The Case Method. What do law school students do every day? The answer is read cases. Lots of cases! The "case study" method of learning law was invented right here at Harvard in the mid-1800s by Dean Langdell of the Harvard Law School (thus Langdell Library). It caught on quickly, and soon law students around the country were cursing Langdell's name. Despite what you might have heard, though, the goal of the case method (for most professors) is not to make you memorize the cases, but rather to use the cases -- real examples of "the law in action" -- to teach you how to analyze legal problems.

The cases below all appear in real 1L casebooks, so they should give you a good taste of what first-year law students actually study. Although most casebooks will edit the cases to focus on a single legal issue, the cases appear here unabridged, with accompanying "headnotes" from Westlaw.

We have deliberately NOT selected the "sexy" cases that everyone likes to read -- most cases aren't like that, so you won't get a taste of law school by looking at them. Rather, we have chosen cases that we feel are fairly representative of the everyday work in first-year law school classes. In fact, if you do decide to go to law school, you'll probably be required to read one or two of them in your first year (in fact, you're absolutely guaranteed to read International Shoe, which is one of the most imporant cases in all of civil procedure).

CONTRACT LAW

United States v. Algernon Blair, Inc., 479 F.2d 638 (4th Cir. 1973).
A legal battle between contractors requires the court to decide when and how a contracting party may sue "in quantum meruit" to recover restitution damages for work already done.

CRIMINAL LAW

Commonwealth v. Welansky, 316 Mass. 383 (1944).
A fire at a nightclub gives the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court an opportunity to clarify the difference between civil negligence and criminal wanton-and-reckless conduct.

Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573 (1980).
The Supreme Court defines the scope of the Fourth Amendment in the context of warrantless entry by police into the home of a felony suspect.

CIVIL PROCEDURE

International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310 (1945).
One of the most important cases on the doctrine of personal jurisdiction -- the ability of courts to subject litigants to their authority and impose binding judgments that other courts must respect.

TORTS

Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co., 248 N.Y. 339 (1928).
A famous case on the theory of negligence, as much for the dissent as for Judge Cardozo's majority opinion.

PROPERTY

Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003 (1992).
Yet another effort by the Supreme Court to clarify the law of regulatory takings of property.