Georgia's Historic Law Schools -- Part II: University of

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Georgia's Historic Law Schools -- Part II: Universityof Georgia - History of the University of GeorgiaSchool of LawC. Ronald EllingtonUniversity of Georgia School of Law

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Georgia's HistoricLaw Schools -

Part II: University of Georgia -History of the University of Georgia School of Law

by C. Ronald Ellington

n June 1859, Joseph HenryLumpkin, William Hope Hull,and Thomas R.R. Cobb, underauthority of the University of

Georgia's Board of Trustees, issued aprinted announcement of the open-ing session of a law school on Octo-ber 1 of that year. Law courses hadbeen offered up to that time as onepart of the curriculum of theFranklin College, but the reorganiza-tion plan unveiled called for the es-tablishment of a law school with afaculty of three. The law professorswould be unsalaried and were to becompensated from tuition collected.The School of Law was formallycreated a few months later when theGeorgia General Assembly enactedits charter on December 18, 1859.

The founders of the Law School,Chief Justice Lumpkin and Athens at-torneys Cobb and Hull, understoodfirst-hand the frustrations of un-structured, self-preparation for a le-gal career. Legal education in theearly years of the American democ-racy generally consisted of law of-fice apprenticeships complementedby extensive but unsupervised read-ing. I

Justice Lumpkin, the senior of thethree founders, was born inOglethorpe County in 1799. He at-tended Franklin College in its forma-tive years, but graduated from Prin-ceton in 1819. He read law underJudge Thomas W. Cobb and was ad-mitted to the bar in 1820. After serv-ing two terms in the Georgia GeneralAssembly, he became the first ChiefJustice of the Georgia Supreme

Editor's Note: This is Part II of athree-part series on Georgia'sHistoric Law Schools. Part I(Mercer) appeared in the February1990 edition of the Journal, andPart III (Emory) is scheduled foran upcoming edition.

"Its cupola, topped with the scalesofjustice, continues to distinguishthe Law School among the varietyof rooftops on the Universitycampus."

Court when the court was estab-lished in 1845. He served as ChiefJustice until his death in 1867.

Thomas R.R. Cobb was Lumpkin'sson-in-law. He was only 34 years oldwhen he joined Lumpkin and Hull tofound the law school. As a younglawyer he served as clerk and re-porter for the Supreme Court ofGeorgia. Cobb had a brilliant legalmind and was a principal drafter ofone of the first efforts in the UnitedStates to codify the common law.Cobb's Digest of Georgia Law standsas a remarkable achievement. Itsought to make law more rationaland principled and to make it under-standable and usable. Although

186 GEORGIA STATE BAR JOURNAL

Cobb was an ardent secessionist (hewas also the principal author of theConfederate Constitution), his firstinterest was education. He was anactive trustee of Franklin Collegeand was founder and director of theLucy Cobb Institute, Athens' well-known academy for women. Abrigadier-general in ConfederateGeneral Robert E. Lee's centralforces, Cobb was killed at the CivilWar battle of Fredericksburg in1862.

William Hope Hull, the thirdfounder, was a federal attorney inAthens. Hull was born in 1820 andan honor graduate of the Universi-ty's Class of 1838. He was a law part-ner of Governor Howell Cobb. TheHulls, the Cobbs, and the Lumpkinswere related by marriage, and num-bered among their descendants aremany generations of prominentGeorgia lawyers and judges.

The Lumpkin Law School beganits classes in the fall of 1859 in thelaw offices of Lumpkin and Cobb - asmall wooden frame structure on thecorner of Prince Avenue and PulaskiStreet.

The Civil War drew so manyyoung men into uniform that theUniversity temporarily closed itsdoors in 1864; the Law School reo-pened in 1867. Since two of theschool's three faculty had died, newinstructors were hired: Benjamin H.Hill and William L. Mitchell. The cur-riculum of the post-war era includeddaily lectures and quizzes on thecommon and statutory law alongwith lectures on constitutional law,medical jurisprudence, and meta-physical philosophy.

In 1873, law school classes weremoved into two large rooms on onefloor of the Ivy Building on the Uni-versity's North Campus. By 1880 thecurriculum contained courses inequity, parliamentary law, and in-

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dividualized studies in commerciallaw such as sales, agency, partner-ship, bailments, promissory notes,insurance, tax, and tariffs. Every Sat-urday was devoted to "practical ex-ercises" in conveyancing and plead-ing.2 After Benjamin Hill was electedto the United States Senate in 1877,Professor Mitchell carried virtuallythe entire teaching load until PopeBarrow and George Dudley joinedthe faculty in 1881, later joined byAndrew J. Cobb and Howell Cobb.

Sylvanus Morris, law professor for36 years, was a legendary figure inthe school during the first quarter ofthe twentieth century. The son of aUniversity faculty member, Morrisearned his master's (1874) and lawdegrees (1877) from the Universityof Georgia. He had an active lawpractice in Athens, served as solici-tor of the City Court, and was coun-sel for what is now the SouthernRailway. He joined the faculty in1893 and became the Law School'sfirst dean in 1900, serving as deanuntil 1927. He continued to teachuntil his death in 1929. Morris'steaching ranged over the entire com-mon law. He published a textbookentitled Principia which explainedthe English common law and its ap-plication in American jurisprudence.

