CHISELING LEGAL TRADITION

By Sarah Baringer Gordon, Professor of Law and History

On the Chestnut Street front, non-American jurists and scholars again imply progress from Europe westward to England, and ultimate fulfillment in the trip across the Atlantic to America. Grotius is perhaps the most remarkable and colorful figure; in 1613, he was imprisoned for his support of a controversial religious sect. He eventually escaped (fittingly enough) in a box of books. In 1625, he published his greatest legal work, De Jura Belli et Pacis (On the Law of War and Peace), which appealed to natural law and social contract as a basis for rational principles on which a system of public, international law could be founded.(25) Grotius was a favorite of Thomas Jefferson and other elite lawyers of the early republic, all men of letters who could read him in the original Latin. (26)

Together, these medallions from early Roman code law through European public law and finally to the English common law tradition present a narrative of legal progress. This celebration of England was typical not only in literature and architecture in the late nineteenth century, it was also an essential component of American legal theory, and law school pedagogy, when Lewis Hall was built. Blackstone's Commentaries, of course, remained a staple of American legal education through the nineteenth century. (27)

The pinacle of legal thought, according to the architectural scheme of the medallions, was in America, where English tradition blended with the American landscape to reach its highest and best form. The 34th Street side, the front entrance of the Law School, is studded with American lawyers and judges. John Marshall, Joseph Story, Daniel Webster -- judicial and political giants of the Revolution and early Republic, combine with more local heroes -- Horace Binney, John Bannister Gibson, William Tilghman; guiding the visitor through massive oak doors to the choreographed bustle and debate of life inside. All were given extensive biographies in Lewis's Great American Lawyers series. (28) The first major history of the American legal profession, the eight-volumes were driven, as were the medallions, by the notion that biography of past lawyers is the single best and most efficacious means to capture the spirit of greatness.(29) The treatment of Chief Justice Marshall, written by Lewis himself, is the longest and most detailed of the essays.(30) The biography includes significant amounts of detail about Marshall's upbringing, marriage, and gentle character, as well as his experiences in the Revolutionary War and his reading habits.(31) Lawyers and law students, Lewis believed, should learn as much about the social context of legal actors as about the substantive content of legal doctrine.