If Yale Law has in a sense retreated from its advanced position on the legal battlefield, Harvard has discarded some of its nineteenth century armor for modern, imaginative weapons--weapons resembling Yale's former revolutionary doctrines. Dean Erwin Griswold jokingly says, "Yale talks about it; we do it." As he told the entering class in 1954, law "has deep roots in the past. It presents a continuity of development which must be understood if the law of the present is to be mastered. But it also has a flexibility, a capability for growth and development, which is as much a part of the law as its past." He continued: "You are studying not to be lawyers, but to be lawmakers as well."

Since Dean Griswold was appointed in 1946, basic changes have taken place in Harvard's approach to the law. There has been a complete revamping of the curriculum and the addition of many new and diverse seminars. The 50-year-old legal expert went to Oberlin College and received his LL.B. from Harvard Law in 1928 and his S.J.D. in 1929.

The school of world law at Harvard symbolizes the change in the Harvard approach. Problems in world organization, foreign investment, economic development, international trade, the European Coal and Steel Community--these demand a modern approach through international legal seminars.

Many professors in both law schools are active in outside work with private and public agencies. Professor Harold Lasswell, Yale's chief exponent of the policy approach, is now on a year's absence to work with a Ford Foundation project in California. And Professor Eugene Rostow, also at Yale, is working with Attorney General Brownell on an investigation of anti-trust legislation.

Harvard's projects

At Harvard, many research projects are in operation--many of them on a joint basis with other graduate schools. Surveys of Massachusetts administrative and judicial procedures have been completed, and Professor Sheldon Glueck is analysing some legal problems in juvenile delinquency. The Law School is also starting an advisory study for Israel's legal development. Another new project is an inquiry for the International Bank into the regulation of the electric industry in underdeveloped countries. These research projects at Harvard show a functional approach to law that would not be foreign to a Yale environment.

Harvard, then, although it does not offer the sociological courses that Yale does, has nevertheless come to realize that law is not only a rule but a policy, and that such projects as a broad study of world law are needed to maintain progress in legal study.

If the educational philosophies of the two law schools are now almost indistinguishable, the distinct difference in size leads to many contrasts in social atmosphere, student body, and classroom technique.

1,514 student were registered in the Harvard Law School last year, and only about 500 could live in the Graduate School dormitories. Of Yale's 499 students, however, almost all who wanted to live on campus could find room in the ivy-covered Sterling Law Buildings.

This living situation alone creates a unified student body at Yale and a more individalistic atmosphere at Harvard. In Cambridge, it is easy for a student to choose his friends from many associates, and if he prefers the quiet of a rooming house to study his torts and liabilities--even on the afternoon of a big football game--that is his privilege. There is no pressure at Harvard to socialize, to get a date; the only pressure is to keep a general average above 58--a failing score--and as near 75, or "A," as possible.

Closer society

At Yale, where students deny the presence of social "pressure," there is an easier, more intimate social atmosphere. Since the dorms, classrooms, library, and dining hall are all within one quadrangle, a student comes to know most of his class by the time he graduates. During the football season, when Harvard is content to throw a Saturday night dance at Harkness Commons, the Elis go about it in a big way. Two whole entries move out of their rooms, and dates move in at the cost of one dollar a room. If a student does not intend to socialize, he might just as well leave for the weekend. With the evicted men crowded into other rooms, it is next to impossible to study. As one Yale Law student said, "When you study here, you do it alone; but when you play, you let everyone know it."

Yale's librarian, obviously imbued with this spirit, serenades the students as they leave at closing time. "Taps" is followed by "Boola, Boolal" on a makeshift xylophone.

One of the most debated issues at Yale now is not something legal--but something illegal. This year a set of stringent parietal rules has gone into effect. Previously no one quite knew what the rules were, and rather than check with a dean, everyone simply forgot there was a curfew. This situation lasted until an indignant student complained to the dean that a policeman had broken up his five a.m. party. New rules, of course, resulted, prompting indignant letters to the Yale Daily News as well as a Law School "League of Reaction."

Extra-curricular balance