Distinguished Jurists Attend Dedication of Langdell Today

At 11 o'clock this morning Langdell Hall of the Harvard Law School will be dedicated by ceremonies conducted in the Courtroom of that building before an assembly of many of the foremost lawyers of this country and representatives of the bar and the schools of several foreign countries.

The company will include the Under Secretary of State Joseph P. Cotton, '96, the Honorable George W. Wickersham, Chairman of the President's National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, deans and representatives of a number of the leading law schools of the country. United States Federal and State Judges, Canadian Judges, foreign lawyers and scholars, and a large representation from the American bar. Five hundred or more guests are expected to attend the ceremonies.

Portrait of Dean Pound Presented

The proceedings are conducted by the Harvard Law School Association, whose President is Mr. William Thomas of San Francisco. Dean Roscoe Pound of the Harvard Law School, a member of the President's Commission of which Mr. Wickersham is Chairman, and the Under Secretary of State of the United States, Mr. Cotton, will address the guests. Following these addresses, a portrait of Dean Pound, painted by Mr. Charles Hopkinson of Boston, will be presented to the School by the Harvard Law School Association. The President of the University will receive the keys of the building from the architect, Mr. Charles A. Coolidge of Boston. Honorary degrees will be conferred on distinguished foreign scholars.

Following the dedication a buffet luncheon will be served in the Reading Room, and an inspection of the building will follow. One of the unique features of the new building which the visitors will be shown is the reading room, the largest in any library in the world, a room 480 feet long, extending the length of the building. In the center of this huge room there is located a delivery desk 24 feet square, with a capacity for 1600 books within the desk. A book lift connects this desk with the book stacks in the basements, so that, at a moment's notice, the student may secure the desired book.

Library Houses 500,000 Volumes

A complete set of all American and English reports has been placed at each end of the reading room. The facilities for caring for the vast law library have been enlarged in the same way as these reference facilities. The new Langdell Hall will house 500,000 volumes, or almost double the number in the old Langdell Hall.

In the midst of the book stacks there are located 35 studies for graduate students, and 96 stack stalls for undergraduate work in the stacks. The enlargement of the facilities for graduate students is in line with the policy of the School to increase its graduate and research work.

Model English Courtroom

Large lecture rooms, one seating 350 students and the other 200, give the school the additional classroom space which it has needed for a great while. The larger of these rooms is built in the form of an amphitheatre and can be used for some of the trials. But it is the new Courtroom where most of the important trials will be conducted by the undergraduates.

This Courtroom, in which the dedication is being held today, is modelled after the style of the old English Courts at Westminster, with seats for counsel inside the bar on the sides and at right angles to the judges' bench as well as before the bench. It is probably one of the finest court, rooms in the country. Its acoustics are remarkable, for an acousticon ceiling enables the counsel, standing with back to the audience, to be heard in any part of the large room.

Powell Leader of Funds Drive

The building which is dedicated today is but one of the tangible results of that campaign which brought before the American people the need for an enlarged Harvard Law School. From March, 1926, until June, 1927, a large corps of workers set forth to graduates of the Harvard Law School, and to other lawyers and laymen throughout the country the national need for a reexamination of our legal system. This corps of workers, led by Mr. Wilson M. Powell, '96, LL. B. '98, a prominent New York attorney, produced the funds wherewith Harvard's research and library facilities were enlarged and her graduate work was made a new and growing feature of the School.

In line with the reexamination of our legal system, Harvard opens this fall the work of the new Institute of Criminal Law, whose Director is Professor Francis Bowes Sayre of the Harvard Law School. To assist Professor Sayre, Professor Sam Bass Warner comes to Harvard from the University of Syracuse and Mr. Sheldon Glueck, author of "Mental Disorders and the Criminal Law", becomes Assistant Professor of Criminology and assumes a position on the staff of the new Institute. Assistant Professor John Joseph Burns of the Harvard Law School will collaborate with Professor Sayre in the Institute.

Beale, Pound, Frankfurter to Assist

An advisory committee of Dean Roscoe Pound. Professor Joseph H. Beale and Professor, Felix Frankfurter of the Law School will assist in the work. Research projects will be carried on with the aid of graduate students and visiting research professors.

The teacher whose memory is preserved by the building dedicated today was a great example of the tradition of innovation at Harvard, for it was Professor Langdell, at that time Dean of the Law School, who introduced the "case" system into American legal teaching. After graduating from the Harvard Law School Dean Langdell went into practice in New York City. In 1870 President Eliot, remembering the work he had done as an undergraduate with Professor Parsons, in aiding that teacher to complete his book on Contracts, brought Langdell back to Harvard as Dean of the Law School and Dane Professor of Law, positions which he held until 1895