Nathan Roscoe Pound (October 27, 1870 – June 30, 1964) was an American legal scholar and educator. He served as Dean of the
University of Nebraska College of Law
The University of Nebraska College of Law is one of the professional graduate schools of University of Nebraska system. It was founded in 1888 and became part of University of Nebraska in 1891. According to Nebraska's official 2017 ABA-required di ...
from 1903 to 1911 and
Dean of Harvard Law School
The dean of Harvard Law School is the head of Harvard Law School. The current dean is John F. Manning, the 13th person to hold the post, who succeeded Martha Minow in 2017.
List of deans of Harvard Law School
Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School ...
from 1916 to 1936. He was a member of
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world.
Charte ...
, the
University of Chicago Law School
The University of Chicago Law School is the law school of the University of Chicago, a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is consistently ranked among the best and most prestigious law schools in the world, and has many dist ...
and the faculty at
UCLA School of Law
The UCLA School of Law is one of 12 professional schools at the University of California, Los Angeles. UCLA Law has been consistently ranked by '' U.S. News & World Report'' as one of the top 20 law schools in the United States since the inception ...
in the school's early years, from 1949 to 1952. ''
The Journal of Legal Studies
''The Journal of Legal Studies'' is a law journal published by the University of Chicago Press focusing on interdisciplinary academic research in law and legal institutions.
It emphasizes social science approaches, especially those of economics, ...
'' has identified Pound as one of the most cited legal scholars of the 20th century.
Early life and education
Pound was born in
Lincoln, Nebraska
Lincoln is the capital city of the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Lancaster County. The city covers with a population of 292,657 in 2021. It is the second-most populous city in Nebraska and the 73rd-largest in the United Sta ...
to
Stephen Bosworth Pound
Stephen Bosworth Pound (January 14, 1833 – May 14, 1911) was a pioneer lawyer, senator and judge in Nebraska, USA.
Early life and education
Pound was born at Farmington, New York, son of farmer Nathan King Pound and Hannah (née Lane). The Poun ...
and Laura Pound. His sister was the noted linguist and folklorist,
Louise Pound
Louise Pound (June 30, 1872 – June 28, 1958) was an American folklorist, linguist, and college professor at the University of Nebraska. In 1955, Pound was the first woman elected president of the Modern Language Association, and in the same y ...
.
Pound studied
botany
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...
at the
University of Nebraska
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...
in Lincoln, where he became a member of the
Chi Phi Fraternity. He received his bachelor's degree in 1888 and his master's degree in 1889. In 1889 he began the study of law; he spent one year at
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
but never received a law degree. Following his year at Harvard, he returned to Nebraska where he passed the bar without a law degree. He received the first
PhD in botany from the University of Nebraska in 1898. From 1899 to 1907 he taught law on the faculty of the University of Nebraska law school.
The University of Nebraska established its first football team the year after Pound graduated. Pound traveled with the teams to their games, including their first one. He also covered the team in the student newspaper and even refereed some games. Pound created many chants and songs for the team and helped create a fan base that traveled well, which is something that the Cornhuskers still see to this day.
Career
In 1903, Pound became dean of the
University of Nebraska College of Law
The University of Nebraska College of Law is one of the professional graduate schools of University of Nebraska system. It was founded in 1888 and became part of University of Nebraska in 1891. According to Nebraska's official 2017 ABA-required di ...
. In 1911 he began teaching at Harvard and in 1916 became dean of
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States.
Each class ...
and served in that role until 1937. He wrote "Spurious Interpretation" in 1907, ''Outlines of Lectures on Jurisprudence'' in 1914, ''The Spirit of the Common Law'' in 1921, ''Law and Morals'' in 1924, and ''Criminal Justice in America'' in 1930.
In 1908 he was part of the founding editorial staff of the first
comparative law
Comparative law is the study of differences and similarities between the law (legal systems) of different countries. More specifically, it involves the study of the different legal "systems" (or "families") in existence in the world, including the ...
journal in the United States, the ''
Annual Bulletin'' of the
Comparative Law Bureau
The ''Annual Bulletin'' of the Comparative Law Bureau of the American Bar Association (ABA) was a U.S. specialty law journal (1908–1914, 1933). The first comparative law journal in the United States, it surveyed foreign legislation and legal lit ...
of the
American Bar Association
The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of acad ...
. In 1909, he taught at the
University of Chicago Law School
The University of Chicago Law School is the law school of the University of Chicago, a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is consistently ranked among the best and most prestigious law schools in the world, and has many dist ...