Admission standards at the LawSchool began to appear about 1889,when it was determined that appli-cants should be at least 18 years oldbefore entering law school. Beforethen there had been no publishedrequirements. By 1891, all appli-cants were required to pass an exam-ination based upon the elements ofan English education.

By 1901 the Law School had ex-tended its program from one to twoyears of formal study; by 1908 fif-teen academic units were requiredfor entrance into the first-year lawclass. By 1917 the B.L. designationwas changed to the LL.B. degree as"bachelor of laws." Another yearwas added to the curriculum in1920, making completion of threeyears of formal legal study the pre-requisite for the LL.B. degree. In1924 the School raised its entrancestandards to make one full year ofcollege a prerequisite; by 1925, twoyears of college were required. Thefirst class to include women gradu-ates was the Class of 1925. Edith

House and Gussie Brooks were thefirst female graduates and Housegraduated as the co-valedictorian ofher class.

In 1905, the Ivy Building and theUniversity's Library were linked by aCorinthian portico to form thepresent Academic Building. In 1918the Law School moved again to theAthenaeum Building at the corner ofBroad and Lumpkin Streets, formerhome of the Elk's Club. Enterprisingyoung students who had a tendencyto sleep late could travel betweentheir lodging and the classrooms viaa plank with which they linked thewindows in the two buildings, ac-cording to former Governor EllisArnall, a member of the Class of1931 and a self-confessed witness tosuch "high-wire" travel.

Reorganization: A MilestoneAlthough the end of the Morris

deanship in 1927 marked the end ofan era, it also ushered in the modernmethod of case law instruction and amajor reorganization of the school.

In 1923 the University Trusteeshad begun to take a greater interestin the Law School due largely to theinsistence of the new Board chair-man, Georgia Chief Justice RichardB. Russell, Sr.3 A special study com-mittee report, adopted by the Trust-ees in 1925, recommended the ap-pointment of an active practitionerto head the School along with DeanMorris.

For a brief period the school hadboth a dean and a "president," JudgeGeorge F. Gober, former SuperiorCourt judge from Cobb County. Go-ber was the author of the GeorgiaForm Book, which had beenadopted by the State and furnishedto every court.

Within a few years it was evidentthat the two-administrator arrange-ment would not bring the school anycloser to accreditation by the Associ-ation of American Law Schools, es-pecially when the faculty consistedof only five full-time instructors.Meanwhile, the school had out-grown its quarters in the Athenaeumand a new building was desperatelyneeded. In an ambitious proposal toreorganize the Law School and toupgrade standards, the Law School'sAlumni Society pledged to raiseenough money to construct a new

C. RonaldEllington becamedean of theUniversity ofGeorgia School ofLaw in July 1987.At the time of hisappointment, behad served on thelaw faculty for eighteen years,teaching in the fields of civilprocedure and constitutional law.He holds the Thomas R.R. CobbProfessorship in Law. With anundergraduate degree from Emoryand aJD. degree from Virginia,where he was notes editor of theVirginia Law Review, Ellingtonearned an LL.M. at Harvard. Hewas a Fellow in Law and Human-ities at Harvard in 19 73-74. In1979 he was appointed scholar-in-residence in the Office forImprovements in the Administra-tion ofJustice in the United StatesDepartment ofJustice where heworked on problems of citizenaccess to courts.

The author wishes toacknowledge, with appreciation,the contributions to the researchand preparation of this articleby Gwen Y Wood, the formerDirector of Alumni Programs atthe Law School, and Nancy B.Bowen, the Law School's Directorof Public Information.

building on campus, "provided,however, and upon express condi-tion that such law school shallpromptly be reorganized and that atits head shall be placed a trained andexperienced legal educator ... andthat such school shall be so plannedas to qualify in the near future as aClass A school."4

The man who spearheaded the re-organization and led the school to-ward full accreditation was Harry N.Edmunds of the University of SouthCarolina. In only three years (1929to 1932), Edmunds met the mandateof the Trustees to bring the LawSchool up to accreditation stan-dards. First, he hired two young pro-fessors well-versed in the casemethod of instruction, Harmon W.Caldwell and J. Alton Hosch. Thenhe moved to upgrade the standards

(Continued on page 188)

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Law School(Continued from page 187)

for the admission of students. Hepersuaded University ChancellorCharles Snelling to seek additionalannual funding for the library and toprepare the building site for con-struction on the University's northcampus.

Finally, on December 29, 1931,the efforts of Edmunds and the lawalumni were rewarded when theUniversity of Georgia School of Lawwas granted membership in the As-sociation of American Law Schools.

The financing of the School's nu-clear building, Hirsch Hall, wasborne entirely by private contribu-tions, not an easy task during thedepths of the national Depression.Nevertheless, $80,000 from 250 do-nors was raised and construction onthe law building began. HughesSpalding, chairman of the LawSchool Alumni Society BuildingCommittee, headed the fundraisingdrive, assisted by fellow BuildingCommittee members HarrisonJones, executive vice-president ofthe Coca-Cola Company (who raisedmoney for the furnishings), and JohnA. Sibley (who kept track of thepledges and wrote each person tocollect the notes).

