University of Virginia Library

VIII. School of Law

It would seem that, at first, the School of Law, like the
School of Medicine, in the University of Virginia, was

designed to open up to its students the means of obtaining
the broadest education rather than mere professional
knowledge for practical use in earning a livelihood. We
have seen how keenly interested, if not fanatical, Jefferson
was in prescribing the text-books to be taught on the
political side of that school. In 1829, a conviction
sprang up that the chair of law should be reorganized
in order to meet more fully the needs of such young men
as intended to become active members of the bar. The
imputation had been cast upon it, that, whilst other prominent
colleges embraced all the subjects of professional
jurisprudence in the studies of one session, the courses
of the school at the University of Virginia were so extensive
that properly two sessions should be consumed in
mastering them. This was a stumbling block to the student
who was compelled, by a narrow income, to confine
his preparation to one session. In order to remove
it, the course of the first session was made an epitome
of all the important branches of municipal law. This put
the student of the University school who wished to hasten,
or whose income was small, on the footing of the
students of the schools in other States. Should he decide
to remain during a second session, he would have the principles
learnt by him during the first more profoundly
analyzed and more voluminously diversified in their application.

Lomax was not, by his previous training, in sympathy
with the spirit which made this alteration unavoidable;
but he candidly acknowledged to Cabell that he had hardly
entered upon his duties when he perceived that it was
beyond the Visitors' power to force down the throats of
his pupils a system of legal instruction that was distasteful
to them. "The day has gone by," he wrote in 1830,
"when any person was ashamed to appear at the bar

under a period of less than three years' study. The
necessities of some, and the impatience of others, urge
most modern students into their profession after one
year's study, or at most, two years'. They are eager that
the period shall be devoted to such instruction as may
practically fit them for their profession. Their demand
for the law is as for a trade,—the means, the most expeditious
and convenient, for their future livelihood. I
found myself irresistibly compelled to labor for the satisfaction
of this demand, or that the University would
have no students of law. ... I have selected what, after
much deliberation, I deemed the most approved and
suitable English text-books."

This list consisted of (1) Blackstone's Commentaries;
(2) Cruise's Law of Real Property; (3) Selwyn's Abstract
of the Law of Nisi Primus, and (4) Muddock's
Chancery.

In the lectures which Lomax delivered on the principles
set forth in these volumes, he cited, as supplementary to
the text, numerous dicta found in the appellate reports,
not only of Virginia, but also of all the other States of
the Union. As a complement to this professional course,
which formed the normal work of the school, he recommended
to the Faculty the adoption of what he designated
as an "academic course of law." This should
treat of American jurisprudence in its broadest scope.
With this new branch added, he was convinced that the
facilities for legal education at the University would be
unsurpassed. The Faculty, in their turn, recommended
it to the Board of Visitors.

There were, at this time, several causes for discouragement
which tended to reduce the number of pupils in the
School of Law. First, the regulation that subjected the
students of every school indiscriminately to public examinations,

and then, as a supposed reward for tested efficiency,
required that the names of the successful should
be published in the newspapers. Lomax declared that
the young men under him had, as a rule, arrived at that
period of life when they disdained the prizes which
these examinations held out to boyish emulation; but
above all, they deprecated the effect upon their own standing
at the bar,—which they would so soon join,—of a
failure to obtain these prizes, however much they might,
in reality, contemn them. Secondly, the uniform was
offensive to older students such as made up the membership
of his classes. Many of them had entered the University
only for a single year, and their expenses were
sensibly increased by the necessity of purchasing new
suits of clothing for use only during a few months.
Thirdly, it was revolting to his pupils' self-respect that
they should be expected to submit to the patron's financial
guidance at an age when, in the eyes of the law, they
were mature enough to manage their own affairs, and
dispose of their own money. "Invested with this competence
by law and sustained by the consciousness of his
own powers," he asserted, "the student at that period
of life when unnecessary restraint is particularly irksome,
was required to live within the precincts, and living there,
was denied all discretion in his minutest pecuniary concerns;
was compelled to put his purse in the hands of the
proctor, and to pay him for keeping it out of its unfortunate
owner's reach." Lomax counseled that every pupil
in the School of Law above a specified age should be permitted
to reside in an approved boarding-house situated
beyond the precincts; and that he should also be relieved
from all pertinency to himself of the regulation so justly
excepted to. This wise recommendation was adopted by
the Board, with the result that the worst grounds of
complaint were done away with for all those students of
law who were willing to vacate their dormitories.

Whilst Lomax was as inflexible as his successor, Davis,
in advocating a strict interpretation of the Constitution,
—a conviction held by him as a disciple of Jefferson and
Madison,—nevertheless he did not give as much time as
Davis did to the exposition of that part of his course
which embraced those principles of government that were
of such keen and fundamental interest to his great exemplars.
In the junior course as taught by Davis, after
Lomax's resignation, there were comprised numerous subjects
which were, not only necessary to be studied for
practice at the bar, but, owing to their universal significance,
were also of the highest value as the solid ingredients
of a liberal education,—such subjects were the
law of nature and nations, the science of government,
constitutional law, the history of the common law, and
the elementary principles of criminal and municipal law.
The text-books of this class were Vattel, the Federalist,
Resolutions of 1798–99, Blackstone's Commentaries, and
a treatise by Davis himself. The attention of the senior
class was concentrated upon the theory and practice of
law as a profession, as illustrated in different works on
common and statute law, equity, maritime, and commercial
law. In 1833, there was organized a law society,
the members of which, at first, assembled, at regular intervals,
in the basement of pavilion VII, but afterwards
in one of the lecture-rooms of the Rotunda.