Changes

On June 20, 1997, the New York Times obituary for James Willard Hurst described him as the “dean of American Legal Historians.”<ref>Gelder, sec. B, pg. 8, col. 5, <i>New York Times</i>, June 20, 1997.</ref> While few legal historians would have challenged this description of Hurst, it hardly encompassed the full scope of his career. Hurst was a legal historian, a prolific scholar (he wrote seventeen books, numerous journal articles and book reviews), a historical sociologist and a legal education reformer. Hurst was not only the most prominent legal historian of his day, but he had broader goal by attempting to explain how law fit into the fabric of American life. He also founded the “Law and Society” movement which sought to bring a more interdisciplinary approach to American legal education by emphasizing the importance of social sciences. Hurst worked hard throughout his career to reform both legal history and education.

Hurst was not a historian by training. He attended Williams College for his undergraduate work and proceeded to Harvard Law School.<ref>Tomlins, Christopher, “Framing the Field of Law’s Disciplinary Encounters: A Historical Narrative,” <i>Law and Society Review</i>, vol. 34, 2000, p. 956.</ref> When Hurst attended Harvard Law, he became disenchanted with emphasis on the case method and legal formalism as the exclusive way to educate law students.<ref>Ernst, Daniel R., “Willard Hurst and the Administrative State: From Williams to Wisconsin,” <i>Law and History Review</i>, vol. 18, 2000, p. 8.</ref> Hurst believed that the Harvard legal education ignored the vital role of legislation and administration in the law.<ref>Ernst, p. 8.</ref>. Hurst became interested in the work of the Legal Realists (such as Karl Llewellyn) who argued that laws had social origins and that they were not simply the result of legal logic.<ref>Ernst, p. 8-9.</ref> Hurst began to believe that any history of American laws would also have to be a social history of the United States.<ref>Ernst, p. 9.</ref>

Hurst’s legal and historical education continued during a research fellowship with Felix Frankfurter and clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis during the mid 1930s.<ref>Tomlinson, p. 956.</ref> By 1937, Hurst began teaching at the University of Wisconsin law school. At the University of Wisconsin, Hurst developed a number working relationships with faculty members in the social sciences. These relationships (along with his extensive knowledge of scholarship in history, sociology and political science) would play an important role in developing his work as a legal historian.