"The Highest Legal Ability in the Nation": Langdell on Wall Street, 1855-1870

Christopher C. Langdell (1826-1906), arguably the most influential reformer in the history of legal education in the United States, worked as a lawyer in New York City from 1855 until 1870, when he joined the faculty at Harvard Law School. Yet, his legal practice has been disparaged for the past century as insubstantial and unsuccessful and as causing his disaffection from the bench and bar. Drawing on new archival evidence, this essay reveals that Langdell was a prominent, successful, and busy litigator. The new evidence also discloses that Langdell's disaffection from the Wall Street bench and bar arose in response to the corruption of the judiciary and the complicity of even eminent lawyers in Boss Tweed's New York. Consequently, Langdell left Wall Street for Harvard Law School in 1870 not as a failure but as a determined reformer, committed to two related principles that had been forged during his youth and that characterised his reforms in legal education: democratic advancement by merit and apolitical character of law.