Professor Pound's Teaching Career at an End

Roscoc Pound has given his last class at Harvard.

From Professor Pound's casual office in the stacks of Langdell Library, word came this term that the 76-year old legal philosopher, dean of the Law School for 20 years, would retire July 1. "It is best to retire before people begin wondering why you don't," he mused, peering over the wall of books that lines his desk on three sides.

Simultaneous with the announcement of his withdrawal from active work at the University, Professor Pound disclosed plans to return to China this summer to complete the work he began last year on he codification of Chinese law. He will leave for the Orient some time towards the close of the summer after preparatory work here at the University. "We need six weeks in the library before we can go ahead," he explained, adding that China now has no adequate library of comparative law, The Japanese spoiled such institutions during their years of military occupation.

Charles Evans Hughes said of Professor Pound on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, "He has a unique place among American scholars. By reason of his wide knowledge of legal subjects and his rare talent for exposition, he has been a brilliant teacher. His writings constitute a notable contribution to the science of jurisprudence. He has also been a close student of the practical problems of the courts and has greatly aided in promoting sound administrative measures,"

During the fall, the portly, Keen-eyed jurist carried a heavy law schedule, beside one course in he College. He grades all examinations and term papers himself. "I do not think it is fair to my students to have assistants do the work," he said. He found his first postwar class swollen, as is the rule these days, with serious-minded veterans "much better" than those before the war.

Philosophical Pioneer

Professor Pound's reputation rests on the philosophy of "sociological jurisprudence," which he conceived and pioneered. Law became for him no mere pattern of rules. The aim of the law was, he enunciated, not just stability or the ordering of individual wills. Rather it was to harmonize the conflicting interests in society through the force of an organized political structure. "We may think of the task of the legal order," Professor Pound summed up, "as one of precluding friction and eliminating waste; of conserving the goods of existence in order to make them go as far as possible."

Only a few years after slavery had been prohibited in the Nebraska Territory and with the pony express yet to be replaced by the overland telegraph, Roscoe Pound was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1870. His father was a judge; his mother, an amateur botanist.

Young Pound must have taken after this mother in his early years. Botany was his field when he took his A.B. from the University of Nebraska at the age of 17. His masters came the following year, and in 1897 he took a Ph.D. Both were in botany.

At the age of 18, he came east to study at the Harvard Law School. Pound took the freshman courses and sat in one as many others as he could.

One of the School's top men at the time, John C. Gray, chanced upon the Nebraskan in the library one afternoon, poring over Mackensie's Roman Law. Gray stopped and advised, "Don't read that." He picked a copy advised, "Don't read that." He picked a copy of the then recently published 1889 edition of Sohm's Institute from the shelves and set it down before Pound. "Read this," he admonished and walked on. Twenty years later Gray sat in Professor Pound's seminar on Roman Law.

In a letter to his parents back in Nebraska, Pound explained that studying was hardly fashionable in Cambridge. But he had found an ingenious way to maintain both caste and scholarship. "The Law School men have the reputation of working harder than the College men--and I think they probably do," he wrote. "If a College man works very hard, he is called a grind and generally looked down on.

"I probably wouldn't stand much show, if I didn't go with a College set who suppose, of course, when I am not with them that I am with the Law School fellows or at the club. I am hardly even there. But there is only one other Law School fellow there, and he is never at the library. Consequently I can work all the time, and no one knows the difference. As I room at a private house, I am not bothered with callers."

Pound left the Law School after a single year to return to Nebraska. He has never taken the LL.B in course but has received the honorary Doctor of Laws from the nation's universities better than 14 times since Michigan first awarded it to him in 1912.

Professor Pound doubled as a commissioner of appeals for Nebraska's Supreme Court and an assistant professor in her University's law school until Dean Wigmore of Northwestern offered him a position on his faculty and a chance to practice in Chicago.

Northwestern to Chicago

At Northwestern, Professor Pound had a light, six hour teaching schedule with ample opportunity for research and writing. Soon the University of Chicago offered him a staff position with a high stipend. Dean Wigmore volunteered to meet the figure, but Pound took the position that it would be "intolerable" for him to receive a higher salary than

His brief stay at Chicago was the last stop on the road to Harvard. Dean Thayer invited him to become Story Professor of Law, and 1913 found him Carter Professor of Jurisprudence. At Dean Thayer's death in 1916, Professor Pound became Dean of the Law School. He was the first men graduate of the School to hold that post.

During his 20-year tenure as dean, Harvard became the nation's leader in training men for teaching and government service. While this program was carving out the success that Dean Pound had worked for, the enrollment doubled, remaining at 1500 from the immediate postwar period throughout his deanship. In 1936 he became a University Professor and added undergraduate courses to his schedule.

Astounding feats of memory have along fascinated Professor Pound's friends and associates. Undergraduates are flattered to find he remembers names, faces, and even the details of term papers.

Before delivering an address to the Chicago Bar Association, Professor Pound was approached by the editor of its Review with a suggestion that the Review publish the speech. Professor Pound pulled out his manuscript and handed it to the editor. "Is this your address for tonight?" he asked. Pound replied that it was nut that he did not need his text, as he had dictated it on the way over from Philadelphia so that it was fresh in his mind. Following the talk through the pages of the manuscript, the Review's editor reported that they corresponded nearly word for word, with all the changes seemingly for the better.

Professor Pound has always been a strong man and for years could run a five minute mile. When he lived in Belmont, he walked six miles a day to Cambridge, and he became famous among his neighbors for going coat-less in subzero weather.

On one occasion he excited the sympathy of a group of people who saw him walking along the shore overlooking to bay. He was coat-less as usual; the thermometer read ten below. Mrs. Pound, who tells the story, was embarrassed to confess to the commiserators that the "poor man" was her husband, as she was swathed warmly in mink.

Professor Pound, still vigorous and active, is today the epitome of what a man retiring should be. He refuses to be drawn into controversy.. "I have been in the midst of controversial issues all my life," he replies to queries about the New Deal or the Supreme Court. "This is not the time for that." He has already achieved substantially all the honors that can be accorded to a lawyer. He retires from the University in an aura of faculty-student regret at giving up a great thinker and a great teacher. But it is an aura of mutual good will.

At the time of his retirement, Professor Pound became the focal point of a flood of congratulations and good wishes mixed with regret at the loss of his figure from the American legal scene. By wire and mail and phone the 76-year old giant got his due from the top minds in American government and law.

Albert Kourek, professor emeritus at North western university where Pound started his long teaching career, summed up the general feeling with his statement: "In our time in this country in the field of legal philosophy, one alpine peak has appeared above the surrounding landscape. This is Roscoe Pound."

Punctuality

Among other of his characteristics, Roscoe Pound has always emphasized punctuality. Only twice in his career at Harvard did he fail to keep an appointment. Once was this spring term, his last at Harvard, when he missed the first meeting of his undergraduate course. Government 43 to the surprise of the assembled and expectant class. The explanation was a simple one, though: in the confusion of different College and Law School opening dates he had merely forgotten to note the lecture date on his overstuffed calendar.