The Law School building wasnamed Harold Hirsch Hall, in honorof the prominent Atlanta lawyerwho was best known as the protec-tor of Coca-Cola's famous trade-mark. Hirsch Hall is a handsomebrick Georgian colonial with lime-stone trim. Its cupola, topped withthe scales of justice, continues to dis-tinguish the Law School among thevariety of rooftops on the Universitycampus.

Dedication exercises, attended bystate political leaders, were con-ducted on October 29, 1932, in theUniversity Chapel. Unfortunately,Dean Edmunds, who had workedtirelessly to secure the new struc-ture, suffered major health problemsalmost immediately after the dedica-tion and had to resign the deanshipbecause of illness.

Harmon W. Caldwell, who be-came dean in July 1933, served inthat capacity until he was electedpresident of the University in 1935.Caldwell, who was revered by his

Harold Hirsch Hall, built in 1931-32 with funds raised by alumni, wasthe Law School's first permanent home on the north campus of TheUniversity of Georgia.

students as a professor of constitu-tional law, served ably for 13 years asUniversity president. He was namedChancellor of the University Systemof Georgia in 1948 and served asChancellor for 16 years.

The Deanship of J. AltonHosch

Law professor J. Alton Hosch be-came dean in 1935. A native ofGainesville, Georgia, Hosch earnedthe B.S.C. and M.A. degrees from theUniversity of Georgia in 1924 and1925. After graduation from Har-vard Law School in 1928, he joinedthe Georgia faculty and was tappedfor the deanship in 1935 whenCaldwell resigned to become presi-

dent of the University. During WorldWar II Hosch was on leave from theLaw School while he served in theArmy as a colonel with the JudgeAdvocate General Corps.

When he retired from the dean-ship inJune 1964, Hosch had servedas dean 29 years, longer than anyother dean of any law school at thattime approved by the American BarAssociation. The years 1935 to 1964brought many highlights, but DeanHosch would have selected oneabove the rest - the establishment in1953 of the forerunner of today'sInstitute of Government. Hoschfounded the Institute and served asits first director in addition to hisduties as dean and professor of law.

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Hosch worked hard to championthe Law School's cause in budgetarymatters, but in those decades of eco-nomic stringency state money for li-brary acquisitions, faculty salaries,and building expansion was impossi-ble to come by. He nonetheless per-sisted, and his efforts would later berewarded in the mid- 1960s with theRegents' approval of $ 2,773,000 fora major library, classroom and fac-ulty office addition to Hirsch Hall.Although the law addition was con-structed after Hosch retired, his ef-forts to bring it about should be rec-ognized.

Alumni InvolvementThe idea of creating an organized

alumni association for the School ofLaw took shape at a breakfast meet-ing of University of Georgia lawgraduates at the Georgia Bar Associa-tion in June 1951. Following themeeting, Dean Hosch asked a com-mittee headed by M. Cook Barwickto draft a constitution for an alumniorganization. Also named to thecommittee were A.G. (Gus) Cleve-land of Atlanta, Roger H. Lawson ofHawkinsville, and Robert G.Stephens of Athens.

In the fall of that year, a largercommittee reviewed a draft of theproposed constitution and by-lawsand voted to present the documentsto interested law alumni at a calledmeeting of the new association at themid-winter meeting of the GeorgiaBar Association. The new LawSchool Association was chartered onDecember 14, 1951.

Roger Lawson served as the firstpresident of the association, fol-lowed by Gus Cleveland. By 1960,under the presidency of James Bar-row, the Law School Association hadalso developed committees to workin the areas of scholarships and aca-demic awards as well as in member-ship and finance.

Special EventsThe Law School undertook many

special projects during its centennialin 1959. The undisputed highlight ofthe centennial celebration, however,was the visit of Roscoe Pound in Feb-ruary 1960. Pound, dean emeritus ofHarvard Law School, came to thecampus to deliver three lectures onthe science of law and to spend time

with students and faculty.Dean Hosch initiated the observ-

ance of Law Day long before theAmerican Bar Association initiatedthe national movement in 1957. ALaw Day event was planned as earlyas 1948, and the first official LawDay program on campus was in1952, when Governor HermanTalmadge, a 1936 graduate, was fea-tured as speaker. Another notableLaw Day speaker during those yearswas Robert Kennedy, United StatesAttorney General, who spoke in1961.

Faculty of the Hosch EraThomas F. Green served on the

faculty from 1907 until 1918, andhis son Tom Green entered lawteaching in 1929. The youngerGreen earned the S.J.D. degree at theUniversity of Chicago in 1931 andserved on the Georgia faculty forforty years until retiring in 1969.Professor Green, appointed by theChief Justice of the United States tothe advisory committee to draft theFederal Rules of Evidence, was a spe-cialist in the areas of Georgia prac-tice, federal jurisdiction and proce-dure, and evidence. A fine scholar,Dr. Green had the reputation of be-ing a demanding teacher whoseclasses some graduates still recallvividly years later. Professor Greendied in 1988 at the age of 85.

