "He is one of the greatest men of the age, having held without competition the first place at the bar of our general court for 25 years, and always distinguished by the most spotless virtue." Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Ralph Izard (July 17, 1788), in 13 Jefferson Papers, supra note 18, at 372.
106. Wythe later wrote that his uncle "treated him with neglect, and confined him to the drudgeries of his office, with little, or no, attention to his instruction in the general science of law." Quoted in Hunter, supra note 4, at 140.
107. Quoted in id. at 141.
108. Wythe had also worked closely with Jefferson from 1776 until 1778 on an effort to revise Virginia law. The fruits of their labor were 126 proposed bills in the Virginia General Assembly. Wythe became speaker of the House of Delegates
109. Imogene E. Brown, American Aristides: A Biography of George Wythe 200 (East Brunswick, 1981).
110. Frank L. Dewey, Thomas Jefferson, Lawyer 9-17 (Charlottesville, 1986).
111. Hunter, supra note 4, at 142.
112. Hellenbrand, supra note 38, at 55.
113. Id. at 92.
114. Paul D. Carrington, Teaching Law and Virtue at Transylvania University: The George Wythe Tradition in the Antebellum Years, 41 Mercer L. Rev. 673, 675 (1990); Quoted in Ferguson, supra note 37, at 25. David Hoffman wrote in 1837 that lawyers were "the most entrusted, the most honoured, and withal, the most efficient and useful body of men" in the country. Quoted in Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America from the Revolution to the Civil War 105 (New York, 1965). This role of lawyers as public citizens, however, would begin to decline by the middle of the nineteenth century. A midcentury legal publication noted: "It is well known that men of the highest eminence in our profession are seldom members of the legislative assemblies in this country." Bloomfield, supra note 9, at 149.
115. Bloomfield, supra note 9, at 148. The American Quarterly Review remarked in 1832: "Of the learned professions, nay of all the sciences, [law] may well put in a claim for even the highest rank. What, indeed, can be more noble than the aim of that science which is to direct the actions of mankind." Quoted in Ferguson, supra note 37, at 25. David Hoffman wrote in 1837 that lawyers were "the most entrusted, the most honoured, and withal, the most efficient and useful body of men" in the country. Johnson, supra note 13, at 109. Bloomfield, supra note 9, at 149.
116. Hunter, supra note 4, at 145. Virginia governor John Tyler (the father of President John Tyler) wrote Thomas Jefferson about Wythe's lecture notes in 1810: Judge [Spencer] Roane has read them, or most of them, and is highly pleased with them, thinks they will be very valuable, there being so much of his own sound reasoning upon great principles, and not a mere servile copy of Blackstone, and other British commentators, - a good many of his own thoughts on our constitutions and the necessary changes they have begotten, with that spirit of freedom which always marked his opinions.
117. Letter from John Tyler to Thomas Jefferson (Nov. 12, 1810), in 1 The Letters and Times of the Tylers, ed. Lyon G. Tyler, 249 (Richmond, 1884).
118. Alonzo Thomas Dill, George Wythe: Teacher of Liberty 43 (Williamsburg, 1979).
119. William Clarkin, Serene Patriot: A Life of George Wythe 156 (Albany, 1970). Peter Carr, Thomas Jefferson's nephew, wrote his uncle describing his studies with Wythe: Mr. Wythe advised me to begin the study of the Law, reading it two or three hours every day, and devoteing the rest of my time to the languages, history and Philosophy. . . . I rise about day, and take a walk of half an hour to shake off sleep, read law till breakfast, then attend Mr. Wythe till 12 oclock in the languages, read philosophy till dinner, history till night and poetry till bed time. Mark Swartz & Jerry Colliver, Further Discussion of SP Checklists and Videotaped Performances, 75 Acad. Med. 315, 317 (2000).
