Harvard Law School
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Harvard Law School |
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| Established | 1817 |
| Type | Private |
| Endowment | US$840 million |
| Dean | Elena Kagan |
| Staff | 284 |
| Students | 1,800 |
| Location | Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA |
| Campus | Urban |
| Website | www.law.harvard.edu |
Harvard Law School, often referred to in shorthand as Harvard Law or HLS, is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is considered one of the world's most renowned law schools and is home to the largest academic law library in the world.
Harvard Law routinely places as one of the top three law schools in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, along with Yale Law School and Stanford Law School, and usually receives the highest reputational scores from judges, academics and practitioners. Harvard Law School is also noted for its size; in its JD program, each class has approximately 550 students, compared to about 180 at Stanford, 200 at Yale, 375 at Columbia, and 440 at New York University.
Fourteen of the school's graduates have served on the Supreme Court of the United States, more than any other law school, and another four justices attended the school but did not graduate from it. Six of the current nine members of the court attended HLS: Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer. (Ginsburg transferred to and graduated from Columbia Law School.)
The current dean of Harvard Law School is Elena Kagan, who succeeded Robert C. Clark in 2003.
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[edit] Campus
Harvard Law School's campus is located just north of Harvard Yard, the historic center of Harvard University, and contains several architecturally significant buildings.
Austin Hall, the law school's oldest dedicated structure, was completed in the 1880s by architect H. H. Richardson. The Harvard Graduate Center, also known as Harkness Commons, is the law school's student center; it was designed by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, along with several law school dormitories.
Langdell Hall, the largest building on the law school campus, contains the HLS library, the most extensive academic law library in the world.
As of 2006, a new structure is scheduled to rise on the northwest corner of the law school campus, to be designed by traditionalist architect Robert A. M. Stern.
[edit] History
Harvard Law School was established in 1817, making it the oldest continuously-operating law school in the nation.
The school was endowed with money from the estate of Isaac Royall, an Antiguan slave-owning planter. Royall sold most of his Caribbean slaves and plantations to move to Medford, Massachusetts. His Medford estate, the Isaac Royall House, is now a museum, and includes the only remaining slave quarters in the northeast United States. The estate was passed down to Royall's son, Isaac Royall, Jr., who fled Massachusetts as the American Revolution broke out. Just prior to his death in 1781, Royall, Jr. left land to Harvard the sale of which was intended for the "endowing of a Professor of Laws at said college, or a Professor of Physics and Anatomy". Harvard took the opportunity to fund its first chair of law. The Royall chair remains today, and is traditionally occupied by the Dean of the law school.
In 1806, the Royall estate in Medford was returned to Royall, Jr.'s heirs, who sold it and donated the proceeds for the formal foundation of Harvard Law School. The Royall family coat-of-arms was adopted as the school crest, which shows three stacked wheat sheaves beneath the university motto (Veritas, Latin "truth").
In the 1870s, Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell introduced the standard first-year curriculum - including classes in Contracts, Property, Torts, Criminal Law, and Civil Procedure - as well as the case method of teaching. It became the model for most law schools in the United States.
The faculty recently voted unanimously to approve a new first-year curriculum, placing greater emphasis on problem-solving and international law.
[edit] Programs
[edit] Berkman Center for Internet & Society
The Harvard Law School is home to the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, which focuses on the study and construction of cyberspace. The Center sponsors conferences, courses, visiting lecturers, and residential fellows. Members of the Center do research and write books, articles, and weblogs with RSS 2.0 feeds, for which the Center holds the specification. The Center's present location is a small Victorian wood-frame building which sits next to the larger-scale buildings of the Harvard Law School campus. It is in the process of relocating to a larger site on the campus' perimeter. Its newsletter, "The Filter", is on the Web and available by e-mail, and it hosts a blog community of Harvard faculty, students and Berkman Center affiliates. The Berkman Center is funding the Openlaw project. One of the major initiatives of the Berkman Center is the OpenNet Initiative, which is a joint worldwide study of the filtering of the web, along with the Universities of Toronto and Cambridge (UK). The Berkman Center was a co-sponsor of Wikimania 2006.
see also: prof Charles Nesson, Lawrence Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain, John Palfrey
[edit] Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice
Established in the fall of 2005 at Harvard Law School, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice seeks to honor the contributions of Charles Hamilton Houston, who dedicated his life to using law as a tool to reverse the unjust consequences of racial discrimination. The Institute carries forth Houston's legacy by serving as a hub for scholarship, legal education, policy analysis, and public forums on issues central to current civil rights struggles.
see also Charles Ogletree
[edit] Labor & Worklife Program
The Labor and Worklife Program (LWP) is Harvard University’s forum for research and teaching on the world of work and its implications for society. Located at the Harvard Law School, the LWP brings together scholars and policy experts from a variety of disciplines to analyze critical labor issues in the law, economy, and society. The LWP also provides unique education for labor leaders throughout the world via the oldest executive training program at Harvard University, the Harvard Trade Union Program, founded in 1942. As a multidisciplinary research and policy network, the LWP organizes projects and programs that seek to understand critical changes in labor markets and labor law, and to analyze the role of unions, business, and government as they affect the world of work. By engaging scholars, students, and members of the labor community, the program coordinates legal, educational, and cultural activities designed to improve the quality of work life.
