The Intellectual Sword
Bruce A. Kimball & Daniel R. CoquilletteA history of Harvard Law School in the twentieth century, focusing on the
school’s precipitous decline prior to 1945 and its dramatic postwar resurgence
amid national crises and internal discord.
By the late nineteenth century, Harvard Law School had transformed legal education and
become the preeminent professional school in the nation. But in the early 1900s, HLS
came to the brink of financial failure and lagged its peers in scholarly innovation. It also
honed an aggressive intellectual culture famously described by Learned Hand: In the
universe of truth, they lived by the sword. They asked no quarter of absolutes, and they
gave none. After World War II, however, HLS roared back. In this magisterial study, Bruce
Kimball and Daniel Coquillette chronicle the school’s near collapse and dramatic
resurgence across the twentieth century.
The school’s struggles resulted in part from a debilitating cycle of tuition dependence,
which deepened through the 1940s, as well as the suicides of two deans and the dalliance
of another with the Nazi regime. HLS stubbornly resisted the admission of women, Jews,
and African Americans, and fell behind the trend toward legal realism. But in the postwar
years, under Dean Erwin Griswold, the school’s resurgence began, and Harvard Law would
produce such major political and legal figures as Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Elena
Kagan, and President Barack Obama. Even so, the school faced severe crises arising from
the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, Critical Legal Studies, and its failure to enroll
and retain people of color and women, including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Based on hitherto unavailable sources including oral histories, personal letters, diaries,
and financial records The Intellectual Sword paints a compelling portrait of the law school
widely considered the most influential in the world.