120. See Consensus Statement of the Researchers in Clinical Skills Assessment (RCSA) on the Use of Standardized Patients to Evaluate Clinical Skills, Appendix 1 to Special Issue: Proceedings of the AAMS's Consensus Conference on the Use of Standardized Patients in the Teaching and Evaluation of Clinical Skills, 68 Acad. Med. 475 (1993) [hereinafter Consensus Statement]. One medical professor is quoted, in support of her SP research and recommendation that SPs be used in medical school: "[M]edical students are rarely if ever observed [during the four years of medical school] by faculty physicians in taking a history and performing a physical examination . . . ." Mark Swartz & Jerry Colliver, Further Discussion of SP Checklists and Videotaped Performances, 75 Acad. Med. 315, 317 (2000). Letter from Peter Carr to Thomas Jefferson (March 18, 1788), in 12 Jefferson Papers, supra note 18, at 677.
121. Dill, supra note 86, at 44.
122. See Marian C. McKenna, Tapping Reeve and the Litchfield Law School 7-8 (New York, 1985).
123. Brown, supra note 79, at 203. Walker Maury, headmaster of Williamsburg's grammar school, described the model legislature to Jefferson: the students assemble as a body of Legislators, in whom you see our assembly in miniature debating, at least many of them, extempore, on important questions of state. Some of their harrangues wou'd be heard with pleasure in any house of representatives; and the whole is conducted with, perhaps, more spirit than was ever display'd in an institution of this nature.
124. Letter from Walker Maury to Thomas Jefferson (Apr. 20, 1784), in 7 Jefferson Papers, supra note 18, at 112. One Wythe student, John Brown, described the legislative assembly in a July 1780 letter: He has form'd us into a Legislative Body, consisting of about 40 members. Mr. Wythe is speaker to the House, & takes all possible pains to instruct us in the Rules of Parliament. We meet every Saturday and take under our consideration those Bills drawn up by the Committee appointed to revise the laws, then we debate & alter (I will not say amend) with the greatest freedom.
125. Clarkin, supra note 87, at 143-44.
126. W. Hamilton Bryson, Legal Education in Virginia 1779-1979 at 23 (Charlottesville, 1982).
127. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison (July 26, 1780), 3 Jefferson Papers, supra note 18, at 507.
128. Quoted in Oscar L. Shewmake, The Honorable George Wythe: Teacher, Lawyer, Jurist, Statesman 16-17 (Williamsburg, 1921).
129. Hunter, supra note 4, at 146. All of Wythe's students, of course, were white males. It would be decades before women and African-Americans would enter the legal profession.
130. Id. at 153.
131. Brown, supra note 79, at 206.
132. The exact reasons for Wythe's departure are unclear, but legislation that took effect in 1789 moved the Court of Chancery to Richmond, and Wythe relocated to that city upon completing the 1789-90 term at the college. Dill, supra note 86, at 71. According to Jefferson, Wythe also apparently had some type of disagreement with his colleagues at the college. Jefferson was bitterly disappointed at Wythe's departure. He wrote at the time: "The [board of] visitors will try to condemn what gave [Wythe] offence [and caused him to leave] and press him to return: otherwise it is over with the college." Letter from Thomas Jefferson to William Short (Dec. 14, 1789), in 16 Jefferson Papers, supra note 18, at 25-26. Tucker was an extraordinarily distinguished successor to Wythe, but Jefferson's high regard for the college was not restored. In particular, Jefferson objected to certain decisions by the Board of Visitors in the early 1790s that had the effect of increasing the influence of the church over the college: the consecration of Professor Madison as bishop of Virginia, the required attendance at prayers, and the establishment of a degree in divinity. Jefferson's disappointment was so great that by 1800 he would refer to the "demolition" and "ruin" of his 1779 plan to modernize and reform William and Mary. Godson et al., supra note 60, at 173. After Wythe's departure, Jefferson did not suggest that other aspiring lawyers attend the college. His disappointment with the changes at William and Mary would have profound consequences for the history of higher education in America. In time, he turned his attentions to the establishment of a new university to fulfill his educational ideals - the University of Virginia.
133. For example, Tucker explained that the American Revolution had "produced a corresponding revolution not only in the principles of our government, but in the laws which relate to property, and a variety of other [laws] irreconcilable to the principles contained in the Commentaries." Michael Grossberg, Citizens and Families: A Jeffersonian Vision of Domestic Relations and Generational Change, in Jefferson and Education, supra note 5, at 19.