Robert L. McWhorter, who taughtlaw from 1923 to 1959, was also alegendary figure in the world ofGeorgia football. McWhorter wascaptain of the University's 1913football team, Georgia's first All-American, and an honor studentwho made Phi Beta Kappa in his lawstudies at Virginia. He was also ahighly popular mayor of Athens.

Henry A. Shinn, who taught be-tween 1934 and 1948, served as act-ing dean of the Law School duringthe years that Dean Hosch was onactive duty in the Armed Forces.Sigmund A. Cohn, who initiated theteaching of international law, servedon the faculty between 1940 and1964 and taught by lecture and ex-ample a respect for professional in-tegrity and fidelity to reason in law.

D. Meade Feild, a legendaryteacher, came to Georgia in 1938 andtaught spans at both Georgia andMercer over the course of his long

career. He is perhaps best remem-bered for his wit and his courses onconstitutional law and workers com-pensation.

Bridging the Hosch era to today isthe incomparable figure of Verner F.Chaffin. Chaffin joined the faculty in1958 and retired in May 1989 as theFuller E. Callaway Professor of Law.After earning his law degree fromGeorgia in 1942, Chaffin served inWorld War II and then taught at Ala-bama for ten years. He earned theJ.S.D. at Yale in 1961. Chaffin'steaching and research centered onfiduciary law. Not only did Dr. Chaf-fin teach countless students to ap-preciate the intricacies of the law oftrusts and estates but he played andcontinues to play an important rolein the continuing education of law-yers and law reform efforts in thisimportant field.

The law school in these years waslimited by the lack of adequate statefunding, but it produced a genera-tion of graduates who had learnedfrom these teachers to be proud to be


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lawyers and who would make amark on the state and on the profes-sion. These alumni, moreover, felt agreat debt and were committed toseeing their Law School develop andprosPer.

The Deanship of LindseyCowen and a RemarkableCommitment

The 1960s were turbulent times inthe South, but Martin LindseyCowen was not one to be dauntedeasily. A native of Ohio who hadtaught on the law faculty at Virginiafor 13 years, Cowen became dean onJuly 1, 1964. He immediately setmultiple projects in motion so thatby the end of his second year asdean, there was an impressive set of"firsts" already on the books, in-cluding publication of the first issueof the modern Georgia Law Review,the establishment of the John A. Sib-ley lectureship series, the creation ofthe Law School's Board of Visitors,the establishment of the Institute ofContinuing Legal Education (ICLE),and the creation of the Law SchoolFund. In addition, the Legal Aid andDefender Society was established,construction began on the newbuilding, a major state grant forfunding library acquisitions was ap-proved, and the first black studentwas admitted, Chester Davenport,who graduated in the Class of 1967.

A new day opened for the LawSchool in the mid-1960s because ofleaders of vision. Carl E. Sanders, thegovernor, and James Dunlap, chair-man of the state Board of Regents,were the key actors along with DeanCowen. Sanders had earned his lawdegree from Georgia in 1948. He hada vision for the state and saw theimportance to all citizens of improv-ing our state's system of higher edu-cation to be competitive with otherstates. Dunlap, a 1946 graduate,made the case that the public goodwould be well served by devotingthe resources needed to turn thestate's Law School into one of realexcellence. The goal was clear: theLaw School should be one of suchexcellence that no citizen need leavethe state to secure an affordable legaleducation of a superior quality.

Through their advocacy and thehard work of other law alumni onthe Board of Regents, in the GeneralAssembly, and in private practice,the legislature funded the expansionof the Law School, and GovernorSanders directed a $1 million enrich-ment grant for library acquisitions.

The funding for books and legalmaterials made a dramatic impact onthe School's position in the rankingof United States law libraries. ByJuly1967 the library was ranked asthirty- first; within another year ithad moved up to twenty-fourth. InFebruary 1973, when the volumecount of the Law Library passed the200,000 mark, the Library at theUniversity of Georgia School of Lawwas ranked in the top twenty lawschool libraries in the nation.

The physical structure of the Uni-versity of Georgia School of Law re-flects planning for the aesthetic aswell as the functional. The Regentsallocated funds for the new buildingin June 1963 and groundbreakingceremonies were held in October1964. For some time, classes wereaccompanied by the drone of jack-hammers as workers carved the firstfloor out of rock. Dedication cere-monies for the new facilities wereheld in November 1967, and UnitedStates Supreme Court Justice HugoL. Black gave the principal address inan outdoor ceremony on the northcampus quadrangle as falling acornspeppered the canopy overhead. Fewin attendance would ever forget Jus-tice Black's eloquent belief in thepossibility of a new South withoutracial discord, or those acorns.

In 1964 the Board of Regents ofthe University System of Georgia es-tablished a Board of Visitors for theLaw School to serve as a consultativeand advisory body on Law Schoolaffairs. Six of the fourteen membersof the Board of Regents at that timewere University of Georgia law grad-uates, so it was a unique and propi-tious time to advance the cause ofthe school. The Board was solidlybehind the improvement of theschool and the drive for nationalstanding.

