About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

54 Alta. L. Rev. 1 (2016-2017)

handle is hein.journals/alblr54 and id is 1 raw text is: THE DEAN WHO WENT TO LAW SCHOOL 1 THE DEAN WHO WENT TO LAW SCHOOL: CROSSING BORDERS AND SEARCHING FOR PURPOSE IN NORTH AMERICAN LEGAL EDUCATION, 1930-1950 ERIC M. ADAMS* This article is about the making of modern legal education in North America. It is a case study of the lives of two law schools, the University of Alberta, Faculty of Law and the University ofMinnesota Law School, and their respective deans, WilburBowker andEverett Fraser, in the decades surrounding the Second World War. The article follows Bowker's unorthodox route to Alberta's deanship via his graduate training under the experimental 'Minnesota Plan Fraser's long-forgotten effort to place public service at the centre of American legal education. In detailing an overlooked moment of transition and soul- searching in North American legal education, this article underlines the personalities, ideologies, circumstances, and practices that combined to forge the still dominant model of university-based legal education across the continent. Highlighting the movement ofpeople and ideas, this study corrects a tendency to understand the history oflaw schools as the story ofsingle institutions and isolated visionaries. It also reveals the dynamic ways in which law schools absorbed andrefracted the period's ideological andpolitical concerns into teaching practices and institutional arrangements. In bold experiment and innate conservatism, personal ambition and institutional constraints, and, above all else, faith in the power oflaw and lawyers, the postwar law school was born. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................... 1 II. WILBUR BOWKER: THE ACCIDENTAL ACADEMIC ...................... 5 III. THE MINNESOTA PLAN: A MORE PERFECT JUSTICE .. ................ 16 IV. DEAN BOWKER AT THE BAT .................................... 29 V . CONCLUSIONS .............................................. 37 I. INTRODUCTION We are in a bad way here, George Steer, Acting Dean of the University of Alberta, Faculty of Law, lamented in November 1946. What we need, he pleaded to law deans across the country, is some young man, from 25 to 35 years of age, of good mental caliber, who wants to make teaching his job. The replies were not encouraging. I sympathize with your cry of distress, Cecil (Caesar) Wright, Dean of Osgoode Hall, answered. To be quite Associate Professor of Law, University of Alberta, Faculty of Law. An earlier version of this article received the 2014 Canadian Association of Law Teachers' Scholarly Paper Award. This research was supported by the Alberta Institute for American Studies, the Centre for Constitutional Studies, and the Faculty of Law, all of the University of Alberta, and the able research assistance of Daniel Girard, Kelsey Robertson, Sarah Hamill, and Jacqueline Byers. Earlierversions of this work were presented at the University of Alberta, Faculty of Law, the Toronto Legal History Workshop, and the 2014 Annual Meetings of the Law and Society Association I thank audiences for helpful feedback. I also thank two anonymous peer reviewers, and John Law and Anna Lund for valuable constructive criticism. David Percy, Trevor Anderson, Judge Allan Lefever, and the Right Honourable Madam Justice Beverly McLachlinvery generously shared their memories of Wilbur Bowker with me. Finally, this article is for Bruce Ziff. Steer to Wright (25 November 1946), Toronto, University of Toronto Archives (B1982-0028, Box 2, Wright Papers).

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most