Studies in Legal History

C. C. Langdell, 1826-1906

Bruce A. Kimball

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780807889961
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Biographies

Christopher C. Langdell (1826-1906) is one of the most influential figures in the history of American professional education. As dean of Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1895, he conceived, designed, and built the educational model that leading professional schools in virtually all fields subsequently emulated. In this first full-length biography of the educator and jurist, Bruce Kimball explores Langdell's controversial role in modern professional education and in jurisprudence. Langdell founded his model on the idea of academic meritocracy. According to this principle, scholastic achievement should determine one's merit in professional life. Despite fierce opposition from students, faculty, alumni, and legal professionals, he designed and instituted a formal system of innovative policies based on meritocracy. This system's components included the admission requirement of a bachelor's degree, the sequenced curriculum and its extension to three years, the hurdle of annual examinations for continuation and graduation, the independent career track for professional faculty, the transformation of the professional library into a scholarly resource, the inductive pedagogy of teaching from cases, the organization of alumni to support the school, and a new, highly successful financial strategy. Langdell's model was subsequently adopted by leading law schools, medical schools, business schools, and the schools of other professions. By the time of his retirement as dean at Harvard, Langdell's reforms had shaped the future model for professional education throughout the United States.

Chapter 1
Boyhood and Youth, 1826–1854

In Langdell’s youth lie the origins of his interest in education and the specific reforms in professional education that he advanced as dean of HLS. His encounters with John Locke’s Education at Phillips Exeter Academy, with taxonomy and specimens in the natural history classes of Asa Gray and Louis Agassiz, with “office” education in a law firm, with the degree requirements at Harvard Divinity School, with other law students in table talk, and with eleemosynary aid for needy students contributed to principles and policies that he later instituted in professional education. Above all, his firm commitment to a formal system of academic merit originated in the experience of practicing self-discipline, following the established rules, and achieving academically. By this route, he gradually elevated himself from an impoverished and traumatic childhood to the threshold of the elite in the legal profession.

Boyhood, 1826–45

In the two decades after arriving in New Boston in 1792, John Langdell grew into a thrifty, industrious young man, and by 1814 had built a farm comprising three acres in pasture and tillage, two oxen, and twenty acres of unimproved land. Valued at $140 amid estates ranging in value from $25 to $975, the farm was modest, but certainly respectable for a twenty-three-year-old man without a father or an inheritance.¹ Meanwhile, he met Lydia Beard, whose “Scots-Irish” forebears had emigrated from northern Ireland in the 1760s and found their way to New Boston, where she was born in 1793. In 1820 Lydia and John were married and had their first child, a son. The valuation of the farm had increased to $904, including three acres of tillage and pasture, six large livestock, and thirty-four acres of unimproved land.² Over the next fifteen years, the family’s labors steadily improved the farm. In 1824 a daughter, Hannah, was born, and the farm was taxed at a value of $1,088. In 1826 the oldest boy was doubtlessly helping with chores, while the farm had grown to $1,298 in valuation. On 22 May 1826, a second son was born and named Christopher Columbus Langdell.

Why Lydia and John selected this name is a mystery. It did not fit the four naming traditions of New England families up to 1850: the English tradition yielding such names as John, Robert, Richard, or Henry; the Puritan-biblical practice of drawing names from the Old Testament; the kinship pattern of naming after parents or grandparents; or the minor tradition of choosing classical names from antiquity. In fact, due to their “papist” associations, neither “Christopher” nor “Christopher Columbus” appear in any tabulations of New England naming patterns prior to 1850. Nor do the names appear elsewhere in the Langdell family tree. Given the strength of Yankee tradition in New Hampshire towns and the seriousness devoted to naming children, especially older boys, the name of “Christopher Columbus Langdell” was remarkably unorthodox.³ His parents’ nonconformity and the example of his namesake set Chris, as the boy was known to townspeople, on a course to challenge convention.

In breaking with tradition, John and Lydia were perhaps emboldened by the auspicious increase in their family, their estate, and their social status. In 1828 John assumed his first role in town government by serving on the committee that assigned families to school districts. His property value rose to $1,480, near the median valuation in the town. Also in that year Lydia gave birth to a third son. Then, in 1829 misfortune began to envelop the Langdells. The third son died due to “cancer of the eye,” perhaps foreshadowing the severe problem that Chris would have with his own vision. The value of John’s property plummeted to $440, one-quarter of its previous value, and included no land and only one horse and one cow. The precipitous decline cannot be explained by a personal tragedy or a natural disaster, because John did not petition the town meetings for an abatement from taxes or for compensation—as did other residents, who cited fire, sickness, or support of an indigent neighbor.⁴ He may have defaulted on a debt or mortgage, since tax records show that he had no cash savings to cover a bad agricultural year.

