CHISELING LEGAL TRADITION

By Sarah Baringer Gordon, Professor of Law and History

This emphasis on the importance of context, the role of society in the formation of law and lawyers, does not conform to our traditional understanding of legal education at the turn of the twentieth century. The "case method," after all, hardly allows a student time to consider who wrote an opinion, and what the social circumstances were behind the promulgation of a given doctrine.(32) Indeed, Lewis's belief in social fact as determinative at some level of legal rules and legal thought, was part of a growing sense of the value of interdisciplinary work in law.(33) Legal history played a vital role in the articulation of the benefits of looking beyond doctrine in the search for meaning.

The address delivered by Dean Lewis at the opening of the building provides interesting clues to interpreting this expansive vision of the role of legal history in legal education. In his talk, Lewis discussed the importance of "efficient" training for lawyers, and the role of what he called "character." (34) A person of character, Lewis believed, was also committed to a political vision. This was no dessicated theory of the lawyer as technocrat,(35) but a full-blooded moral theory, one in which lawyers are moral actors in a world in need of change.

The keys to working change, Lewis maintained, were interdisciplinary research, and active involvement in the world. In addition to being Penn Law's first legal historian, Lewis was also its first economist.(36) His training in economics and his commitment to history explain his desire to train "efficient" lawyers, and his belief that emulation of great legal thinkers of the past was the key to such training. As Lewis put it, he and every legal academic worth his salt knew that law was a "living science," one that is applied every day "to decide real controversies." Law, Lewis maintained, was the "result of the facts which make-up our history."(37) Practice and theory, he claimed, were thus united in legal training.

Technical and theoretical expertise were not enough. Lewis believed deeply in a moral component of efficiency. Included in moral efficiency were independence of thought, perseverance, respect for law, honesty, moderacy, and kindness. These qualities were as important sharp wits or oratorical skill. These were the qualities that Lewis sought in faculty, and sought to instill in students.(38) The medallions that ring Lewis Hall are a constellation of such independent and moral legal minds of the past. The outer shell of greatness was designed to inspire students to action themselves.