Brahmin Connections: A Note on the Vocation of the Law Professor

The early modern Harvard Law School is known for its significance as a model for legal education in the United States. This model is understood to include the case method and a very narrow curriculum, focused on pure law. It is often noted that important figures on the law school faculty were part of the Brahmin Culture of Boston. They were members of a caste which valued a broad and serious engagement with intellectual life.

This Article focuses on several individuals—Charles Eliot, James Bradley Thayer, and John Chipman Gray—to illustrate that engagement and suggests that it provided a frame which tempered a narrow law school curriculum.