When Cowen became dean in1964, he named a student committeeto begin the preliminary work to re-store publication of the GeorgiaLaw Review, which in an earlier ver-

sion had been published for one year(1928-29). Volume I of the contem-porary series appeared in the fall of1966. John Daniel Reeves, a newmember of the faculty, served as fac-ulty advisor. The Georgia Law Re-view, currently in Volume 24, hasachieved national respectability as ascholarly journal.

The first issue of the Law School'sother-scholarly journal, the GeorgiaJournal of International and Com-parative Law, was first published inthe winter of 1970-71. ProfessorDean Rusk, who joined the faculty in1970, headed the Journal's board ofadvisors and was instrumental inbringing to its pages the writings ofoutstanding scholars in internationallaw.

Other features of a modern lawschool have their origins in thatsame era. The Athens Legal Aid Soci-ety was established in 1961 in coop-eration with the Athens Bar Associa-tion. Fred S. Clark, then a third-yearstudent, laid the groundwork for theprogram. In its first year of opera-tion, the student Legal Aid office in-terviewed applicants, evaluatedtheir problems, and determined ifthe services of a lawyer were re-quired. If legal services were neces-sary, a member of the Athens Bar wascalled in on the case and the studentassisted the lawyer of record.

In 1964 the program was ex-panded to include the legal defenseof indigents charged with criminalacts. Cowen sought private grants tosupport the program until it couldreceive state and local governmentfunding. Gary Blasingame, anAthens attorney and 1961 alumnus,became the Attorney-Director. TheGeorgia Legislature later passed alaw that authorized limited practiceby certified third-year students un-der the supervision of a practicingattorney, thus increasing the oppor-tunity for more extensive clinicaltraining for law students. RobertPeckham joined the faculty as direc-tor in 1968, and the Clarke CountyCommission began to fund the legalrepresintation of indigent criminaldefendants through the clinic. ThePrison Legal Counseling Project, aprogram in which law students assistattorneys funded by the state to pro-vide legal advice to prison inmates,was also inaugurated in this period.


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The Prosecutorial Clinic, estab-lished in 1970, was the result of theLaw School's commitment to pro-viding a range of opportunities forskills training for its students. In1972, B. Thomas Cook, Jr., a 1971law graduate, assumed the director-ship along with a joint appointmentas Assistant District Attorney of theWestern Judicial Circuit. Today, lawstudents receive academic credit forserving in District Attorneys' officesthroughout Northeast Georgia andassist in the presentment and prose-cution of cases under the supervi-sion of Clinic Director WendyJenkins.

The student-run Moot CourtBoard was established in 1970 to ad-minister the extracurricular mootcourt program. Teams from Georgiatraditionally compete in regionaland national competitions as well astwo intraschool competitions. Pro-fessors Robert D. Brussack and thecurrent faculty advisor Jere More-head have given the program direc-tion, continuity, and a competitiveedge. Success leads to success, andtoday the moot court program atGeorgia is consistently shown to beamong the very best in the nationmeasured by competitive won-lossrecords. A companion program inthe area of trial advocacy, the MockTrial program, began in 1984 and ison its way to establishing its ownwinning tradition and is also provid-ing opportunities and incentive forstudents to practice and hone law-yering skills.

The Charles Loridans Foundationsupports what is now one of themost prestigious lecture series inAmerican legal education, the JohnA. Sibley Lecture Series. The SibleyLectureship has brought to campusleading figures in the law to speakand to meet faculty and students.From Justice Antonin Scalia in April1989 to the first two lecturers, Pro-fessors Myres S. McDougal of Yaleand Herbert Wechsler of Columbia, aparade of important guests has vis-ited the Law School thanks to theprivate funds provided by the Lori-dans Foundation.

Faculty of the Cowen EraThat period saw a significant in-

crease in the size of the faculty, andthe School was fortunate to attract

and retain many who would spendtheir careers at Georgia. John Rees,who had joined the law faculty in1959, continued to teach Civil Pro-cedure and Conflict of Laws whileserving as Cowen's first assistantdean and planning the new building.Robert N. Leavell returned from Tu-lane to teach Corporations, Securi-ties Regulation, and Equitable Reme-dies. The co-author of EquitableRemedies and Restitution, Leavellretired at the end of the 1989 aca-demic year.

R. Perry Sentell, a member of theClass of 1958, joined the faculty asan associate professor in 1964 andbegan teaching Torts and local gov-ernment law with a zest and flair thathas not diminished after thirty yearsas class after class of first-year stu-dents can readily attest. A group ofnew faculty who would stay at Geor-gia for the decades of the 1970s and1980s came during the Cowen years:C. Ronald Ellington, Samuel M.Davis, Julian B. McDonnell, D.Eugene Wilkes and Gabriel M.Wilner. Also joining the faculty dur-

The

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ing this era was former Secretary ofState Dean Rusk, whose early ambi-tion to teach international law had,as he would explain, "taken a de-tour."