134. See also Charles T. Cullen, St. George Tucker and Law in Virginia, 1772-1804 at 120 (New York, 1987).
135. Blackstone's Commentaries, supra note 17, at v.
136. Id. at xvi-xvii. Tucker also believed that knowledge of constitutional law was essential to the preservation of liberty and republican government: "In a government founded on the basis of equal liberty among all its citizens, to be ignorant of the law and the constitution, is to be ignorant of the rights of the citizen. . . . [W]hen ignorance is united with supineness, liberty becomes lethargic, and despotism erects her standard without opposition." Id. at xvii.
137. Cullen, supra note 98, at 130.
138. Quoted in id. at 129.
139. Blackstone's Commentaries, supra note 17.
140. For example, Tucker used almost verbatim his lecture to his law students on the irreconcilability of slavery with republican principles in his introduction to his edition of Blackstone. Cf. Cullen, supra note 98, at 119-20 with 1 Blackstone's Commentaries, supra note 17, at xi-xii.
141. The U.S. Supreme Court also considered Tucker's Blackstone authoritative as to the legal understandings of the founders. Indeed, Tucker's Blackstone has been cited by the Supreme Court in more than 40 cases, as recently as 1995. Paul Finkelman & David Cobin, An Introduction to St. George Tucker's Blackstone's Commentaries, in 1 Blackstone's Commentaries, supra note 17, at v-vi.
142. Currie, supra note 3, at 360. Some have suggested that Tucker's Blackstone helped extend the life of the apprenticeship method of legal training since it made much of American law accessible to the aspiring lawyer.
143. Reed, supra note 61, at 117.
144. Cullen, supra note 98, at 125-26.
145. 1 Blackstone's Commentaries, supra note 17, at xi-xii.
146. Quoted in Cullen, supra note 98, at 124.
147. Tucker noted that London sent only four members to Parliament, although it contained one-seventh of the nation's population, and that some other English cities, like Manchester and Birmingham, had no representation in Parliament. In like fashion, he criticized the Electoral College because it could allow a minority of voters to elect the president. Id. at 123-24.
148. Quoted in id. at 129 (emphasis omitted).
149. Quoted in Hunter, supra note 4, at 146-47.
150. Quoted in Ira Bernard Dworkin, America's First Law School: The College of William and Mary, 37 A.B.A. J. 348, 349 (1951).
151. St. George Tucker, Plan for Conferring Degrees on the Students of Law in the University of William and Mary in Tucker-Coleman Papers, Special Collections, Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary. Finally, Tucker prepared legislation for the Virginia General Assembly providing that any student who completed a law degree at the College of William and Mary should gain admission to the bar without payment of any additional fees. Id.
152. Cullen, supra note 98, at 123.
153. Letter from St. George Tucker to the Rector of the Convocation of Visitors & Governors of William & Mary College (Dec. 9, 1803), in Tucker-Coleman Papers, supra note 114.
154. Tucker objected to a number of actions taken by the Board of Visitors of the college, including requirements that all classes be taught on the college premises, that all faculty regularly present the Board of Visitors with class rolls, and that all faculty regularly patrol dormitory rooms to control student misconduct. As to the requirement that he teach on the college premises rather than in his home a few blocks away, Tucker commented: "I tried this method one or two winters. A chairbox full of books was daily transported there and back again with no small inconvenience to myself and servants. But often in the midst of a lecture I found that I had overlooked an important reference, perhaps many, which it was in vain to attempt to supply." Tucker construed the requirement that he present the board with his class roll as demonstrating their "total want of confidence in the professors; not to say a perfect contempt for them." Finally, in response to the requirement that he patrol student living quarters, Tucker refused to "inflict upon my students the ordinary discipline of a village school" or "to perform the duties of a beadle . . . the performance of which must degrade the professor in the eyes of his pupils, and of the public, and the man in his own eyes." He resigned instead. Id.
