Biddleblog

I was excited to finish processing recently a small but very interesting collection: 12 notebooks filled with the research and lectures of former Penn Law Professor John Dickinson.

Born in Maryland in 1894, Dickinson was born into a legal history pedigree: he was a direct descendant of another John Dickinson, a Founding Father and lawyer who had authored the first draft of the Articles of Confederation. 

The younger Dickinson excelled in Greek and Latin from an early age, graduating from Princeton at the age of 19.  From there, Dickinson taught American and Medieval history before returning to Princeton to earn his Ph.D.  In 1919, the newly minted Professor Dickinson immediately enrolled in law school at Harvard, where he received his LL.B. in 1921.  While practicing law in New York and Los Angeles, Dickinson explored his lifelong passion of writing.  His efforts culminated in the 1927 publication of Administrative Justice and the Supremacy of Law in the United States, widely considered a legal classic.  After turning down offers from Harvard and Yale, Dickinson arrived at Penn Law School in 1929.  He would remain here until his retirement in 1948.

For nearly 20 years, Dickinson embodied the spirit of interdisciplinary study promoted by the Law School, teaching on a range of topics, including constitutional law, legal theory, and Greco-Roman law.  It was this last interest that inspired Dickinson to return to his roots in the classics to write a sprawling study of Western thought from the Ancient era to the present.  The centerpiece of the work was to be an in-depth study of Roman law and institutions.  Sadly, the manuscript was never completed, as Dickinson died suddenly in 1952 from an embolism.

The notebooks that the Law School Archives just accessioned include Dickinson's handwritten notes in drafting the book.  One volume is particularly interesting: it's a series of lectures that Dickinson might have given in one of his classes on the laws of Ancient Greece and Rome.  Below is a picture I captured of one of these lectures:



At the time of the scholar's passing, Dickinson's colleague, fellow Penn Law Professor George Haskins, wrote of Dickinson in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, "Seldom has anyone combined such a unique versatility and competence in so many fields of learning and endeavor.  A scholar of of world repute and a leader among men and in affairs, he died in the prime of life, his course not run."  Dickinson's final manuscript may have never been published, but the Archives is honored to have records of his preliminarly work. 

If you're interested in taking a look at Professor Dickinson's notes, contact me or drop by the Archives.

 

Philadelphia scion George Wharton Pepper was an accomplished figure in American legal history.  As a student at Penn, he helped found the Daily Pennsylvanian in 1888, the university's student-run newspaper.  After studying the law under prominent Philadelphia attorney George Biddle, Pepper ran his own successful law practice in Old City.  A first-rate legal mind, Pepper was a founding member of the American Law Institute (whose archives, coincidentally, are located at the Law School).  Later, he also entered politics, and served as our United States Senator from 1922 to 1927.  And, amidst all his professional achievements, he found time to teach at the Law School from 1893 to 1910.

I processed a small collection of papers from Insurance Law courses Pepper taught in the late 1890s.  The collection includes Pepper's lecture notes, class hypotheticals, and a syllabus - referred to as a "synopsis" - from the 1897 term. 

There are some other Pepper papers located in the American Law Institute Archives.  While they are currently unprocessed, I hope to make them available to researchers soon.  But for now you can see some images from this collection.


 

 

 

In preparation for a researcher who was visiting the American Law Institute Archives, I was reviewing some Executive Director files when I came across the following letter, excerpted here:

Who's it from?

 

Many of you in the Penn Law community might have taken a class from Professor Geoffrey C. Hazard on civil procedure.  Still others might know Professor Hazard as one of the foremost experts on legal ethics in the United States. 

 

However, Professor Hazard was also Director of the American Law Institute from the mid-1980s through the 1990s.  During his tenure, the Institute participated in a number of notable projects, including restatements of the law of property, foreign relations law, and the law governing lawyers; revisions and enhancements to the Uniform Commercial Code; and the Transnational Civil Procedure project, a joint initative with UNIDROIT.

I have spent the better part of this year organizing Professor Hazard's files in the American Law Institute Archives and am now opening them to the wider research community.  Professor Hazard's papers constitute one of the largest collections in the Archives.  He created and collected prodigiously: the collection comprises 47 linear feet of correspondence, drafts, reports, and other papers on a variety of projects.  Notably, the Geoffrey C. Hazard Director's Files include Professor Hazard's work on behalf of the American Law Institute to write rules and procedures which governed lawyers in the ethical practice of the law. 

If you are interested in learning more about Geoffrey Hazard's ALI-related work, I encourage you to browse our online finding aid or contact the Archives.  You can also learn more about the American Law Institute Archives by visiting the department's home page.