These same years saw the publicservice mission of the Law Schooldevelop when in 1965 Dean Cowenpresented to representatives of theState Bar and the law schools ofEmory and Mercer Universities aproposal for a unified program ofcontinuing legal education. With theconstant support of Gus Cleveland,ICLE got off to a fine start and founda home in Athens.

James W. Curtis became ExecutiveDirector of ICLE in 1967, succeed-ing Norman A. Crandell. Curtis, a1940 Georgia law graduate, ex-panded the locations of the seminarsso that they were presented all overthe state, making them available toeach Georgia lawyer with a mini-mum of travel and a low cost. UnderCurtis's direction, ICLE became anationally-recognized programearning many honors and providing


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great service to the bar of the state. Itis now led superbly by Barney L.Brannen, a 1960 alumnus, who be-came director when Jim Curtis re-tired in 1982.

The Cowen LegacyLindsey Cowen left the deanship

at Georgia in 1972 to accept thedeanship at Case Western ReserveLaw School in his home state ofOhio. He served as dean at CaseWestern for ten years and then re-turned to the classroom. After he re-tired, he and his wife, Eleanor,moved to Cartersville, Georgia,where they now live.

Dean Cowen's tenure saw the ba-sic ingredients of a first-rate lawschool come together: new facilit-ies, additional faculty, and new pro-grams. What the Law School nowneeded was additional resources andthat would require raising a substan-tial private endowment.

The Deanship of J. RalphBeaird

When Cowen resigned as dean in1972,J. Ralph Beaird was named act-ing dean. Beaird, a graduate of theUniversity of Alabama, had gone toWashington as a young lawyer in1951. He served as associate generalcounsel of the National Labor Rela-tions Board and as associate solicitorof the U.S. Department of Labor be-fore he was recruited by Cowen tojoin the law faculty in 1967 to teachlabor law and constitutional law. In1974 Beaird became Counselor tothe President of the University andreturned to full-time teaching when

Neill H. Alford was named as dean.Alford served as dean a period of

eighteen months before he returnedto the University of Virginia wherehe had taught for 26 years. WalterRay Phillips, who had joined the fac-ulty as a professor in 1973 as an ex-pert in Bankruptcy and Creditors'Rights, served as acting dean foreight months before the Regents ap-pointed Beaird dean in October1976. The late 1970s and early1980s saw an impressive series ofmilestones in the history of theschool. The Law School convertedsuccessfully to the semester systemto operate on the same calendar asmost American law schools. Itgained entry into the Order of theCoif, the Phi Beta Kappa of Ameri-can legal education. The Dean RuskCenter for International and Com-parative Law was launched, and theInstitute for Continuing Judicial Ed-ucation was founded.

All the while, Beaird understoodintuitively that his most importanttask was to increase the school's pri-vate endowment. He seemed to rel-ish what many people find hard: ask-ing potential donors for money. Bydetermination, if not training, heproved remarkably good at turningfriends and alumni of the LawSchool into generous donors as well.The result was a high level of privategiving from the school's alumni andfriends and escape from the mis-taken notion that alumni supportpublic schools just by paying theirtaxes.

The Law School's first formalizedcapital gifts campaign began in 1977.Not since the building of Hirsch Hallwith alumni funds in 1931 had therebeen any organized attempt to raise

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capital for the Law ochool, and theUniversity as a whole did not have aprofessionally-run capital gifts cam-paign.

Kenneth M. Henson, chairman ofthe Board of Visitors, underwrotethe cost of the feasibility study forthe campaign, while Charles H.Kirbo of the Class of 1939 served aschairman of the Development Coun-cil. The three million dollar cam-paign was named for former SenatorHerman Talmadge, reminiscent ofhis earlier work to launch the JointTech-Georgia Educational Fund.

One of the highlights of theTalmadge Fund Campaign was a onemillion dollar gift to endow the Em-ily and Ernest Woodruff Chair in In-ternational Law, which enabled theSchool to attract to the faculty one ofthe preeminent scholars in theworld, Louis B. Sohn, from Harvard.The legacy of this development ef-fort is readily apparent today in thequality of the school's educationalprogram. It shows in the. level ofscholarship assistance provided bythe Castellow, Woodruff, and otherendowed scholarship funds, in fac-ulty support, and in support for stu-dent co-curricular programs.

A number of gifts were made tocreate chairs or named professor-ships. These include special profes-sorships honoring Harmon W.Caldwell, John Byrd Martin, J. AltonHosch, John A. Sibley, Pope Brock,Francis Shackelford, HermanTalmadge, Ernest P. Rogers, RobertCotten Alston, Thomas M. Kirbo,Dean Rusk, Martin E. Kilpatrick, Ma-rion and W. Colquitt Carter, and Al-len Post.

The faculty was strengthened bynew hirings at both the senior leveland the entry level. Richard V.Wellman came from Michigan LawSchool to accept appointment as thefirst Robert Cotten Alston Professorin 1974. The late John C. O'Byrnecame as the Francis Shackelford Pro-fessor of Taxation in 1977, to bejoined a few years later by Ronald L.Carlson, Thomas J. Schoenbaum,and L. Ray Patterson, who had al-ready gained national prominence atthe time of their appointments tonamed professorships. Erwin Surre-ncy, Class of 1949, returned to hisalma mater from Temple as Law Li-brarian in 1979.

