Case Method

• Author: Jeffrey Lehman, Shirelle Phelps

Page 267

A system of instruction or study of law focused upon the analysis of court opinions rather than lectures and textbooks; the predominant method of teaching in U.S. law schools today.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS LANGDELL, a law professor, often receives credit for inventing the case method although historians have found evidence that others were teaching by this method before him. Regardless, Langdell by all accounts popularized the case method.

Langdell viewed the law as a science and believed that it should be studied as a science. Law, he said,

consists of certain principles or doctrines. To have such a mastery of these as to be able to apply them with constant facility and certainty to the ever-tangled skein of human affairs, is what constitutes a true lawyer; and hence to acquire that mastery should be the business of every earnest student of law.

Each doctrine, Langdell said, arrived at its present state by slow degrees, growing and extending through centuries. Langdell's beliefs differed from those of his law professor colleagues. Throughout the 1800s, the prevalent approach for teaching law school classes was the lecture method. Although professors and textbooks interpreted the meaning of various court decisions, they did not offer a significant opportunity for students to do so on their own. The case method, on the other hand, forced students to read, analyze, and interpret cases themselves. It was Langdell's opinion that law students would be better educated if they were asked to reach their own conclusions about the meaning of judicial decisions.

Langdell's ideas were, at first, overwhelmingly rejected by students, other law professors, and attorneys alike. These critics viewed the case method as chaotic compared with organized lectures. They believed that instead of soliciting law students' opinions regarding cases, professors should simply state their own interpretations. Law students, afraid that they were not learning from Langdell's method, dropped out of his class, leaving him with only a few pupils. Enrollment in the Harvard Law School decreased dramatically because of concern over Langdell's case method and alumni called for his dismissal.

But the president of Harvard University, Charles W. Eliot, supported Langdell and his case method. This backing allowed Langdell to withstand the criticism long enough to prove the case method's success: Langdell's students were becoming...