The faculty, staff, and research associates of the Program include some of the nation’s premier scholars of labor studies and an array of internationally renowned intellectuals. The executive training program (HTUP) works closely with trade unions around the world to bring excellence in labor education to trade union leadership. The LWP regularly holds forums, conferences, and discussion groups on labor issues of concern to business, unions, and the government.
[edit] Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center
Along with the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, the Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center is one of Harvard Law School’s oldest and largest clinical teaching facilities. The Legal Services Center is a general practice law firm that provides legal counsel to over 1,200 clients annually. It offers students an opportunity to gain practical legal experience and earn academic credit by handling real cases for real clients under the supervision of clinical instructors who are experienced practitioners and mentors. The Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center sponsors up to 70 students each semester through several clinical courses offered at Harvard Law School and, during the summer, sponsors a program for volunteer law students from across the country.
Students working at the Center are placed in one of its clinics housed in five substantive practice groups and work with clinical instructors, experienced practitioners and mentors, who supervise student work and provide guidance as students build and manage their own caseload. The Center provides substantive training in each practice area and also offers general instruction on topics such as client interviewing and intake, case management, legal investigation and discovery, creative legal analysis, research and drafting.
The Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center is located in Boston’s culturally diverse Jamaica Plain neighborhood.
[edit] Other Harvard Law School programs
- The Ames Moot Court Competition
- Child Advocacy Program
- East Asian Legal Studies Program
- Director: Professor and Vice Dean William P. Alford
- European Law Research Center
- Fund for Tax and Fiscal Research
- Human Rights Program
- Islamic Legal Studies Program
- John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics and Business
- Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics
- Prison Legal Assistance Project
- Program on Corporate Governance
- Program on Emprical Legal Studies
- Program on International Financial Systems
- Program on Negotiation
- Program on the Legal Profession
- Public Interest Auction
- Harvard Legal Aid Bureau
There are two additional programs affiliated with Harvard Law School, the Ames Foundation and the Selden Society.
[edit] Publications
Students of the Juris Doctor (JD) program are involved in preparing and publishing the Harvard Law Review, one of the most renowned university law reviews, as well as a number of other law journals and an independent student newspaper. The Harvard Law Review was first published in 1887 and has been staffed and edited by some of the school's most notable alumni. The student newspaper, The Record, has been published continuously since the 1950s, making it one of the oldest law school newspapers in the country, and has included the exploits of fictional law student Fenno for decades.
The law journals are:
- Harvard Law Review
- Harvard International Law Journal
- Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review
- Harvard Law & Policy Review
- Black Letter Law Journal
- Environmental Law Review
- Human Rights Journal
- Journal of Law & Gender (formerly Women's Law Journal)
- Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy
- Journal of Law and Technology
- Journal on Legislation
- Latino Law Review
- Negotiation Law Review
- Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left
[edit] Notable professors
- Stephen Breyer
- Zechariah Chafee
- Archibald Cox
- Alan Dershowitz
- Martha Field
- Roger Fisher
- Felix Frankfurter
- Charles Fried
- Gerald Frug
- Mary Ann Glendon
- Erwin Griswold
- Lani Guinier
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
- Morton Horwitz
- Randall Kennedy
- Duncan Kennedy
- Christopher Columbus Langdell
- Daniel Meltzer
- Arthur R. Miller
- Martha Minow
- Robert Mnookin
- Charles Nesson
- Charles Ogletree
- John Palfrey
- Roscoe Pound
- Todd Rakoff
- Joseph Story
- Laurence Tribe
- Roberto Unger
- Alvin Warren
- Elizabeth Warren
- Jonathan Zittrain
[edit] Notable alumni
See List of Harvard Law School graduates.
See also: Harvard University people
[edit] In popular culture
Several movies and television shows take place at least in part at the school. Most of them have scenes filmed on location at or around Harvard University. They include:
- Legally Blonde (2001)
- The Firm (1993)
- Soul Man (1986)
- The Paper Chase (1973)
- Love Story (1970)
- Rubeusutori in Habeodeu (2004), or "Love Story in Harvard", a Korean TV series
Many popular movies and television shows also feature characters introduced as Harvard Law graduates. Some of these include:
- NCIS (2003-)
- Two Weeks Notice (2002)
- The People vs. Larry Flynt (2000)
- Sex and the City (1998)
- Ally McBeal (1997–2002)
- Quiz Show (1994)
- The Firm (1993)
- A Few Good Men (1992)
- Matlock (1986–95)
- The Practice (1997-2004)
Scott Turow, a novelist, has also written a book about his experience as a first-year law student in his memoir One L.
[edit] External links
- Official website
- HLS programs
- HLS publications
- Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center
- HLS blogs
- The Record - HLS's independent student newspaper
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- Satellite image from WikiMapia or Google Maps
- Street map from Multimap or GlobalGuide
- Aerial image from TerraServer
