Howe Given Law School Warren Seat

Mark DeWolfe Howe '28, professor of Law, has been named the first Charles Warren Professor of the History of American Law. His new chair is one of the four endowed by the $7 million grant that will also finance the Warren Center for Studies in American History.

Howe said that he was not certain what his duties would be, but hopes to advise graduate students in American legal history.

To Stay At Law School

Despite his new appointment, Howe will remain a member of the Law School faculty. The still unnamed Warren Professors of the History of Education in America and the History of Religion in America will be associated with the School of Education and the Divinity School respectively.

Oscar Handlin, director of the Warren Center, is the only Warren Professor associated with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He recently expressed hope that the three Warren Professors from the graduate faculties would collaborate with the members of the History Department who will staff the new center.

Howe predicted yesterday that the Warren Center would lead to collaboration in general between the Law School and the History Department.

Howe teaches Law School courses on the history of legal institutions in the United States, church-state issues, and civil rights. He is also an expert on the life and writings of the late Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. He has edited Holmes' letters and written two volumes of a biography on Holmes.

In addition to teaching at the Law School, this year Howe is giving a new undergraduate course, Soc Sci 124, "Civil Rights in American History."

Howe graduated from Harvard Law School in 1933 and then clerked for Justice Holmes.