155. Hunter, supra note 4, at 149-50.
156. Quoted in Cullen, supra note 98, at 137.
157. Letter from William Short to Greenbury Ridgely (Dec. 11, 1816), in To Practice Law: Aspects of the Era of Good Feelings Reflected in the Short-Ridgely Correspondence, 1816-1821, ed. George Green Shackelford, 64 Md. Hist. Mag. 342/349 (1969) [hereinafter To Practice Law].
158. Letter from William Short to Greenbury Ridgely (Nov. 10, 1817), in To Practice Law, supra note 120, at 369.
159. Letter from William Short to Greenbury Ridgely (Dec. 11, 1816), in To Practice Law, supra note 120, at 349-50. One former student wrote Tucker in 1802 about his frustration with practice in the county courts of Virginia: "I feel myself very much unprovided with that kind of teaching, which alone seems useful in county courts. And though I may be in possession of some uncoined ore, which may hereafter be valuable, and which great labor has extracted from the mines of Coke and Sheppard yet the current half-pence, in possession of every pettifogger, gives them a . . . superiority, which I cannot relish."
160. Letter from Chapman Johnson to St. George Tucker (May 29, 1802), in Tucker-Coleman Papers, supra note 114.
161. Robert Green McCloskey, Introduction in 1 The Works of James Wilson, ed. Robert Green McCloskey, 37 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967).
162. Kent's Introductory Lecture, 3 Colum. L. Rev. 330, 332, 338 (1903).
163. Id. at 334. Kent aspired to "explain the principles of our constitutions, the reason and history of our laws, to illustrate them by a comparison with those of other nations, and to point out the relation they bear to the spirit of representative republics."
164. We began our survey project with two key goals: aiming to trace the extent and nature of any gender gap in the performance and difficulties men and women experienced in law school, and seeking to understand how third-year law students perceived their future careers as lawyers and whether some students self-selected out of parts of the curriculum. See Richard Sander & Kristine Knaplund, Through the Gender Gap (unpublished draft, on file with authors); David B. Wilkins & G. Mitu Gulati, What Law Students Think They Know About Elite Law Firms: Preliminary Results of a Survey of Third-Year Law Students, 69 U. Cin. L. Rev. _ (forthcoming, 2001). Id. at 341. Patrick J. Schiltz, Legal Ethics in Decline: The Elite Law Firm, the Elite Law School, and the Moral Formation of the Novice Attorney, 82 Minn. L. Rev. 705 (1998); Graham C. Lilly, Law School Without Lawyers, 81 Va. L. Rev. 1421 (1995); Anthony T. Kronman, The Lost Lawyer: Failing Ideals of the Legal Profession (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); Harry T. Edwards, The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education and the Legal Profession, 91 Mich. L. Rev. 34 (1992). For a recent article that describes the literature on American legal education and the bleak story that dominates it, see Kirsten Edwards, Found! The Lost Lawyer, 70 Fordham L. Rev. 37 (2001) (positing an increased focus on clinical education as a solution).
165. Id. at 341.
166. Kent delivered 26 lectures his first year to seven college students and to 36 lawyers and law students from outside the college. Julius Goebel, Jr. & Samuel F. Howard, A History of the School of Law, Columbia University 16-17 (New York, 1955).
167. Warren, supra note 3, at 350-52.
168. Carrington, supra note 84, at 679; See also Linda F. Wightman, Are Other Things Essentially Equal? An Empirical Investigation of the Consequences of Including Race as a Factor in Law School Admission, 28 Sw. U. L. Rev. 1 (1998); Linda F. Wightman, The Threat to Diversity in Legal Education: An Empirical Analysis of the Consequences of Abandoning Race as a Factor in Law School Admission Decisions, 72 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1 (1997); and Linda F. Wightman, Women in Legal Education: A Comparison of Law School Performance and Law School Experiences of Women and Men, LSAC Research Report (Newtown, 1996)[hereinafter Women in Legal Education].
