For those who enjoy winter, here is a look back at times when the Law School has been blanketed in snow.
News and information from the Dickinson Law Library
Below is the text of Judge Reed’s advertisement for the opening of his Law School, as it appears in the book he kept regarding Law School matters. The advertisement first ran on January 9, 1834.
A law department has been established in connection with Dickinson College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and it has been placed under the sole direction of the subscriber.
The design of the institution is two fold. I. To prepare students of law thoroughly for the practice of this profession. II. To afford to others the means of such general instruction in the science as is deemed indispensable to every finished scholar, and eminently useful to every American citizen. The two objects, as far as expedient, will be separately attended to.
The first will embrace a minute inquiry into the science of the law and the technical details involved in the practice of it. In accomplishing these objects, the severer studies, will be occasionally relieved, by an attention to history and such other branches of general literature, as are intimately connected with the study of the law, and are deemed indispensable, in forming a professional character.
I. The means of instruction will consist, first, in a methodical course of study of the best books, properly arranged. Secondly, in frequent examinations accompanied with familiar conversations, adapted to the progress and comprehension of each particular law student, and thirdly, in a regular series of lectures.
II. The practice will be taught first by the examination of approved precedents, and books of practice. Secondly, by presenting fictitious cases, and training the students through all the forms and distinctions of actions, pleas, pleadings, trials, judgements: thus familiarizing them with all the modes of procedure from the inception of a suit to its consummation by final execution.
III. The application of theory and practice will further be made familiar, by frequent exercises in conducting proceedings in a moot court to be organized for the purpose. Actions will be instituted and regularly prosecuted through all the windings which the skill and ingenuity of the students can suggest and in these prosecutions, regular discussions will be had on debatable points, both orally and in writing.
IV. A course of collegiate lectures will be prepared for such students of the college and others as may choose to attend them, less in detail, but embracing the general principles of the law as a science, in which the constitutions of the United States and of the several states, our political institutions and the laws derived from, or modified by, their peculiar constitutions, will claim special attention.
Upon the course being satisfactorily finished by law students, and a final examination passed, the degree of “Bachelor of Laws” will be conferred by the Faculty of Dickinson College.
The length of time required to complete the course, will depend in some measure, upon the age and previous amount of preparation of the respective students. Two years will be generally sufficient for graduates of any respectable college, and others properly prepared.
The College library, with the advantages of the literary societies connected with the College, and their extensive libraries, will be accessible to the law students, the latter at the option of the societies and according to the forms of the respective institutions. An extensive private law library will be appropriated exclusively to the use of the law school. The aid of competent assistants will always be secured, where occasion requires it.
Terms
The price of tuition to law students embracing all charges will be seventy five dollars per annum. (This is for two terms of 5 mos each.) For collegiate lectures, fifteen dollars a lesson. For membership in moot court, $15 per annum. The school will be open on the first day of April 1834 for the reception of students.
John Reed was born, in 1786, in an area of York County, which later became part of Adams County, Pennsylvania. He attended Dickinson College, and then studied law under an attorney in Gettysburg. He was admitted to the bar in 1809. In 1820, he was appointed President Judge of the Ninth Judicial District, which at the time was comprised of Cumberland, Franklin, Adams and Perry Counties. Judge Reed is the author of a 3-volume work titled, Pennsylvania Blackstone, being a Modification of the Commentaries of Sir William Blackstone with Numerous Alterations and Additions, Designed to Present an Elementary Exposition of the Entire Laws of Pennsylvania, Common and Statute, with a Short Notice of the Judiciary of the United States.
On June 8, 1833, Judge Reed sent the following letter to the trustees of Dickinson College:
Gentleman:
I have contemplated for some time past the opening of a law school in Carlisle: there is nothing of the kind, I believe in Pennsylvania, and I can’t help thinking it might be made extensively serviceable to the profession. It has occurred to me, within a day or two past, that some nominal connection with the College would be auxiliary to my views, and that perhaps it might not altogether be without advantage to the institution. My residence from next spring will be in the immediate vicinage of the College: I will be provided with a spacious office, and will have abundant leisure, from my official duties, to conduct the operations of a school of the kind I have referred to. I would not contemplate more than a nominal connection with the College. I have taken the liberty of suggesting the subject to you; if it is of sufficient importance, or can in any way be brought to bear in favor of the College or myself, I would invite your attention to it.