In 1830 the last child—a daughter named Mary Ann—was born, and the financial situation on the farm did not improve. In the following year, likely with the help of the oldest son and seven-year-old Hannah, the family tilled half an acre and added a few sheep. In 1832 and 1833 their small estate continued to grow, and the valuation climbed to $980. But this financial recovery was no less precarious than the original prosperity had been, and the sudden death of Lydia in 1833 brought the recovery to a halt. John managed to work the farm for a few more years as the valuation declined to about $600.⁵

Then, the oldest son, who was perhaps thirteen years old and likely felt the brunt of his mother’s absence as his father became embittered, fled from home and drowned soon after. Unable to cope with the farm and three young children, John broke up the home in 1836 and sent nine-year-old Hannah to live with relatives in Massachusetts, and seven-year-old Chris and three-year-old Mary Ann to different families in New Hampshire. By 1839 John had lost all his property, livestock, and taxable possessions and became “more and more a recluse.”⁶ No records remain for assessing the effect of these events on the two sisters, but there are indications of the harmful impact on the seven-year-old boy.

Throughout the remainder of his life, Chris avoided addressing the death of any longtime friend or colleague—even if the deceased had been one of his closest friends (William Gibbons in 1855 or Theodore Tebbets in 1863), or when he was invited to provide a memorial statement for his college roommate and a published excuse had to be conjured in order to explain his refusal (Chauncey Wright in 1875),⁷ or when it seemed incumbent on his position as dean of HLS to eulogize a colleague (Charles F. Dunbar in 1900 or James B. Thayer in 1902). Langdell apparently wrote only one such eulogy,⁸ and his reluctance to memorialize friends or colleagues whom he had known for years suggests that the deaths of his mother and brothers had severely wounded him.

In addition, several observers describe his mature relations with his wife and closest adult friends as of a “tender, almost feminine nature.”⁹ Such terms were highly unusual to apply publicly to a distinguished man in the Victorian era, particularly a law professor from Harvard University, which cultivated an ethic of manhood.¹⁰ Hence, Langdell may still have been searching for the intimacy lost through the death of his mother and the disintegration of his family.

Finally, these losses may have contributed to his lifelong reclusiveness, for he rarely entertained guests or visited others. Friendships brought the prospect of separation and of reliving the searing 1830s. His relationship to his hometown demonstrates the tension between insularity and loneliness in his life. Beginning in 1895, the townspeople of New Boston published a pamphlet describing their annual reunion, an event when former residents returned each summer to renew acquaintances. Both his sister, Hannah, and his wife, Margaret, observed that, to the end of his life, Langdell eagerly requested that each pamphlet be read to him “from the first to the last page.” But he never agreed to attend the reunion, sending his regrets each year, even when the townspeople asked him to come and address them.¹¹ He enjoyed the reunion vicariously in print, but would not witness the reuniting and the separating in the place where he had lost his family.

Though wounded by the loss of his mother and siblings, Chris received little comfort from his father, who “gave his boys nothing but took all he could from them.” Chris nevertheless exhibited an extraordinary sense of filial obligation and personal generosity, supporting his father throughout his life and loaning and giving money to friends, relatives, and acquaintances in need.¹² In 1840 fourteen-year-old Chris returned home to help his father, and over the next four years the farm expanded to twenty acres plus livestock, while the valuation rose to $450.¹³ Meanwhile, Chris nurtured the ambition to continue his education.

Both he and Hannah displayed the interest in education that characterized his mother’s family. His uncle, Jesse Beard, was a prominent educator who had taught school and served on the school committee for over twenty years.¹⁴ During the 1830s Chris and Hannah attended the district schools in New Boston and, perhaps, an academy in Hancock, New Hampshire. According to Hannah, her brother “was not precocious, but studious and ambitious”; and in about 1842 sixteen-year-old Chris “opened his heart to me for the first time, and it was also the first time he had made known his aspirations to any human being. He told me that he had a very strong desire for a college education, but he did not see how it could be accomplished.” Hannah resolved to help and left Massachusetts to join Chris in teaching school in New Boston and neighboring towns.¹⁵

As in most district schools, Chris and Hannah were plagued by uncooperative students and parents, unsuitable textbooks, and dilapidated facilities.¹⁶ But an unexpected benefit came when the teachers in New Boston were joined by David Cross, who had graduated from Dartmouth College in 1841 and from HLS in 1843. To support himself while establishing his law practice, Cross began teaching school in New Boston in 1843 and imparted to Chris the ideas to enter law and to approach it as a “learned profession,” that is, by e...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The Inception of Modern Professional Education
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations, Tables, and Figure
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on Style and Monetary Values
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Boyhood and Youth, 1826–1854
• Chapter 2 Lawyer on Wall Street, 1855–1870
• Chapter 3 Scholar, 1870–1881
• Chapter 4 Teacher, 1870–1881
• Chapter 5 Faculty, 1870–1900
• Chapter 6 The First Dean, 1870–1886
• Chapter 7 Students, 1876–1882
• Chapter 8 Triumph and Betrayal, 1886–1890s
• Chapter 9 Poor Old White-Whiskers, 1895–1906
• Bibliography
• Cases Cited
• Index