Harvard Law School

===Growth and the Langdell curriculum===
By 1827, the school, with one faculty member, was struggling. [[Nathan Dane]], a prominent alumnus of the college, then endowed the Dane Professorship of Law, insisting that it be given to then Supreme Court Justice [[Joseph Story]]. For a while, the school was called "Dane Law School."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1930/1/23/law-school-has-fine-portrait-collection/ |title=LAW SCHOOL HAS FINE PORTRAIT COLLECTION &#124; News &#124; The Harvard Crimson |publisher=Thecrimson.com |date=January 23, 1930 |access-date=March 10, 2015 |archive-date=March 3, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303182518/http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1930/1/23/law-school-has-fine-portrait-collection/ |url-status=live }}.  The school is called ''Dane Law School'' in an 1854 letter written by Rev. C.C. Jones to his son, Robert Manson Myers, ed., ''The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War'' (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1972), p. 42.</ref>  In 1829, John H. Ashmun, son of [[Eli Porter Ashmun]] and brother of [[George Ashmun]], accepted a professorship and closed his [[Northampton Law School]], with many of his students following him to Harvard.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/antiquitieshist00clargoog |page=[https://archive.org/details/antiquitieshist00clargoog/page/n285 277] |quote=john ashmun northampton harvard law school. |title=Antiquities, Historicals and Graduates of Northampton – Solomon Clark – Internet Archive |publisher=Steam Press of Gazette Print. Company |access-date=March 10, 2015|last1=Clark |first1=Solomon |year=1882 }}</ref> Story's belief in the need for an elite law school based on merit and dedicated to public service helped build the school's reputation at the time, although the contours of these beliefs have not been consistent throughout its history. Enrollment remained low through the 19th century as university legal education was considered to be of little added benefit to apprenticeships in legal practice.  After first trying lowered admissions standards, in 1848 HLS eliminated admissions requirements entirely.<ref name=120HarvLR1089>{{cite journal|title=Book Note: Exploring the Organization and Actions of Legal Professions: Honor Seeking and Echoes of Political Revolution|journal=[[Harvard Law Review]]|date=2007|volume=120|page=1089|url=https://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/booknote.pdf|access-date=October 25, 2017|archive-date=October 25, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171025185857/https://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/booknote.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>  In 1869, HLS also eliminated examination requirements.<ref name=120HarvLR1089/>

In the 1870s, under [[Law school dean|Dean]] [[Christopher Columbus Langdell]], HLS introduced what has become the standard first-year [[curriculum]] for American law schools – including classes in [[contracts]], [[property]], [[torts]], [[criminal law]], and [[civil procedure]]. At Harvard, Langdell also developed the [[casebook method|case method]] of teaching law, now the dominant [[pedagogy|pedagogical]] model at U.S. law schools.  Langdell's notion that law could be studied as a "science" gave university legal education a reason for being distinct from vocational preparation. Critics at first defended the old lecture method because it was faster and cheaper and made fewer demands on faculty and students. Advocates said the case method had a sounder theoretical basis in scientific research and the inductive method. Langdell's graduates became leading professors at other law schools where they introduced the case method. The method was facilitated by casebooks. From its founding in 1900, the [[Association of American Law Schools]] promoted the case method in law schools that sought [[accreditation]].<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 20462057|title = The Proliferation of Case Method Teaching in American Law Schools: Mr. Langdell's Emblematic "Abomination," 1890-1915|journal = History of Education Quarterly|volume = 46|issue = 2|pages = 192–247|last1 = Kimball|first1 = Bruce A.|year = 2006|doi = 10.1111/j.1748-5959.2006.tb00066.x|s2cid = 143692702}}</ref><ref>Bruce A. Kimball, '"Warn Students That I Entertain Heretical Opinions, Which They Are Not To Take as Law': The Inception of Case Method Teaching in the Classrooms of the Early C.C. Langdell, 1870–1883," ''Law and History Review'' 17 (Spring 1999): 57–140.</ref>