With sentiments of respect,
Your Obt. Sert.
John Reed
The Board of Trustees responded by establishing a professorship of law “in connection with Dickinson College.” The law department was to be under the professor of law’s entire control and was “established under the pledge of mutual assistance and cooperation so far as may be practicable and expedient.” The professor was not to be considered a faculty member of the College, and it was “understood that there will be no expense to the College arising out of the establishment” of the Law School. However, the faculty at Dickinson College would award an appropriate degree upon students who completed a regular course of study at the Law School, upon recommendation from the professor of law.
Judge Reed’s response to the Trustees was to set forth in a letter dated September 27, 1833, his plans for the establishment of the Law School, including the curriculum and tuition. This letter would later be mirrored in Judge Reed’s advertisement for the opening of the Law School, which was first published on January 9, 1834. (In next week’s post, I will share the full text of Judge Reed’s advertisement.)
Judge Reed maintained a book, in which he recorded information relevant to the Law School, including his advertisement and the signatures of students who enrolled in his school. This book remains a part of the Law School Archives Collection and is on display in the Law Library.
Judge Reed’s Law School, which later became known as The Dickinson School of Law, opened on April 1, 1834. He continued in his position as Judge until 1839, when the judicial office expired due to a constitutional change. He thereafter returned to the practice of law, while continuing to operate his Law School. Judge Reed passed away on January 19, 1850.
The Honorable Burton R. Laub was born on October 19, 1903 in Berwick, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Erie Academy High School in 1921. He obtained his B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce in 1925, and his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1928. In June 1964, he was awarded an honorary law degree from the Dickinson School of Law. Laub also received honorary degrees from Temple University and Gannon College.
Laub served, in Erie County, as first assistant district attorney from 1932-1940, district attorney from 1940-1946, and judge from 1946 to 1966. Laub was President of the Pennsylvania District Attorney’s Association and the first President of the Pennsylvania Conference of State Trial Judges. He served on the Judicial Advisory Committee of the PA Council on Crime and Delinquency, the Supreme Court Criminal Procedural Rules Committee, and the State Board of Law Examiners. Laub was also appointed to the Devers Committee by Governor John S. Fine, to investigate and recommend improvements to prison conditions in Pennsylvania.
Laub became Dickinson Law’s fourth dean on January 3, 1966. He served in that capacity until September 1, 1974, but continued to be active in the Law School community after leaving his post as dean. Laub was the author of many legal works, including the Pennsylvania Trial Guide and Pennsylvania Keystone – Lawyer’s Desk Library of Practice. He also authored The Dickinson School of Law – Proud and Independent, which he described as “a sort of love letter” to the Law School. Laub was an artist as well, and the 1984 sesquicentennial edition of The Dickinson School of Law – Proud and Independent contains many of Laub’s illustrations, including a self-portrait. On March 5, 1983, former classroom 132 was dedicated in Dean Laub’s honor. Laub passed away at the age of 96 on December 28, 1999.
The American Bar Association (ABA), which was founded in 1878, “is committed to advancing the rule of law across the United States and beyond by providing practical resources for legal professionals, law school accreditation, model ethics codes and more.”
The Dickinson School of Law was approved by the ABA on December 28, 1931. At the time, Dickinson was one of three law schools in Pennsylvania to have been approved by the ABA. The other two law schools were the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pittsburgh. Below is an excerpt from the announcement that appeared in The Dickinson Alumnus, regarding the ABA’s approval:
The approval followed a rigorous inspection conducted by representatives of the American Bar Association some months ago and places the Law School on an equal rating with the best schools for legal training in the country.
The standards set by the American Bar Association are very high and recognition is granted to only a limited number of schools which meet these requirements. In addition to the standards as to course of instruction, curriculum and number of instructors, each school is also required to have an ample law library for research and study.
