In this well-researched and engaging book, Paul DeForest Hicks makes a convincing case that the Litchfield Law School provided the most innovative and successful legal education program in the country for almost fifty years (1784-1833). A recent history of the Harvard Law School acknowledged, "In retrospect, both Harvard and Yale have envied Litchfield's success and wished to claim it as their ancestor."
Upwards of twelve hundred bright and ambitious students came from all over the country to study law at Litchfield with Tapping Reeve and James Gould, who took a national rather than state perspective in their lectures on the evolving principles of American common law.
In every year from 1791 to 1860, there were law school alumni, including Aaron Burr and John C. Calhoun, who served at high levels in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the federal and state governments. Hicks gives fascinating details about many who succeeded as lawyers and in public office but also in the fields of business, finance, education, art and the military. Whether they practiced law or pursued other careers, their collective achievements continued to enhance the prestige of the Litchfield Law School long after it closed.
"Just a year after the American Revolution ended, a lawyer named Tapping Reeve built a small schoolhouse next to his home in Litchfield, Connecticut. The Litchfield Law School was arguably the United States' first. Paul DeForest Hicks leaves no doubt that it was the most important law school before the Civil War. This gracefully written book tells the story of this tiny institution with national reach through the experiences of its alumni. Hicks finds Litchfield students seemingly everywhere in the young nation, and convincingly shows how they influenced the development of American politics, proslavery and antislavery ideas, capitalism, and law."
-- Mark Boonshoft, Professor of History, Norwich University