192 GEORGIA STATE BAR JOURNALHeinOnline -- 26 Ga. St. B. J. 192 1989-1990

Increasingly, faculty appoint-ments at the entry level were aimedat recruiting scholars who wouldwrite for a national audience andwho would bring to the Law Schoola diversity of ideas and approachesto understanding and teaching law.Milner S. Ball in Constitutional Lawand Jurisprudence, Albert M. Pear-son in Criminal Law and Procedure,Paul Kurtz in Family Law, Ellen Jor-dan in Contracts and Unfair TradePractice, Walter Hellerstein in Tax,James F. Ponsoldt in Antitrust, Mi-chael Wells in Federal Courts andThomas A. Eaton in Law and Medi-cine joined the faculty during thisperiod and earned promotion to therank of full professor.

In the 1970s the faculty began bet-ter to reflect the changing genderand racial composition of the stu-dent body and the legal profession.In 1970 Barbara Bates Croft becamethe first woman to be appointed tothe faculty, and the first black mem-ber, Larry Blount, joined the facultyin 1976.

Law Library in the 1970sand 1980s

The great fortune of having a mil-lion dollars to build the Law School'scollection into one of the top-ratedlibraries in the country brought withit a corresponding dilemma of howbest to serve its patrons.

Association of American LawSchools accreditation standards re-quire that library seating should ac-commodate at any one time 65 per-cent of the student body. When theshelving space was filled to capacityin 1973, the floor space remainingprovided 373 seats, which wouldlimit the student body enrollment to573. That year the fall enrollmentwas 649. The alternatives were tolimit the size of the entering classesor to expand the available study andshelf space in the immediate future.The latter was the only acceptablealternative.

In 1979, construction began on alibrary annex to provide neededstudy and shelf space, faculty of-fices, and offices for the GeorgiaLaw Review and Georgia Journal ofInternational and ComparativeLaw. The new annex, completed in1981, added an aesthetically pleas-ing facility of three stories and some

24,000 net square feet. AssociateJus-tice Harry Blackmun spoke at thededication ceremony that year andthe building was named in honor ofDean J. Alton Hosch.

The Rusk CenterInternational trade has played an

important role in the growth ofGeorgia's economy since the early1970s, particularly with the empha-sis placed on fostering internationalbusiness investment and overseasexports by Governor George D. Bus-bee (Class of 1952).

The Dean Rusk Center for Interna-tional and Comparative Law was es-tablished in 1977 to make the studyand application of international law

Former Secretary of State DeanRuskjoined the Law School facultyin 1970 as the Samuel H. SibleyProfessor of International Law.The Law School's Rusk Center forInternational and ComparativeLaw is named in his honor

and international cooperation morecentral to the education of this newgeneration of lawyers. It seeks toprovide specialized knowledge andput this knowledge to the service ofgovernment and business leaders.

There was never a question aboutwho the new center would benamed for or who its chief advisorwas to be. Dean Rusk, whose namewas synonymous with internationallaw and diplomacy, spent untold

hours bringing to the citizens andleaders of his native state an appreci-ation of the dangers and possibilitiesof a truly global economy. Mrs. Lyn-don B. Johnson, widow of one of thepresidents under whom Rusk servedas Secretary of State, attended theceremony in his honor as did formerU.S. Undersecretary of State GeorgeW. Ball, a Rusk protege.

Dr. Frederick W. Huszagh was thefirst Executive Director of the RuskCenter. He was succeeded in 1983 byThomas J. Schoenbaum.

True to its mission, the Rusk Cen-ter is currently engaged in studyingthe dynamics of Japanese-UnitedStates trade relations, analyzingways of doing business in South Ko-rea, and developing strategies for es-tablishing American business pres-ence in Europe after 1992. The RuskCenter has explored the goal ofachieving free and fair trade withCanada and studied the problemssurrounding arms control and thestrategic defense initiative. TheDean Rusk Center is fulfilling aptlyits mission of bringing a broad inter-disciplinary focus to issues of inter-national importance.

The Institute of ContinuingJudicial Education

The Institute of Continuing Judi-cial Education (ICJE) was founded inthe fall of 1977. S. Jerome (Jerry)Braun, a 1971 UGA graduate, was itsfirst director. ICJE is one of the sevenindependent departments of the ju-dicial branch of Georgia govern-ment, and operates under the direc-tion of a Board of Trustees that isrepresentative of trial court judgesand other officials served throughICJE's programs. The first convoca-tion of Georgia judges in the state'smodern history was held in Septem-ber 1978 in Athens and was spon-sored by ICJE.

In 1982, Richard D. Reaves, for-mer director of education for theFlorida state court system, becamedirector of ICJE. Reaves has devel-oped a model program that makesGeorgia a national leader in provid-ing continuing education for bothjudges and their support staffs. Theeducation and training programs forlower court judges developed byICJE were judged the best in the na-


VOLUME 26/NO. 4/MAY 1990 193

7



tion by the ABA's National Confer-ence of Special Court judges in Au-gust 1989.