The Law School has been showing marked progress and recent graduations have been remarkably successful in the bar examinations. Dean Hitchler recently announced that twenty-five of the twenty-eight graduates of last June have passed their bar examinations and have been admitted to practice. This record in so short a time is a very unusual one.
Place Dickinson Law School on Approved List, The Dickinson Alumnus, February 1932, p. 9.
Sometimes research goes in an unexpected direction…researching an account of a Holocaust survivor led to shocking accounts of the brutality of the Nazis during World War II as they attempted to systematically eliminate Jewish people in a way we now understand as genocide. Seventy-three years after the end of World War II, the horrors of the genocide committed by the Nazis are fading as the generation who survived the atrocities passes away and our schools fail to educate students about the Holocaust. We cannot forget what happened then, or the continuing instances of genocide around the world. The staggering numbers of people killed are appalling but don’t convey the horror experienced by individuals who survived genocide. It’s through those personal stories that we learn both the depravity of individuals and the strength one can summon to endure evil.
The Jewish Virtual Library provides a wealth of information about the Holocaust including the basic history of the Holocaust, the persecution, biographies, and the aftermath. From here we can learn about the arc of events in World War II as seen through the lens of time, but other resources provide more detailed stories from individuals who experienced the Nazi concentration camps. These stories tell us what it really meant to endure and survive.
Sadly, the Holocaust is but one of many genocides in recent world history. Others include the Genocide in Darfur, the Rwandan Genocide, Genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Killing Fields: The Cambodian Genocide, Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution, the Rape of Nanking, the Ukrainian Genocide, the Armenian Genocide, the Herero Genocide, the Genocide of Native Americans, and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The Genocide Education Project assists educators to teach about human rights and genocide, particularly the Armenian Genocide. Many other resources are also available to assist educators in teaching about genocide.
“The mission of the Foundation for Genocide Education is to work with governments to ensure that genocide and the steps leading to it are taught in high schools in Canada and in the United States.” The Foundation has created a video to explain the importance of genocide education in schools. Unfortunately, genocide is not a relic of our past; it continues today in many locations such as Myanmar, Syria, Iraq, and South Sudan. The Foundation for Genocide Education teaches the 8 stages of genocide which one can witness on the news worldwide. Education is one vital step in preventing future genocides.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum supports and engages in work to prevent genocide. The Early Warning Project is a “tool to alert policy makers and the public to places where the risk for mass atrocities is greatest.” The Responsibility to Protect is a joint project which adopted the principle “Responsibility to Protect (R2P)” as a mandate to protect civilians and prevent mass atrocities. The Genocide Prevention Task Force provided “practical policy recommendations to enhance the capacity of the US government to respond to emerging threats of genocide and mass atrocities.” These project are undertaken in cooperation with groups and countries willing to prevent genocide.
As noted in our prior blog post, December 9, 2018 marks the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. With this anniversary, the United Nations is undertaking a campaign to appeal for Universal Ratification by the 45 United Nations Member States who have not yet ratified the Genocide Convention. You read that correctly, even after 70 years, 45 of the 193 member states of United Nations have not ratified the Genocide Convention.
Imagine a world fully committed to the elimination of genocide.
December 9, 2018 marks the 70th Anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide by the United Nations General Assembly. The Convention was adopted on December 9, 1948 and went into force on January 12, 1951, after obtaining the required twenty ratifications.
The term “genocide” can be attributed to Raphael Lemkin, who created the word in 1944 by combining the Greek word “genos,” meaning race or tribe with the Latin word “cide,” which means killing. Genocide was defined by Lemkin as “a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of life of national group, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.” Excerpt from Lemkin’s Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia, Coining a Word and Championing a Cause: The Story of Raphael Lemkin.
Lemkin was a lifelong human rights activist. His efforts began as early as 1933. When Germany invaded Poland, Lemkin fled. He later learned that forty-nine of his family members were murdered in the Holocaust. Lemkin worked tirelessly to have genocide added as a crime on an international level. His commitment paid off through the adoption of the Genocide Convention in 1948. Id.
The Genocide Convention declared genocide a crime under international law. Genocide was defined by the Convention as:
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group.
