University of Michigan Law School University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository Miscellaneous Law School Publications Law School History and Publications 1908 A Short History and Some of the Graduates of the Department of Law of the University of Michigan Burke A. Hinsdale Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.law.umich.edu/miscellaneous Part of the Legal Education Commons Citation Hinsdale, Burke A., "A Short History and Some of the Graduates of the Department of Law of the University of Michigan" (1908). Miscellaneous Law School Publications. http://repository.law.umich.edu/miscellaneous/11 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School History and Publications at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Miscellaneous Law School Publications by an authorized administrator of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HINSDALE,BURKE A A short history and some of the granuates of the Department of law of the University o! Michigan. LAW LIBRARY MC 805 H665s A SHORT HISTORY AND SOME OF THE GRADUATES OF THE DEPARTMENT OF LAW OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 'R.tprint from 'llit Jtficlritan Alumnus Jtfarch, 1908 .... .. ,. : .. .. .. ' . .. ... .. .. .. ..... TBB A!fN ARBOR P&BSS M4YMAJtD STllSBT A HISTORY OF THE LAW DEPARTMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY* Until recent years the great major­ by no means wholly passed away to ity of American lawyers received this day. The first American profes­ their professional training in lawyers' sorship of Law was founded in 'Wil­ offices. This system of legal educa­ liam and :Mary College, Virginia, in tion was introduced from England in 1782, and the first American Law colonial times, and took a firm hold School was established at Litchfield, both of the public and professional Connecticut, in 1783. The dates of mind. Carried on under favorable other early Law Schools, or Law Pro­ -circumstances, the system had much fessorships arc :-The University of to recommend it, particularly in Pennsylvania, 1790; the Harvard Law the days when the law was compara­ School, 1817; the Columbia Law tively undifferentiated, when the liter­ School. 1822. From these later dates ature of the profession was mainlv onward the number of similar schools found in the two great books, and in the country has steadily increased when there were able lawyers who had until, in 1897-1898, there reported to time and disposition to take students the Bureau of Education 82 Law into their offices and give them the Schools. with 845 instructors, TI,615 instruction that they needed. In fact, students, and 3,o65 graduates. These an excellent preliminary legal educa­ statistics betoken a great revolution tion could be obtained by "reading in in legal education, as well as a vast an office," a~ it was called. Not un­ increase in the legal business of the naturally many lawyers were drawn country. to the work both by interest in the Judge T. M. Cooley is authority subject and by interest in students, for the statement that the plan of and some of them, although engaged founding a Law School in Michigan in active practice. actually made of was discussed in Territorial days; but their law offices Law Schools, just there is no trace of the subject in leg­ as some ministers and physicians, islation until the Organic Act of 1837 from similar motives. made of their provided for a Law Department in the studies and offices Divinity Schools University, as well as Departments of and Medical Colleges. The peculiar Literature, Science, and the Arts, and excellences of this mode of instruc­ of Medicine and Surgery. In fact, tion were the close personal relations Law had precedence over Medicine in that it effected between the pupil and the Act; but for some reason, as per­ the teacher, and the direct practical haps the greater interest in the sub­ character of the instruction ; excel­ ject on the part of the medical pro­ lences that are not always reproduced fession of the state, the right of way with ease, to an equal degree, in law was given to Medicine in 1848-1849, schools. and Law was obliged to wait ten years But this system, good as it was in longer. The superior interest of the its time, could not endure under con­ medical men is something more than ditions to which it was not actapt~d , a ISypothesis. Many lawyers, probab­ and in process of time it :began• ta ~y •a large majority of those practic- break up and disappear. S dl~ 4t ha's•, trrg :in Michigan at the time, still ad­ .. .. .. henld tenaciously to the old office *Reprinted from Prof. Burke A. Hios­ 1noae of legal education, and were <lnle's "History of the University." stoutly opposed to Law Schools alto- ' -3- gether. T he Law Schools of