The History of Business Law at Yale
Simeon E. Baldwin, Professor of Constitutional and Mercantile Law, Corporations and Wills, 1869-1919
Simeon Eben Baldwin (1840-1927), a native of New Haven and alumnus of Yale College (1861), studied law at the Law School from 1861-62 and was a professor at the Law School for fifty years, as well as the Law School’s Treasurer for decades. In the Nineteenth century, the Law School faculty were not salaried positions, and Simeon Baldwin was also a leading practitioner, legal scholar, jurist, and Connecticut statesman. He was the governor of Connecticut from 1911-15, after having served as justice and then chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court. He was also founder and president of the American Bar Association, president of the Association of American Law Schools, the American Social Science Association, the American Political Science Association, the American International Law Association, and the American Historical Association.
William K. Townsend, Edward J. Phelps Professor of Law, 1881-1907
William Kneeland Townsend (1849-1907) was an alumnus of both Yale College (1871) and the Law School (1874). Considered “one of Yale’s most brilliant sons” and “one of the most distinguished men in Connecticut,” Townsend was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut in 1892, and elevated to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1902. During this period, Judge Townsend lectured on contracts at the Law School, and published a History of American Law of Patents and Trademarks, Copyrights, and Admiralty.
At the Law School, a professorship was established in his honor in 1925 and a library fund in 1942.
Arthur L. Corbin, William K. Townsend Professor of Law, 1903-43
Arthur L. Corbin (1875-1967), an alumnus of the Law School (1899), became the school’s first full-time professor in 1903, and remained a force at the School for over five decades. Corbin was a giant of American contract law and an intellectual father of the Legal Realist movement that blossomed at Yale in the 1930s. His comprehensive treatise Corbin on Contracts, in updated versions, still serves as a standard reference for judges and lawyers.
Typical of Corbin’s scholarship—and central to the Realist project—was the effort to probe whether important legal principles did in fact inhere in the cases that ostensibly supported them. A famous example was Corbin’s demonstration that “consideration” was not always required to make a contract binding. His recognition that “reliance” often supplied an alternative basis to consideration for contract enforcement was ultimately embodied in section 90 of the Restatement of Contracts.
Edward A. Harriman, Lecturer in Administrative Law, 1906-17
Edward Avery Harriman (1869-1955) came to the Law School from Northwestern, where he was a Professor of Law and faculty Secretary. Harriman was a prominent contract law scholar who corresponded frequently with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. on the theory of contracts. The correspondence began when Harriman sent Holmes a copy of his law review article, “The Nature of Contractual Obligation,” 4 Nw. L. Rev. 97 (1895), that drew upon Holmes’ ideas. That article was the first chapter of Harriman’s treatise, Elements of the Law of Contracts (1896), which he later expanded into a multi-volume work, The Law of Contracts (1901).
William R. Vance, Lafayette S. Foster Professor of Law, 1910-12, 1920-38
William Reynolds Vance (1870-1940) was dean of the University of Minnesota Law School before returning to Yale in 1920. Vance was a leading insurance law scholar of his day. His casebook Cases on the Law of Insurance, first published in 1914, remained in print (in various editions) for nearly forty years. Vance also served as general editor of West Publishing’s American Case Book series from 1912-35.
Wesley N. Hohfeld, Southmayd Professor of Law, 1914-18
Wesley N. Hohfeld (1879-1918), came to Yale from Stanford in 1914, and remained until his untimely death at the age of 39. In his brief career, he published articles on a wide range of topics, including corporate law, partnership law, conflict of laws, trusts, and jurisprudence.
Hohfeld’s most lasting contribution to legal scholarship was his two-part article “Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning,” 23 & 26 Yale L. J. 16 & 710 (1913 & 1917), which was republished as a book several times by Yale University Press (1st ed. 1923). In it, Hohfeld analyzed the notions of legal “rights” and “duties,” breaking them down into a framework of claims, privileges, powers, and immunities on the one hand, and corresponding duties, no-rights, liabilities, and disabilities on the other