Marquette’s Original Law School Curriculum

The students who enter Marquette University Law School this year will take a first-year course load consisting of one-semester courses in Torts, Contracts, Civil Procedure, Property, Criminal Law, and Constitutional Law, and a year-long course in Legal Research and Writing.  After the first year, the curriculum is largely elective, although the diploma privilege makes Evidence, Professional Responsibility, and Trusts and Estates upper-level required courses.

The students who enrolled in the inaugural class at the new day division of the Marquette Law School in the fall of 1908 faced a much different situation.  All classes were required, and there was no flexibility as to when a particular class could be taken.  In addition to the regular classes, law students were also required to attend special lectures by prominent lawyers and judges on topics outside the regular curriculum, and there was a practice court where students learned the nuts and bolts of civil and criminal law practice.

Marquette Law School has a long tradition of tinkering with its curriculum and that was true even in 1908 and 1909.  However, from what can be extracted from the catalogs for 1908-1912, the following appears to have been the original day division curriculum.

Fall—Year 1
Common Law Pleading (1)
Contracts (2)
Torts (2)
Real Property (1)
Criminal Law & Procedure (1)
Agency (2)
Domestics Relations (2)
Spring—Year 1
Common Law Pleading (1)
Contracts (3)
Torts (2)
Real Property (1)
Criminal Law & Procedure (1)
Partnership (2)
Bailments & Carriers (2)
Fall—Year 2
Real Property (2)
Private Corporations (2)
Equity Jurisprudence (2)
Code Pleading & Practice (2)
Personal Property & Sales (2)
Negotiable Paper (2)
Spring—Year 2
Real Property (2)
Private Corporations (2)
Equity Jurisprudence (2)
Code Pleading & Practice (1)
Evidence (2)
Municipal Corporations (2)
Courts & Jurisdiction (1)
Fall—Year 3
Equity Jurisprudence & Trusts (2)
Constitutional Law (1)
Real Property (2)
Wills (2)
Evidence (2)
Municipal Corporations/Utilities (2)
Insurance (1)
Surety and Guaranty (1)
Spring—Year 3
Equity Jurisprudence & Trusts (2)
Constitutional Law (1)
Federal Courts, Admiralty, Bankruptcy, Patents, Trademark (2)
Probate Law & Practice (2)
Equity Pleading (2)
Extraordinary Legal Remedies (1)
Damages (1)
Taxation & Public Revenues (1)

For more information on the experiences of the first law students, see the earlier post on Joseph Tierney L’11.

This Post Has 8 Comments

  1. Mike Zimmer

    Gordon — I am enjoying your posts about the history of the law school. This latest post triggers a question: For the year long courses, were exams given at the end of both semesters or only at the end of the year?

  2. David Papke

    The curriculum suggests what a “trade school” MU was at the time of its founding. The goal was to train practitioners. Period. I wonder if the curriculum was different at places like Harvard or Michigan.

  3. Gordon Hylton

    My sense is that the Marquette curriculum of 1908-1911 was fairly typical. Law schools in the early twentieth century were first and foremost about preparation for the bar examination.

    Also, there was very little in the way of interdisciplinary study at any law school. When, shortly after the beginning of the twentieth century, the new University of Chicago Law School sought to hire Harvard’s Joseph Henry Beale for its faculty, Harvard Dean James Barr Ames refused to allow Beale out of his Harvard contract unless Chicago would guarantee that the famous political scientist (and U. of C. professor) Ernest Freund would not be allowed to teach in the law school.

    Harvard was devoted to the study of “pure law,” and not the role of law in society. Even Roscoe Pound, the noted student of legal history, jurisprudence, and comparative law, who became dean of Harvard in 1916, believed that the “interdisciplinary” study of law should be postponed until a fourth year of law school.

  4. Gordon Hylton

    Harvard introduced the first year curriculum composed of year-long courses in Real Property, Contracts, Torts, Pleading, and Criminal Law early in Langdell’s tenure. However, it was not until much later that it was adopted as the standard first-year law school curriculum at other law schools. It did not become the “industry norm” until the 1920’s.

    Langdell was also responsible for dropping Constitutional Law as a first-year course at Harvard.

  5. Sean Samis

    Do we know the titles of any of the books used or assigned to students in 1908? I am especially interested in the Equity courses; Equity is a branch of law that seems to have disappeared. However, what little I understand of it leads me to believe it has much in common with “ADR”.

  6. Bruce Boyden

    I can’t imagine teaching “Federal Courts, Admiralty, Bankruptcy, Patents, and Trademark” as a 2-hour course!

  7. Gordon Hylton

    In regard to Sean Samis’ earlier question, the text for the course on Equity was James Barr Ames’ A Selection of Cases on Equity Jurisdiction with Notes and Citations. Ames was the dean of Harvard Law School and the casebook was published in 1904 in Cambridge, Massachusetts by the Harvard Law Reviw Publishing Association.

    Alas, the hand of Harvard Law School was there from the beginning.

  8. Sean Samis

    … and I just found it on google books! Two volumes.

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