William R. Vance, Lafayette S. Foster Professor of Law, 1910-12, 1920-38

William R. Vance

REFERENCES:

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

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.

Vance taught the first year course on property at the Law School, as well as his specialty, insurance law. He vigorously opposed the 1935 Restatement of Property, contending that its “black letter formulas [were] of relatively little value,… sometimes inaccurate, often obscure and always pompous and dull” and that “a judge who would base his decision of any question of law upon the [Restatement] would be worse than lazy; he would be incredibly stupid.” “The Restatement of the Law of Property,” 86 U. Pa. L. Rev. 173, 173, 188 (1937). In this respect his position echoed that of many of his Legal Realist colleagues, who opposed the restatements in their fields, although he has been described as “a first generation Realist …dismayed by its excesses” and as “Yale’s most conservative theorist” at the time.