Modern Graduate StudiesProgram

Efforts to establish a Master ofLaWs program were first initiated in1952 and again in 1968, when theprogram was reactivated. The pri-Mary focus of the LL.M. program hasbeen in international and compara-tiVe law studies. The Law School es-tablished a full-fledged Office ofGraduate Studies in 1985 with Pro-fessor Gabriel Wilner as the director.Witiner's contacts in Europe and thereputation of the faculty at Georgiahave attracted a steady stream of ex-cellent foreign students. About 20young lawyers from around theworld study at Georgia each year.Today, thanks to this program, law-yers with Georgia ties can be foundin government posts and in firms andbusinesses around the world.

1987 and BeyondWhen Ralph Beaird stepped down

from the deanship in July 1987, hecould look with pride on a schoolhailed by a recent ABA/AALS accred-itation report as a Law School "thathas arrived." I became the dean of analready fine school that year, but onewith aspirations to become even bet-ter.

The measures of quality of a lawschool are well known: superior stu-dents and faculty; an excellent li-brary and instructional resources;first-class physical facilities; and thatmost amorphous of attributes, repu-tation. During the last three years

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the Law School has enjoyed successin each of these areas.

Applications to law school are upnationally, and our school will set anew record of more than 2,000 ap-plications this year. With an enteringclass of approximately 200 planned,we expect to enroll the bestacademically-prepared class, mea-sured by the objective yardsticks ofLSAT and undergraduate grade pointaverage, in the school's history.

New faculty joining us this yearadded strength and diversity to analready strong faculty. Alan Watson,the world's foremost scholar in thearea of comparative legal history, ac-cepted appointment as the firstholder of the Ernest P. Rogers Chair.Four tremendously talented new as-sistant professors launched or con-tinued their teaching careers atGeorgia this year, and, in anotherfirst, Professor Edward Larson ac-cepted our first joint appointment asAssistant Professor of History andLaw. Like any living thing, a facultygrows and changes over time, butour school has had a tradition ofgreat teachers and that aspect of thefaculty's mission will remain strongeven as research and scholarshipgains new emphasis. We were allpleased, therefore, when Ronald L.Carlson, the John Byrd Martin Pro-fessor of Law, was selected to re-ceive one of the University's tophonors for teaching, the Josiah MeigsAward in 1989.

The Law Library is the primary re-search laboratory for law studentsand faculty. With over 400,000 vol-umes, our library ranks among thebest in the country. Funding for li-brary acquisitions has been a top pri-ority in the University budget forthese past two years, and the LawLibrary acquisitions budget hasgrown by $150,000 in that period. Asubstantial portion of this new fund-ing was allocated to providing elec-tronic data bases such as WestLaw,LEXIS and NEXIS for faculty and stu-dent research. Increasing the avail-ability of these electronic data basesand providing computers for wordprocessing for faculty and studentshas been a major objective and hasbeen accomplished. The Law Schoolis equipped with computers and newresearch technology as the 1990s be-gin.

Plans are well along to securematching state and private fundingto construct a new $5 million addi-tion to the Law School. The new fa-cility will provide a permanenthome for the Dean Rusk Center andwill serve to further all of the LawSchool's principal missions of teach-ing, research, and service by provid-ing state-of-the art facilities to edu-cate a new generation of lawyers forthe profession in the 21st Century.

The reputation of a school for edu-cating highly-talented men andwomen for the profession of the lawmust remain largely subjective. Oneindication of the strength of theschool, nevertheless, is that fourGeorgia graduates have been se-lected to clerk for Justices on theUnited States Supreme Court. Begin-ning with Benna Solomon in theClass of 1978, these have been BruceBrown and Glenn Darbyshire fromthe Class of 1984 and Anne Dupre,Class of 1988, who is serving as lawclerk this year for Justice HarryBlackmun.

The advancement of the LawSchool over the past 131 years hasbeen a remarkable story of success.The roster of graduates since the firstgraduating class of 1860 reveals animpressive list of graduates whowere elected or appointed to publicoffice: nine governors, fifteen mem-bers of the Supreme Court of Geor-gia; eighteen members of the Courtof Appeals of Georgia; six UnitedStates senators from Georgia;twenty United States congressionalrepresentatives from Georgia, andseven speakers of the Georgia Houseof Representatives.

To preserve the Law School's hard-won progress and to achieve the goalof moving it into the front ranks ofthis country's great law schools willrequire a continued commitment toits sustained excellence and a sub-stantial enhancement of both privateand state resources. It is a goal that isboth worthy and attainable.

Footnotes1. A. Wade, One Hundred Years of Legal Edu-cation at the University of Georgia 2 (unpub-lished manuscript).2. Bull. U. Ga. Sch. L. (1880).3. T.W. Reed, The Lumpkin Law School 12(unpublished manuscript).4. University of Georgia Alumni SocietyBoard minutes, June 15, 1927.



Documents

Georgia's Historic Law Schools -- Part II: University of