Roscoe T. Steffen, Professor of Law, 1925-49

Roscoe T. Steffen

REFERENCES:

Laura Kalman, Legal Realism at Yale 1927-1960 (1986).

Roscoe Turner Steffen (1893-1976), a Law School alumnus (1920), was on the faculty for over two decades. A member of the Legal Realist movement, Steffen was a leading agency law scholar, and taught the first-year agency course at Yale.

Steffen published on a broad range of commercial law topics (the earliest work being published under his then name Roscoe B. Turner). Among his early work in the Realist vein was a two-part study of certified checks, published as “A Factual Analysis of Certain Proposed Amendments to the Negotiable Instruments Law,” 38 Yale L. J. 1047 (1929), and “A Blue Print for the Certified Check,” 13 N.C. L. Rev. 450 (1935) (with William F. Starr), and an article on independent contractor cases, “The Independent Contractor and the Good Life,” 2 U. Chi. L. Rev. 501 (1935). In the latter article, Steffen studied how courts applied the rule of employer liability for independent contractors, contending that courts held employers liable in situations where they decided the contractors’ work was “dangerous” rather than by legal principles (how “independent” the contractor was).

In addition, Steffen’s innovative 1933 casebook, Cases on the Law of Agency, was one of the first to attempt to integrate modern problems of business organization into the agency materials. It remained in use for decades, with subsequent editions in 1954 and 1969.