Built by Association: John C. Townes
John C. Townes’s inscribed copy (to Ira P. Hildebrand) of his book Law Books and How to Use Them (1909).
John C. Townes, for whom the main building at the University of Texas School of Law is named, was the first dean of the law school (1902–1903, 1907–1923), where he served on the faculty from 1896 to 1923. Townes wrote five books, ranging from torts to jurisprudence to Texas pleading. This small book on legal bibliography and research he inscribed to Ira P. Hildebrand (1876–1944), a native Texan who received his law degree from Harvard in 1902. Hildebrand would become the third dean at Texas, from 1924 to 1940.
In 1942, Hildebrand would dedicate his four-volume treatise in part to the memory of John C. Townes—in addition to other such notable legal scholars as James Barr Ames, John Chipman Gray, and James Bradley Thayer, who were Harvard faculty members at the turn of the century and doubtless taught Hildebrand there.
– Bryan A. Garner
“Built by Association: Books Once Owned by Notable Judges and Lawyers, from Bryan A. Garner’s Collection”, an exhibit curated by Bryan A. Garner with Mike Widener, is on display until December 16, 2013 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.