169. This study is described in Linda F. Wightman, LSAC National Longitudinal Bar Passage Study, LSAC Research Report (Newtown, 1998). Reed, supra note 61, at 118. Linda F. Wightman, The Threat to Diversity in Legal Education: An Empirical Analysis of the Consequences of Abandoning Race as a Factor in Law School Admission Decisions, 72 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1 (1997); and Linda F. Wightman, Women in Legal Education: A Comparison of Law School Performance and Law School Experiences of Women and Men, LSAC Research Report (Newtown, 1996)[hereinafter Women in Legal Education].
170. Quoted in Warren, supra note 3, at 354.
171. Quoted in id. at 355.
172. Paul D. Carrington, Legal Education for the People: Populism and Civic Virtue, 43 Kansas L. Rev. 1, 6 (1994). Wightman, Women in Legal Education, supra note 7.
173. See Paul D. Carrington, Teaching Law in the Antebellum Northwest, 23 U. Tol. L. Rev. 3, 8-12, 16-21 (1991).
174. Reeve established his Litchfield school in 1784. From 1784 to 1798 the school taught about 210 students; from 1798 until 1833, 805 students. The largest year was 1813, when it taught 54 students; 40 was the average. The Litchfield program, which lasted 14 months, consisted of daily lectures on a variety of legal topics, weekly examinations, and a weekly moot court. Warren, supra note 3, at 357-61.
175. Johnson, supra note 13, at 110. Van Schaak, for example, prepared an "Analysis of the Practice of the Supreme Court," in which he outlined the progress of a typical lawsuit from start to finish in great detail. Quoted in Bloomfield, supra note 9, at 25. His questions to his students were exceedingly practical. For example: "Suppose a person inclined to purchase a farm in the County of Westchester was to give you a fee for your advice, how he should find out, whether there were any incumbrances upon the land. What instructions would you give him?" Id. at 26. Jefferson criticized the proprietary law schools for their focus on the narrow practical aspects of law practice and spent the last years of his life attempting to integrate the study of law into a broader liberal arts education at the University of Virginia with, again, a purpose of training leaders.
176. Barber, supra note 5, at 148.
177. McKenna, supra note 89, at 67.
178. For example, David Hoffman's ambitious law curriculum that he completed in 1817 for the purpose of implementation at the University of Maryland included both private law topics and moral and political philosophy, international law, Roman law, and political economy. McManis, supra note 8, at 616.
179. Quoted in Johnson, supra note 13, at 114.
180. Quoted in Ferguson, supra note 37, at 26.
181. Johnson, supra note 13, at 114.
182. Yarbrough, supra note 37, at 142. Jefferson also wrote of the University of Virginia: "Nor must we omit to mention the incalculable advantage of training up able counsellors to administer the affairs of our country in all its departments, -legislative, executive, and judicial, and to bear their proper share in the councils of our National Government; nothing more than education advancing the prosperity, the power, and the happiness of a nation." Currie, supra note 3, at 355. Jefferson expressed the hope that "within a dozen or twenty years a majority of our own legislature" would be graduates of the University of Virginia.
183. Quoted in David Tyack, Forming the National Character: Paradox in the Educational Thought of the Revolutionary Generation, 36 Harv. Educ. Rev. 29, 40 (1966).
184. Johnson, supra note 13, at 113.
185. McManis, supra note 3, at 624.
186. Currie, supra note 3, at 357.
187. Bloomfield, supra note 9, at 148. The American Quarterly Review remarked in 1832: "Of the learned professions, nay of all the sciences, [law] may well put in a claim for even the highest rank. What, indeed, can be more noble than the aim of that science which is to direct the actions of mankind."
188. Quoted in Ferguson, supra note 37, at 25. David Hoffman wrote in 1837 that lawyers were "the most entrusted, the most honoured, and withal, the most efficient and useful body of men" in the country.
189. Quoted in Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America from the Revolution to the Civil War 105 (New York, 1965). This role of lawyers as public citizens, however, would begin to decline by the middle of the nineteenth century. A midcentury legal publication noted: "It is well known that men of the highest eminence in our profession are seldom members of the legislative assemblies in this country."
190. Bloomfield, supra note 9, at 149.