"The
Litchfield Law School presents advantages enjoyed by few, if any,
institutions of the kind of our country. It has sent forth into
the world many gentlemen distinguished no less as Statesmen than
Civilians.”
—The
Litchfield Enquirer, November 11, 1830
Tapping
Reeve (left) and one of his more famous pupils, Vice President
John C. Calhoun
WITH
ALMOST 1,000 students attending from every region of post-Revolutionary
America, the Litchfield Law School launched the careers of many
well-known Americans including two vice-presidents, 101 United States
congressmen, twenty-eight United States senators, six cabinet members,
three justices of the United States supreme court, fourteen governors
and thirteen chief justices of state supreme courts. Many more graduates
held state and local political office, while others became leaders
of the nation's emerging corporate, mercantile, industrial and financial
establishments. More than twenty alumni of the school were the founders
or early professors of new law schools. The Litchfield Law School’s
first and most notorious student was Aaron Burr, brother-in-law
of the school’s founder, Tapping Reeve.
Clockwise
from top left: Charles Perkins, Aaron Burr, Wm. Wolcott Elsworth,
the Reeve House
In
1773, the newly married Tapping Reeve and Sally Burr Reeve settled
in Litchfield where Reeve promptly established a legal practice.
The following year, Sally's brother Aaron Burr came to live with
them and Reeve began to instruct him in the law. Several prominent
residents of Litchfield also sent their sons to Reeve for legal
training, establishing his reputation as a teacher and forming the
nucleus of what was to become America's first formal school of law.
The
Law School exterior and interior
As the number of students increased, Reeve
began to develop a series of formal lectures that prepared students
to take the bar exam and practice law. In the years following the
Revolution most lawyers taught through the apprenticeship system because
there were no schools that offered law degrees. Reeve’s decision
to pass on his legal knowledge through formal organized classes distinguished
him from others who were training new lawyers. By 1784 the number
of students enrolling outgrew the space in Reeve's parlor office,
prompting Reeve to construct a one-room school building next to his
house.
Reeve's
partner James Gould; lecture notes title page
Through
his lectures, Tapping Reeve sought to train his students in legal
principles and their application to any legal situation. Reeve and
his eventual partner James Gould, developed a detailed eighteen
month course of lectures, covering every aspect of legal practice.
Students took copious lecture notes that they then carefully re-copied
and had bound into leather volumes. These volumes provided the Litchfield
Law School graduates with the basis of their office law libraries.
The students then used their bound notes as reference manuals for
the rest of their careers.
Alumni of the Litchfield Law School had a tremendous impact on the
development of the new nation, shaping the creation of the American
legal and judicial systems, and profoundly influencing subsequent
developments in legal education. Reeve's emphasis on a system of
legal principles rather than local laws and statutes, his use of
legal cases in teaching, his establishment of student moot courts,
and his division of lectures into subjects, all shaped legal education
as we know it today.
