The “Science” of Legal Science: The Model of the Natural Sciences in Nineteenth-Century American Legal Education

Abstract

In the first half of the nineteenth century, a model of legal education called “legal science” became prominent in American universities. The idea of teaching law as a science was not new in American education. In 1823 Timothy Dwight wrote that Tapping Reeve, at Litchfield, taught law “as a science, and not merely nor principally as a mechanical business; nor as a collection of loose independent fragments, but as a regular well-compacted system.” Dwight, however, used “science” in its older sense of an organized body of knowledge rather than in its emergent sense as a method characteristic of the study of nature. Similarly, James Kent and Joseph Story, Francis Hilliard, and Silas Jones all thought of themselves as approaching law as a science, but what they meant was that law was an outgrowth of the moral sciences.