Portrait, Warner T. McGuinn, LL.B. 1887
'One Sound, Tested Method': Yale Law School at 200
A Rare Book Exhibition
Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School
August 15, 2024 - January 13, 2025
On November 11, 1824, Samuel Hitchcock, B.A. 1809, calculated the cost of wood, coal, oil, and candles for the two-room office he shared at the corner of Church and Court Street in New Haven. That same month, Yale College published the names of the fourteen students of the proprietary law school Hitchcock oversaw with its founder and his former teacher, Seth Perkins Staples, B.A. 1797. That list, of those students, marked one beginning of what would become the Yale Law School.
This exhibit celebrates the bicentennial anniversary of that fledgling law school. Drawing on the Lillian Goldman Law Library’s historical collections, the exhibit traces the characteristics discernible in the Yale Law School even at its outset: a small community of faculty and students and its library, situated within the communities of practice of New Haven, Connecticut, and an emergent American legal profession.