 

While playing housekeeper in the archives vault recently, I came across an unprocessed collection of essays written by former Penn Law students.  What I found particularly interesting about this collection is that most of the essays date back to the late 1800s, in the time before typewriters -- let alone spell check, computers, and EndNote -- were widely used.  Word processors were human.

Browsing through these essays, which number about 125, I was struck by the manner in which they were forged.  I can't remember the last time I drafted an essay in longhand, can you?  And the penmanship would make this chicken-scratch expert blush.  If I can barely draft a shopping list that doesn't resemble a tablet of mystical runes, will the next generation even know how to put pen to paper?

At times students really went all out on the design of the title pages, often using calligraphy, colored inks, and ribbon.  Here's a representative example:

 

 

And you think plugging in Bluebook citations is a struggle?  Try writing out footnotes by hand.

 

 

The handwriting looks the same, only smaller!  Cute.

Truth be told, processing this collection was pretty complicated.  These essays were kept together by a range of fasteners: staples, paperclips, string, and scotch tape.  Most of these had to be removed because, over time, these fasteners can get rusty or toxic and damage what's really important, the essays.  Archivists of the future, I apologize for ever using brads.

 

 

Beyond the anachronistic nature of the technology, I was also intrigued by the variety of topics covered in these essays.  As far as I can tell, none of the authors went on to fame and fortune.  (Although, there does appear to be material from locally famous attorneys, such as George Biddle, namesake of the Biddle Law Library.)  This collection provides a fascinating window into what Penn Law students were thinking and writing about long ago.

If you're interested in taking a look at these essays, a sampling of them is currently on display in the Biddle Law Library's reference area.  For additional information about the collection, check out the finding aid, e-mail me or stop by the Archives.

The Archives recently received a series of photographs of Penn Law School and related activities in the 1960s.  One particular photograph that caught my eye shows the Law School as it looked from Chestnut Street over 40 years ago.

 

What you're looking at is Silverman (then Lewis) Hall, the oldest building in the Penn Law complex.  You can click on the image for more detail.

What first struck me about the image was the lack of any structures opposite the Law School on the Chestnut Street side.  The convergence of Starbuck's, abstract Liberty Bell forms, and sophisticated apartments that we now take for granted was nowhere to be found.  In its place was a parking lot and a Texaco station.  I also love the old cars, many of which were driven by faculty and staff of the Law School, no doubt.  I think we're overdue for renaissance in wood paneled station wagons and two-tone convertibles, don't you?

If you look to the right of Silverman, in the space that is now occupied by Tanenbaum lies a set of tennis courts.  On the other side of the courts is a row of dormitories that Ron Day, Head of Reference here at Biddle and our de facto historian, told me were modest, "YMCA-style" rooms that One-Ls lived in.

As any member of the Penn Law community can attest, the Law School is no stranger to capital projects.  It seems like every summer we're here, the school undergoes some kind of transformative capital project.  Change is good.

However, as anyone familiar with the Law School can tell from this image, Silverman Hall has remained relatively unaltered on the outside since the 1960s.  And upon the dedication of this building in way back in 1900, the Law School's Record (yearbook) called the structure “the most completely beautiful and beautifully complete building ever designed for the sole purpose of housing a school of law.”  Hey, we're admittedly biased, but that sounds about right. 

(Lewis Hall, c. 1901. Click for more detail. I think those are trolley tracks!)

 

Hope you've enjoyed this Kodachrome trip down memory lane.

  

Written by Megan Good, Archives Intern

John Honnold was an expert in international commercial sales law and known as the Father of the Vienna Convention. After working in private practice for a few years after Harvard Law School, Honnold became Chief of the Court Review Branch, in the Office of Price Administration, during World War II. An authority on commercial sales law, Honnold helped prepare Article 6 of the Uniform Commercial Code, which concerns bulk sales. Honnold also represented the United States delegation at the International Conference on the Unification of Commercial Law at The Hague, and served as Chief of Legal Staff to the Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). He also co-wrote The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG), which went into effect in 1988. Among these distinctions, Honnold also taught at Penn Law from 1946 until his retirement in 1984.

The Archives recently processed the Honnold Papers. This small but significant collection is comprised mainly of letters Honnold sent and received in the 1980s, while serving as co-chairman of the U.S. Delegation to the Vienna Conference and Chief of Staff of UNCITRAL. The papers also include Honnold’s personal copy of the Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce. 

Collections often enter the Archives through circuitous routes, and the Honnold Papers are no exception. They were given to the Archives by Maria Smolka-Day, former Biddle Foreign and International Law Librarian. She in turn received the collection from Marta Tarnawsky, her predecessor, who worked closely with Honnold on various Penn Law research projects. 

 

If you are interested in learning more about this collection, contact Jordon Steele or stop by the Archives. 