. Although it is not often remembered now, Pound was a Roman law scholar. He taught that subject at Nebraska, Northwestern and Harvard. Pound was sufficiently adept at Latin to translate Roman law into English for a sourcebook he used for those classes, and he was said by Professor
Joseph Henry Beale
Joseph Henry Beale (October 12, 1861 – January 20, 1943) was an American law professor at Harvard Law School and served as the first dean of University of Chicago Law School. He was notable for his advancement of legal formalism, as well ...
to have "brought the spirit of Roman law to Harvard". Pound was also the founder of the movement for "
sociological jurisprudence
The sociology of law (legal sociology, or law and society) is often described as a sub-discipline of sociology or an interdisciplinary approach within legal studies. Some see sociology of law as belonging "necessarily" to the field of sociology, ...
", an influential critic of the
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
's "liberty of contract" (
freedom of contract
Freedom of contract is the process in which individuals and groups form contracts without government restrictions. This is opposed to government regulations such as minimum-wage laws, competition laws, economic sanctions, restrictions on pri ...
) line of cases, symbolized by ''
Lochner v. New York
''Lochner v. New York'', 198 U.S. 45 (1905), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that a New York state law setting maximum working hours for bakers violated the bakers' right to freedom of contract under t ...
'' (1905), and one of the early leaders of the movement for American
Legal Realism
Legal realism is a naturalistic approach to law. It is the view that jurisprudence should emulate the methods of natural science, i.e., rely on empirical evidence. Hypotheses must be tested against observations of the world.
Legal realists be ...
, which argued for a more pragmatic and public-interested interpretation of law and a focus on how the legal process actually occurred, as opposed to (in his view) the arid
legal formalism
Legal formalism is both a descriptive theory and a normative theory of how judges should decide cases. In its descriptive sense, formalists maintain that judges reach their decisions by applying uncontroversial principles to the facts; formalis ...
which prevailed in American jurisprudence at the time. According to Pound, these jurisprudential movements advocated "the adjustment of principles and doctrines to the human conditions they are to govern rather than to assumed first principles". While Pound was dean, law school registration almost doubled, but his standards were so rigorous that one-third of those matriculated did not receive degrees. Among these were many of the great political innovators of the New Deal years.
In 1929 President
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gr ...
appointed Pound as one of the eleven primary members of the
Wickersham Commission
The National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (also known unofficially as the Wickersham Commission) was a committee established by the U.S. President, Herbert Hoover, on May 20, 1929. Former attorney general George W. Wickersham (1858 ...
on issues relating to law enforcement, criminal activity,
police brutality
Police brutality is the excessive and unwarranted use of force by law enforcement against an individual or a group. It is an extreme form of police misconduct and is a civil rights violation. Police brutality includes, but is not limited to, ...
, and
Prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic ...
.
During Roosevelt's first term, Pound initially supported the
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
.
In 1937, however, Pound turned against the New Deal and the Legal Realism movement altogether after Roosevelt proposed
packing the federal courts and
bringing independent agencies into the executive branch.
Other factors contributing to this "lurking conservatism" within Pound included bitter battles with liberals on the Harvard law faculty, the death of his wife, and a sharp exchange with
Karl Llewellyn
Karl Nickerson Llewellyn (May 22, 1893 – February 13, 1962) was a prominent American jurisprudential scholar associated with the school of legal realism. ''The Journal of Legal Studies'' has identified Llewellyn as one of the twenty most cited A ...
. Pound, however, had for years been an outspoken advocate of these court and administrative reforms that Roosevelt proposed
and it was acknowledged that he only became conservative because he saw an opportunity to gain attention after his Harvard colleagues had turned on his ideas of government reform after Roosevelt had proposed them.
In 1937 Pound resigned as Dean of Harvard Law School to become a University Professor
and soon became a leading critic of the legal realists.
He proposed his ideas of government reform to Chinese leader
Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek (31 October 1887 – 5 April 1975), also known as Chiang Chung-cheng and Jiang Jieshi, was a Chinese Nationalist politician, revolutionary, and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 ...
.
In 1934 Pound received an honorary degree from the University of Berlin, presented by the German ambassador to the United States.
[ chapter 2, "Legitimating Nazism: Harvard University and the Hitler Regime, 1933–1937".] Pound was among the famous American jurists to express a liking for
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
.
