Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/282

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The Yale Law School.
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those few who have found in the law more than a means of livelihood and more than a technical science,—who find in its literature and the lives of its leaders a means of culture and of recreation. His courses in Equity and Torts are made especially interesting by his careful citations of cases, which are always appropriate and instructive.

William K. Townsend, D.C.L., "Edward J. Phelps Professor" of Contracts and Admiralty Jurisprudence, a graduate of Yale in the Class of 1871, received his legal education in the Yale School, taking his degree of D.C.L. in 1880, some time after admission to the bar. He is an unusually enthusiastic and energetic man, a thoroughly practical and successful lawyer and instructor. At present he is Corporation Counsel of the City of New Haven. Professor Townsend, whose subjects are such as appeal more strongly than many of the others to the interest of the students, takes great pains to emphasize the more practical points and to develop each topic fully by the citation and discussion of leading and recent cases, and succeeds to a remarkable degree, not only in guiding his classes to the knowledge of facts, but also in arousing among all the students a hearty enthusiasm for their professional work.

FRANCIS WAYLAND.

Theodore S. Woolsey, M.A., Professor of International Law, a son of ex-President Woolsey, is the only member of the Faculty who has not been in active practice. He was graduated at Yale College in 1872, and at the Yale Law School in 1876, after pursuing special studies in International Law for a year or two abroad. Although his special branch is an honor study, not being required of any but candidates for a high rank, the exercises are well attended and followed with interest. Professor Woolsey aims to give particular attention to questions of present interest in International relations.

The Faculty is as a whole, as well as individually, peculiarly efficient. The division of labor is such that each professor is able to employ himself in those lines for which he is by taste and ability especially qualified. Whatever the eminence of any of its members in public or political life, they have not been chosen on that account, but for their legal ability and scholarship. But their success is greater than can be accounted for by even legal ability and scholarship, and its reason is to be found in the personal enthusiasm which they bring to their work; in fact, the distinctive peculiarity of the school is the generous disposition of the professors, not only in the routine work, but also in friendly aid and suggestion outside the class-room.

Since the gentlemen who are now in charge of the school assumed its management, and through their efforts, two important changes have been made by which its present location and its library have been gained. The school occupies the whole upper floor of the County Court-house, a handsome building completed in 1873 at a cost of