Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States.
The Law School traces its origins to Isaac Royall, who in 1781 left land from his estate in nearby Medford to Harvard University, with the proceeds intended to “endow of a Professor of Laws at said college, or a Professor of Physics and Anatomy.” Harvard took the opportunity to fund its first chair in law, and the Royall chair continues to support an HLS professor today, more than 200 years later.
In 1806, Royall’s heirs sold the rest of his estate and used the funds to establish a school of law at Harvard University. The Royall family coat-of-arms — three stacked wheat sheaves beneath the university motto, Veritas — was adopted as the school’s shield.
In 1827, the struggling young law school was down to only one faculty member and one student. In this year, an enterprising alumnus stepped in to save the school by establishing the Dane Professorship of Law, and insisting that the chair be given to Joseph Story, the nation’s youngest Supreme Court justice. Story believed in the concept of an elite American law school, based on merit and dedicated to public service: a tradition that continues today. A second critical figure in the development of the Law School arrived on the campus in the 1870s. Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell believed that the study of law should be an interactive and disciplined form of education, in which students were challenged directly by teachers, and through which they learned to analyze cases for themselves. This Socratic method of instruction demanded new teaching spaces, and Austin Hall was built on the north side of Harvard Yard to accommodate the School’s new vision.
The Law School traces its origins to Isaac Royall, who in 1781 left land from his estate in nearby Medford to Harvard University, with the proceeds intended to “endow of a Professor of Laws at said college, or a Professor of Physics and Anatomy.” Harvard took the opportunity to fund its first chair in law, and the Royall chair continues to support an HLS professor today, more than 200 years later.
In 1806, Royall’s heirs sold the rest of his estate and used the funds to establish a school of law at Harvard University. The Royall family coat-of-arms — three stacked wheat sheaves beneath the university motto, Veritas — was adopted as the school’s shield.
In 1827, the struggling young law school was down to only one faculty member and one student. In this year, an enterprising alumnus stepped in to save the school by establishing the Dane Professorship of Law, and insisting that the chair be given to Joseph Story, the nation’s youngest Supreme Court justice. Story believed in the concept of an elite American law school, based on merit and dedicated to public service: a tradition that continues today. A second critical figure in the development of the Law School arrived on the campus in the 1870s. Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell believed that the study of law should be an interactive and disciplined form of education, in which students were challenged directly by teachers, and through which they learned to analyze cases for themselves. This Socratic method of instruction demanded new teaching spaces, and Austin Hall was built on the north side of Harvard Yard to accommodate the School’s new vision.