In the 1940s, Pound was apparently favourably disposed to replacing
John P. Higgins as a judge on the
International Military Tribunal for the Far East
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trial or the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, was a military trial convened on April 29, 1946 to try leaders of the Empire of Japan for crimes against peace, conven ...
, which was conducting a war crimes trial in Tokyo, though an appointment did not eventuate. He joined the faculty of
UCLA School of Law
The UCLA School of Law is one of 12 professional schools at the University of California, Los Angeles. UCLA Law has been consistently ranked by '' U.S. News & World Report'' as one of the top 20 law schools in the United States since the inception ...
in 1949, the year the law school opened, and remained on the faculty until 1952.
Criminal justice in Cleveland
In 1922 Roscoe Pound and
Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter (November 15, 1882 – February 22, 1965) was an Austrian-American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1939 until 1962, during which period he was a noted advocate of judicia ...
undertook a detailed quantitative study of crime reporting in Cleveland newspapers for the month of January 1919, using column inch counts. They found that in the first half of the month, the total amount of space given over to crime was 925 in., but in the second half, it leapt to 6642 in. This was despite the fact that the number of crimes reported had increased only from 345 to 363. They concluded that although the city's much publicized "crime wave" was largely fictitious and manufactured by the press, the coverage had a very real consequence for the administration of criminal justice.
Because the public believed they were in the middle of a crime epidemic, they demanded an immediate response from the police and the city authorities. The agencies, wishing to retain public support, complied, caring "more to satisfy popular demand than to be observant of the tried process of law." The result was a greatly increased likelihood of miscarriages of justice and sentences more severe than the offenses warranted.
Contribution to jurisprudence
Roscoe Pound also made a significant contribution to
jurisprudence
Jurisprudence, or legal theory, is the theoretical study of the propriety of law. Scholars of jurisprudence seek to explain the nature of law in its most general form and they also seek to achieve a deeper understanding of legal reasoning a ...
in the tradition of
sociological jurisprudence
The sociology of law (legal sociology, or law and society) is often described as a sub-discipline of sociology or an interdisciplinary approach within legal studies. Some see sociology of law as belonging "necessarily" to the field of sociology, ...
, which emphasized the importance of social relationships in the development of law and vice versa. His best-known theory consists of conceptualizing law as
social engineering. According to Pound, a lawmaker acts as a social engineer by attempting to solve problems in society using law as a tool. Pound argued that laws must be understood by examining the "interests" that they serve. These "interests" might be individual interests, such as the protection of an individual's life or property, or broader social interests.
Personal life
In 1903, Pound co-founded the
Society of Innocents
The Innocents Society is the Chancellor's senior honorary society at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, composed of 13 men and women who apply during the spring of their junior year and are selected on the basis of academic excellence, unparall ...
, the preeminent senior honor society at Nebraska. Pound is also a member of the
Nebraska Hall of Fame. He was a
Freemason
Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities ...
, and was a member and Past Master of Lancaster Lodge No. 54 AF & AM in Lincoln, Nebraska. He also served as Deputy Grand Master for the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts in 1915 and delivered a series of Masonic lectures for the Grand Lodge in March and April 1916. He helped to found The Harvard Lodge A.F. & A.M. along with
Kirsopp Lake
Kirsopp Lake (7 April 187210 November 1946) was an English New Testament scholar, Church historian, Greek Palaeographer, and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School.
He had an uncommon breadth of interests. His mai ...
a Professor of the Divinity School, and others.
In 1946 Pound helped the 22-year-old
Charlie Munger
Charles Thomas Munger (born January 1, 1924) is an American billionaire investor, businessman, and former real estate attorney. He is vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett; Buffett has described Mung ...
, later a successful businessman and investor, to get into
Harvard Law school
Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States.
Each class ...
.
Notes
References
*
* Pound, Roscoe. ''American National Biography''. 17:760–763. 1999.
External links
Roscoe Pound papersat
Nebraska State Historical Society
History Nebraska, formerly the Nebraska State Historical Society is a Nebraska state agency, founded in 1878 to "encourage historical research and inquiry, spread historical information ... and to embrace alike aboriginal and modern history." I ...
Justice According to Law(1914) essay
The Spirit of the Common Law(1921) book based on Dartmouth Alumni Lectures
*
*
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pound, Roscoe
1870 births
1964 deaths
Deans of Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School faculty
Writers from Lincoln, Nebraska
University of Nebraska–Lincoln alumni
American legal writers
Old Right (United States)
Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law faculty
Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy