Griswold Urges Emphasis On Law

Dean Erwin N. Griswold of the Harvard Law School wants to see several Institutes of Law established in the United States--to push full-time research on such neglected problems as disarmament and maintenance of peace, the laws of different nations and cultures, automobile accidents, crime and delinquency, and public and legal ethics.

He estimates that less than $1 million a year is spent on legal research, and most of this is done by teachers and others working part-time or intermittently on research. Expenditures for legal research, Griswold estimates, are about one-100th of one percent of the $8.4 billion expended last year on scientific research including defense.

In his annual report to President Nathan M. Pusey, Dean Griswold contrasted the small research investment for disarmament studies with the necessary large expenditures for defense research, the small expenditure for auto accident research with large outlay for studying cancer. He proposed that research Institutes of Law be associated with several of the nation's law schools, supported preferably by private funds.

Basic to the Dean's proposal is the fact that the American law teacher has been a "loner." He is burdened with heavy teaching assignments since there are insufficient funds for the employment of junior teachers. Legal scholarship has thus focused around personal teaching. This is not always desirable says Griswold, for it "leaves little room at a for juniors whose talents in the field of legal scholarship, commentary, and leadership lie in other areas than teaching."

Further, says Griswold, a method is needed in law schools whereby a "particularly able senior man may extend his influence and abilities."

Dean Griswold pointed out that at present the law schools are unable to channel the idealism of the college youths who go on to study law. "The student is caught in the current which says that the real measure of success is a clerkship with a prominent judge followed by an association with a large metropolitan law firm."

It is for the law schools to show the rewards and personal satisfactions to be gained by the lawyer who works on the great unsolved problems of the twentieth century, says Griswold. But the openings must be available. "If we had Institutes of Law functioning at various places in the country, employing a sizable number of lawyers--though only a fraction of the number of persons engaged in research in the natural sciences and in medicine--we would not only provide an outlet for the idealism which many of our students bring to law school, but we would also bring about a significant change in the orientation of our legal instruction and thought."

Dean Griswold also said in part:

"In the United States, there are tens of thousands of people working on the intellectual problems of the military. There are scarcely a handful who are assigned, full time, to the task of working on the intellectual problems of disarmament, or of peace through the extension and development of world law. These are not easy tasks. They will not be quickly resolved, even with great effort. How can we expect to resolve them with little effort, or with sporadic effort? If we have 10,000 people in the Pentagon, and in such organizations as the Rand Corporation, devoting their minds to problems of defense, should we not have at least, a thousand working in and out of Government on the manifold problems of the maintenance of peace?"

"Or, let us turn to other fields. There are the problems of automobile accidents, and of crime and juvenile delinquency, and of families and children, of fair trial, and of standards of the bench and bar, and public service. How much substantial concerted effort has ever been devoted to these problems? It is the true that there have been reports on these problems by bar association committees, by temporary public commissions, by private organizations, almost invariably made up of people working on a part-time basis, and that there have been many devoted individuals who have dedicated their lives to these matters, and have contributed brilliantly to them. But can we expect to solve these problems on a basis of intermittent, individual work? The problems of automobile accidents and or crime are surely as important to society, and no less difficult, than the problem of cancer."

Describing the public approval 40 years ago when Judge Benjamin N. Cordozo urged the creation of a Ministry of Justice in this country, Dean Griswold asked: "Where in the United States is there a Ministry of Justice today?--or anything like it? Where is the body, in the nation, or in the states, to which one can turn for effective self-supported research on problems of public concern, adequately staffed to attack the problems on a full scale, and produce recommendations for effective action? There are, it is true, legislative counsel and legislative research services in Congress and in a few of the states. But these groups are almost always understaffed. A number of law schools, feeling the need, have come to call themselves legal centers. This is a step in the right direction, and there is no doubt that these schools would be prepared to take longer steps, if they could receive adequate support for the purpose."

Dean Griswold also called for a new conception of the role of the law-school professor and for an increase in study and research on comparative law.

"There are many legal problems, of increasing concern to the United States, and to American lawyers, which involve legal systems other than common law."