As an heir, through John Langbein when he taught at the University of Chicago, to the "Development of Legal Institutions" tradition in American Legal History, I was thrilled--really thrilled--by the publication of The Tradition of History at Harvard Law School, a note in the Harvard Law Review. I may have some thoughts later, but I want to note its appearance now. From the introduction:
This Note examines the available archival documents to recount the evolution of the DLI course and reflect on the issues that law schools would have to consider in adding a similar legal history requirement today. HLS’s experience with DLI demonstrates that schools may face two major challenges: unpopularity among students and difficulties in optimizing a required history class syllabus for law schools — especially if the goal of such a class is to help budding lawyers apply tests like Bruen’s. Furthermore, fundamental tensions between historical practice and a legal test like “history and tradition” would make it difficult for even a perfectly designed course to meet the goal of training students to apply the test.
--Dan Ernst
