50 years ago this month, Columbia Law School hired its 1st woman tenured law professor in its history.
The professor?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The news was so big that the @nytimes even covered it a few days later, under the headline: "Columbia Law Snares a Prize in the Quest for Women Professors."
The article went on to call Ruth's hire a "major coup."
As a new semester nears, I am reminded of Ruth’s description of law school, told as she left Columbia in 1980 to become a Judge of the D.C. Circuit . . .
"The mission of a university law school as Justice Harlan Stone described it during his tenure as Dean is not to drill students in mechanical rules; rather the aim is to develop with students an understanding and appreciation of legal principles . . .
That means drawing on disciplines other than the law for support & it also means placing law in context & presenting the . . . societal conditions to which the law responds.
The Law School today is different in large & small respects from the one over which Dean Stone presided.
Admission in highly selective . . . [t]he Socratic method has been tempered, clinics & seminars afford students a rich & varied diet, a number of journals & enterprises offer in-depth research & writing opportunities.
But the idea of a University Law School remains the beacon."
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