the compilation of the state statutes and country have been obliged to live his practice at the Bar. It was thought down this opposition, which has bcca important that there should be a res­ a work of time. ident Professor, and Cooley, to whom However, the Medical School was all the circumstances seemed clearly hardly upon its feet before petitions to point as the proper man, at once re­ began to come in praying for the es­ moved to the seat of the University, tablishment of a Law School in con­ where he continued to reside until his nection with the University. Unfor­ death. He took his seat upon the tunately, the Board was not in a fi­ Supreme Bench in 1864, and left in nancial condition seriously to considu 1885. the subject until 1858, when it ap­ Professor Campbell was the first pointed three of its members, J. E. Dean of the Faculty, and on Octo­ Johnson, B. L. Baxter and Donald ber 8, 1859, he delivered an innaugu­ Mcintyre, all lawyers, a Committee to ral address in one of the churches on investigate the subject and submit its the Study of Law. The next morning findings. Already, it seems, one or more the school was regularly inaugurated, courses of lectures on Law had been President Tappan making a brief ad­ gntuitously given at the University dress and Professor Walker deliver­ by practitioners coming from different ing the first formal Law lecture. The parts of the state. In March follow­ three Professors appear to have been ing this Committee submitted its re­ elected without previous consultation port, embodying the results of visits of the Board with them. They were that it had made to existing Law left to divide the subjects of instruc­ Schools, together with its own ideas. tion among themselves, and they Hitherto the assumption had been that worked together effectively and har­ the school would require the appoint­ moniously until the old Faculty was ment of but one Law Professor, dis­ broken up by \.Valker's resignation in tinctly so-called, but the Committee 1876. Years afterwards President An­ recommended three Professorships­ gell bore this public testimony to this one of Common and Statute Law, one first Law Faculty: of P leading, Practice and Evidence, "Perhaps never was an American and one of Equity Jurisprudence, Law School so fortunate in its first Pleading and Practice. The Board Faculty, composed of those renowned adopted the report including the rec­ teachers, Charles I. \Valker, James V. ommendation that the school should Campbell and Thomas M. Cooley." at once be organized and go into \Vhen the new school was inaugu­ operation at the beginning of the next rated there were, as nearly as can be University year. At the same time ascertained, eighteen Law Schools in \ the Board elected James V. Campbell, the country that are still in existence. Charles I. Walker and Thomas M. Of these, four were west of the Alie- \ Cooley to the three chairs, which, a gheny mountans, one in Cincinnati, little later, were officially styled the one in Louisville, Kentucky, one at Marshall, Kent and Jay Professor­ Greencastle, Indiana, and the fourth ships of Law. Professor Campbell at Bloomington, in the same state, in was one of the Justices of the State connection with Indiana University. Supreme Court, residing in Detroit; The Law Department of Northwest­ Professor Walker was a lawyer in ac­ ern University opened its doors to tive practice, also residing in Detroit ; students the same year. Professor Cooley, the youngest of the The success of the new school was three, residing at Adrian, had already at once demonstrated. The enrol­ made a favorable reputation by his ment was 92 the first year and I 59 the -4- seconcl. 'l'he first class, 24 in num­ pancy in University Hall, and again ber, graduatecl in the spring of 186o. in 1882 when the ~eneral Library was In seven vears the school had shot removed to its present quarters in the ahead of ·the Literary Department, Library Building. The Law School ancl almost overtaken the Medical De­ enjoyed the undisturbed use of the partment, a lead, howeyer, which it building for the next ten years. Then maintained for only two or three the growth of the school in 1893 com­ years. At periods of five years the en­ pelled its enlargement and partial re­ rolment of students has been from the construction, and again its practical hcginning- as follows: demolition and the construction of a 1860. C).:?: 1865. 26o; 1870, 308; tnuch more commodious and conven­ 1875. 345; 1880, 395; 1885, 262; 1890, ient building in 1898. The school took 533; 1895, 670; 1900, 837. possession of its new home, which is The first woman student was acl­ in some respects, the finest building mittecl to the school in 1870, and the on the Campus, and the one best first one graduated in i87 I.