April 11-17 is National Library Week, which recognizes and celebrates the contribution of libraries to society.  In an age when search engines and electronic databases are just a few keystrokes away, the library has evolved to become a service as much as it is a space.  National Library Week invites us all to reflect on libraries, and so I would like to take this opportunity to explore the history of the Biddle Law Library in words and images.

 

Written by Megan Good, Archives Intern.

Bernard Segal was an accomplished Philadelphia lawyer devoted to civil rights advocacy. After graduating from Penn with both his undergraduate degree from Wharton in 1928 and his law degree in 1931, he became the youngest Deputy Attorney General in Pennsylvania history under William A. Schnader. When Schnader left office in 1935, he formed a law firm with Francis A. Lewis, with Segal as their first associate. Segal quickly became partner in the firm which employs over 150 lawyers today.

 

ALI Reporters with William Draper Lewis (standing) in Northeast Harbor, Maine, undated.

 

Last spring, the American Law Institute ("ALI") created an internship designed for second-year students at Penn Law School to gain familiarity with the mission of the organization.  The initiative represents the most recent example of a long-standing partnership between the Institute and Penn Law School.

The American Law Institute was founded in 1923 in response to a perceived uncertainty and complexity in American law. An association of practitioners and scholars known as the “Committee on the Establishment of a Permanent Organization for Improvement of Law” published a study that recommended an organization be formed to improve the law and its administration.  William Draper Lewis was a member of this committee and was elected the Institute's first Director.  A longtime professor at Penn Law School and, at the time of his appointment, the institution's Dean, Lewis described the lofty aim of the American Law Institute in a 1923 report to the membership as follows:

We speak of the work which the organization should undertake as a restatement; its object should not only be to help make certain much that is now uncertain and to simplify unnecessary complexities, but also to promote those changes which will tend better to adapt the laws to the needs of life.

Although he had plenty of help, Lewis is generally credited as being the main driver behind the Institute’s mission and philosophy.  The Institute's headquarters were originally operated out of Lewis' office at the Law School.

In his book, The Voice of the Past, the sociologist Paul Thompson comments on the cultural importance of oral histories, saying:

[oral history] can break down barriers between teachers and students, between generations, between educational institutions and the world outside ... it can give back to the people who made and experienc[ed] history, through their own words, a central place.

 

As part of an ongoing project to identify events and people depicted in the Archives’ photograph collection, I was recently reviewing back issues of the Law Alumni Journal when I came across an article written in 1973 entitled, “In Defense of Graffiti.” The article is available in its entirety below.

Indira Gandhi.  Sandra Day O'Connor. Leslie Nielsen.

While one of these things is not like the other, over the years Penn Law School has hosted its fair share of luminaries that have a wide range of cultural associations.  In October 1999, the actor Leslie Nielsen (who passed away last month) paid a visit to campus, stopping by the Law School to participate in a panel discussion coordinated by former Penn Law Assistant Professor Peter Huang as part of a course he was teaching at the time called "Law and Popular Culture."  Nielsen was invited to discuss his preparation and research for "Leslie Nielsen as Clarence Darrow," a one-man performance held in Penn's Irvine Auditorium the same week. 

The Penn Law Journal covered the event, even capturing a photograph of the man holding forth about his role as the famed Scopes Monkey Trial defender and his perspectives on Hollywood. Below is a digitized image of the Penn Law Journal article that originally ran in the Winter 2000 issue.  This appears to be the best available record of Nielsen's visit to Penn Law School, as no known historical material remains.  (If you have any leads, please, contact me.)  Funnyman, dramatic actor, and Penn Law panelist: Leslie Nielsen was a veritable renaissance man. 

Thanks to my colleague, Ben Meltzer, who serendipitously came across this article while working on an unrelated research project.

Penn Law and the community at large lost one of the singular figures in American legal education with the passing of Professor Clyde Summers who died on October 30, 2010. Summers was widely regarded as one of his generation’s leading authorities on labor law.  Professor Summers wrote over 125 articles on topics such as employee rights, unions, and comparative labor law.

 

The Penn Law community was saddened to learn of the recent passing of Professor John O. Honnold, Jr., a preeminent figure in international law who taught at the Law School from 1946 until his retirement in 1984.  Given Professor Honnold's stature in the legal community, there have been many tributes accorded to him, including those found in the Philadelphia Inquirer and our own Communications Department. 

The Biddle Law Library Archives also has items of interest for those who would like to learn more about Professor Honnold.  Last year, we processed a collection of John Honnold's papers, information which can be found here.  And in conjunction with an exhibit currently on display in the Biddle Law Library's main reference area, below is an oral history recorded in 2000, where Professor Honnold was interviewed as part of the Penn Law School Legal Oral History Project.  For more information about access to these and other materials related to the life of Professor John Honnold, please contact the Archives.

Written by Jessica Lydon, Archives Intern.