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Hugo Grotius, versatile and extremely influential seventeenth-century Dutch jurist, wrote verse as well as learned legal scholarhip, and was regarded through-out Europe as among the most thoughtful of international thinkers. |
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.
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His work on the law of war, and on religious toleration, just to name two of his many intellectual endeavors, remain among the most studied and respected of legal treatises. Reproduced from Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1712) |
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.
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