Columbia Law School

Columbia Law School

Established	1858
President	{{{President}}}
Dean	David Schizer
Degrees	JD, LLM, JSD
Enrollment	1,300
Website	www.law.columbia.edu

See also Wikipedia's article about "Columbia Law School".

Columbia Law School, the most successful of elite U.S. law schools in placing its graduates with top law firms, occupies Jerome Greene Hall, one of the most recently renovaated buildings on Columbia's campus.

History

The teaching of law at Columbia began with the hiring of jurist James Kent as Columbia College's first law professor in 1793. Kent left in 1798 to pursue other projects. A law department was established in 1858 (the formal date given for the establishment of the law school) under the leadership of Theodore Dwight, who remained the sole law professor until 1873, when the department was expanded into an independent school.

It occupied a soaring gothic structure on Columbia's Midtown campus. In 1891, Columbia's trustees adopted the case method of law teaching, first developed at Harvard. Dwight, who had developed his own, independent method, was furious. In protest, he and many of the other faculty left to found New York Law School, which remains a forgotten, third tier wreck.

With the move to Morningside Heights in the late 19th century, the law school moved into Kent Hall and, subsequently, to Jerome Greene Hall across Amsterdam Avenue. Kent Hall still bears the markings of a law school, particularly on its library's stained glass windows.

Both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt were students there. Prominent scholars of the legal realist movement, including Karl Llewellyn and Felix Cohen, were also associated with the school.

In recent years, under the deanship of David Schizer the school has greatly increased the size of it faculty relative to the student body. Schizer's goal is to increase the the size of the faculty by 50% from the time he became dean just a few years ago.

Historical photos

A lounge in Kent Hall for law students in the 1950's
The law library ca. 1900, when the collection was housed in Low Library
The law school library on Columbia's Midtown campus
The law school building on the Midtown campus ca. 1860
An 1891 montage of the Midtown campus law school, prepared for a celebration of the career of Theodore Dwight