Scott to Retire From Law Faculty

The nation's leading authority on the law of Trusts, Austin W. Scott, Dane Professor of Law will retire this summer at the age of 76. The man whom Dean Emeritus Roscoe Pound has called "Mr. Harvard Law School" and "one of the four greatest teachers of law I have known" has been on the faculty for more than 50 years.

Scott was Acting Dean of the Law School in 1915-16, served as Dean of the College of Law at the State University of lows on a leave of absence in 1911-12, and became Dane Professor in 1932.

During World War II with most of the Law Faculty off on Government or military service, it was largely due to Scott that the Law School could stay open for the 60 or 70 students then attending classes. He led courses he had never taught previously and took on a large burden for his colleagues.

His Scott on Trusts, a five-volume masterpiece originally published in 1929 and his casebook, The Law of Trusts, now in its fourth edition, are preeminent in their field.

In 1956, for the second edition of his treatise on Trusts, Scott received the University's highest faculty award, the Ledlie Prize. The award is given every second year to the individual at Harvard who "has by research, discovered or otherwise made the most valuable contribution to science, or in any way for the benefit of mankind."

In his retirement Scott plans to continue his research and writing in his familiar office on the second floor of Langdell Hall.

Scott has received honorary degrees as Doctor of Laws from Brown, Harvard, and Rutgers. In the spring of 1954, while giving a course of lectures on the law of trusts at Oxford, he received that university's honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law.

Though known best for Trusts, Scott is also a recognized authority on Civil Procedure and Judicial Remedies, in which fields he has edited three casebooks and taught several courses.