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
The acts of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide and complicity in genocide are all punishable under the Convention. All persons, including rulers, public officials and private individuals are subject to punishment. The nations that ratify the Convention agree to enact appropriate legislation to enforce the provisions of the Convention. Id. Additional information about the Genocide Convention, including documents, video and audio, can be found online through the United Nations, Codification Division, Office of Legal Affairs’ Audiovisual Library of International Law.
The United States ratified the Genocide Convention in 1988 when President Ronald Reagan signed the Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1987, 18 USC § 1091, into law. In signing the Act, President Reagan remarked, “We gather today to bear witness to the past and learn from its awful example, and to make sure that we’re not condemned to relive its crimes.” Reagan’s full remarks can be found online through the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum.
There is currently a display in the Law Library with resources related to genocide and the Genocide Convention. Some notable sources in the Law Library include:
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide : A Commentary
Christian J. Tams, Lars Berster, and Björn Schiffbauer
Call Number: KZ7180.A61948C66 2014
Documents on the Genocide Convention from the American, British, and Russian Archives
Anton Weiss-Wendt
Call Number: KZ7180.A61948A12 2019 v.1 & 2
The United States and the Genocide Convention
Lawrence J. LeBlanc
Call Number: K5302.L43 1991
Raphael Lemkin and the Concept of Genocide
Douglas Irvin-Erickson
Call Number: KZ7180.I78 2017
Genocide in International Law : The Crime of Crimes
William A. Schabas
Call Number: K5302.S32 2000
An American Genocide : The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe
Benjamin Madley
Call Number: E78.C15M33 2016
East West Street : On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against Humanity”
Philippe Sands
Call Number: KZ7180.S26 2016
In 1949, the Dickinson School of Law was presented with one of the most treasured items in the Archives Collection: a stone from the ruins of the Inner Temple, one of England’s great Inns of Court, which had been largely destroyed during World War II.
Sometime during the 12th Century, the Military Order of the Knights Templar built a church along the River Thames, which became known as the Temple Church. Sometime after the abolition of the Order, the Church, along with its surrounding buildings, was occupied by lawyers, and this space evolved into two of the Inns of Court, the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple.
Several early American lawyers attended the Inns of Court, including nine signers of the Declaration of Independence. John Dickinson, from Pennsylvania, who became known as the “Penman of the American Revolution” and for whom Dickinson College was named, also attended the Inns of Court. Robert F. Boden, The Colonial Bar and the American Revolution, 60 Marq. L. Rev. 1, 3-4 (1976).
Both the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple sustained significant damage during World War II. Both Temples were struck by German bombs several times during the War. Fortunately, for the residents of the Temples, preparations had been made, and air raid shelters constructed in 1939, in anticipation of such attacks. The first bomb struck on September 9, 1940. This bomb fell into the Thames River, and caused damage to pedestal ornaments and windows. The first significant damage occurred on September 19, 1940, when the Clock Tower of the Library was struck. Additional air raids occurred on September 26, October 8, October 16, November 16, December 8, and December 29, 1940. Attacks continued in 1941 on January 1, January 11, January 15, March 14-15, and May 10-11. Sir Francis MacKinnon described the attack of May 10-11 as, “London’s worst ordeal of the war. A huge number of bombs, both high explosive and incendiary, were showered down, and the Temple had its full share of them.” Sir Francis MacKinnon, ed., The Ravages of the War in the Inner Temple 19 (1945). The destruction of the Inner Temple was now complete.
The stone from the ruins of the Inner Temple was presented, in 1949, by the Masters of the Bench of the Honorable Society of the Inner Temple to the Corpus Juris Society of the Law School. The Master of the Rolls, the Rt. Hon. Lord Greene, had assisted the Corpus Juris Society in obtaining the stone. The gift was accompanied by a privately printed copy of The Ravages of the War in the Inner Temple, edited by Sir Frank MacKinnon. T. Edward Munce, Jr., Note, Inner Temple of London Presents Relic, 53 Dick. L. Rev. 283 (1949). The Inner and Middle Temples were subsequently rebuilt.