THE NEW DEAN OF THE HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

If the presidency of Harvard University is, as it has sometimes been called, the most important post in America, the deanship of the Harvard Law School has achieved a secondary rank all its own. A long list of distinguished jurists have occupied it. While the school faces able rivals today, it assumed the leadership of legal education under Dean Langdell and its contribution to the progress of the nation's law in every field, public and private, continues high.

Therefore the appointment of Mr. James M. Landis, at the age of thirty-seven, as dean is of the widest interest. There will be general agreement, we are confident, that President Conant and the Board of Overseers could not have made a happier choice. There were many worried faces in Wall Street when to this earnest young professor was assigned the task of helping to tame the Stock Exchange. There could be no question of the adequacy of his background of learning or of the keen edge of his mind. He had been called the most brilliant student at Harvard Law School since the days of Justice Brandeis. But what of his knowledge of human nature, his impartiality, his willingness to learn?

Time resolved all these doubts in favor of Mr. Landis.

As a result, the public service of Mr. Landis must be ranked as one of the brightest spots in the New Deal record. He takes to the direction of the Harvard Law School a wealth of training with concrete human problems. He left a professorship of law to perform this important public service. He returns with an experience that cannot fail to influence the course of legal training for a generation to come.

The legal profession has lost much of its old standing for many reasons. Mr. Landis has qualities which, disseminated over the years, might go far to recover this prestige. He combines with the clearest and fairest of minds a devotion to truth and the right that the country sorely needs in every branch of public service. Indeed, democracy can scarcely survive without the example and leading of such men in posts of responsibility. The whole legal profession is to be congratulated on President Conant's acumen. The appointment is nothing less than distinguished. --N.Y. Herald Tribune