CHRISTOPHER C. LANGDELL handicraft. Only as a science did it deserve a place in the curriculum of a university, as had always been recognized on the conti nent; and only as a science could it be prop erly taught. At least one of his listeners has told how, standing before the fireplace at dusk, young Langdell would expound the scientific basis of law, totally forgetting in his intellectual enthusiasm the frugal bowl of bread and milk he had prepared for his physical supper. His little clique of admirers told each other that here was a genius. And for once a little clique of admirers was right. He took his LL. B. in 1853, but continued another year at the School, a sort of graduate student and assistant to Parsons. Still he lived in the library by day, and still by night his lamp burned till near the dawning. He was indeed ' ' seeking the fountains " of the law . He browsed among the reports as a hungry colt browses among the clover. The year books in particular enthralled him. A fellowstudent in the library recalls his sudden fer vent ejaculation, smiting his knee, " If I had only lived in the days of the Plantagenets!" In 1854 he received the usual honorary A. M., and having saved enough for a start into practice, he determined to enter the field in New York City. But the sensitive, spectacled student found at the very outset of court work that the acutest legal mind, unsupported by practical legal experience, is no match for the tricks of the legal sharper. A quick succession of discomfitures from such gentry was too much for his pride. He flatly and finally withdrew from the court house and gave himself up to office work and research. Constantly in the law library he there made the acquaintance of members of the bar, who though acknowledged leaders, were not quite at home on various theoretic or historic points they happened to stand in need of. Quickly they recog nized his profound acquaintance with the reports, his unerring application of legal principles and his almost startling foresight. As quickly they began to employ him for the preparation of briefs, opinions and plead
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ings. He worked largely for the Hon. Charles O'Connor. He was unheard of by the rank and file of the bar, but when the triumphant advance of opposing counsel was turned to a rout by a sudden pitfall in the pleadings or an unexpected ambush in the argument, the well-informed would mutter, "D—n it, Langdell's at the bottom of this somewhere!" Later he formed a partnership, largely for commercial law, with William Stanley and Addison Brown, afterwards United States District Judge, with counsel of Hon. Edwards Pierrepont, afterward attorney-general of the United States and minister to England. Langdell was only the modest, quiet student, always in his office, always at work, living frugally, and outside his immediate profes sional circle unknown. But when the Dane professorship at Har vard became vacant the great head of the University, who had known and appreciated Langdell in undergraduate days, sought him out for the chair. Himself a scientific man, he was ready to subscribe to the proposition that the law is a science. He accepted, too, the corrollaries — that law must be studied from the original sources, namely, the re ports, and must be taught by men who have so studied it, irrespective of their practice of it — as geology is better studied on the hillside than in the parlor, and better taught by a geologist than by a stone-mason. So Langdell came to teach at the Law School as a king comes into his own. His first term, the spring term of 1870, was not memorable. He lectured on Partnership and on Negotiable Paper. But he was busily collecting his cases on contracts, and in the autumn had the first advance sheets ready for his course. Their publication, and an inkling of what they implied, fell on the legal community like a bolt from the blue. Teach law by cases? Preposterous; also unheard-of! Some folks might practice law that way; no one could teach it! Be sides, it would never do to bring the methods of the office into the lecture room. More
