Justice Frankfurter Explains Role of Law School Centers

Felix Frankfurter, associate justice of the Supreme Court, spoke about the importance of Harvard Law School training yesterday in an informal talk at Langdoll Courtroom.

The onetime Law School professor, who graduated from the School in 1906, attempted to justify the ivory-tower tradition by emphasizing the importance of "centers" removed from the distraction of daily affairs and devoted to "the systematic pursuit of reason."

"The world is with us much too much," Frankfurter said. Then he said that every man should have a "center where he can avoid spot-news psychology."

"Law School should not attempt to teach men the specific facts that are relevant to current affairs," Frankfurter said. Rather, it should give them the "intellectual equipment necessary for what we call the world' with the proper strength and good sense."

Stimson a Law School Great

During his three years here, the Justice said, the law student is "laying up capital that worms cannot eat nor time rust. Capital impregnable, unassailable, and undiminishable."

To prove the effectiveness of this type of law education, Frankfurter mentioned the late Henry L. Stimson LL.B. '90, Secretary of War during World War II.

"It is not an accident the Stimson and his half-dozen helpers all came from this school, or that military affairs in the last war were run so well. These men dealt with problems far removed from the classroom, yet they were using the intellectual equipment they acquired at Harvard."