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Horace Gray, C.M. Bell, ca. 1880

  • Gray_Horace_by CM Bell_HOLLIS 006883220.tif

    Horace Gray by C.M. (Charles Milton) Bell, ca. 1880

    This photograph shows Supreme Court Justice Horace Gray wearing the robes of office.

  • Williston_Samuel with a bicycle_1881_Harvard Law_olvwork382370.tif

    Samuel Williston, 1881

    Here is Williston as a Harvard College student. From 1888-1889, he served as Horace Gray’s sixth clerk (then called secretary).

  • Williston_Samuel_US Supreme court admittance_1897_box 3-16_HOLLIS 9461588.tif

    Samuel Williston, Supreme Court certificate of admission to practice law, 1897

    Williston’s certificate certifying his ability to practice before the Supreme Court less than 10 years after he was a clerk.

  • Joseph Warren (LL.B. 1900)

    Joseph Warren (LL.B. 1900)

    The second-to-last HLS graduate to clerk for Gray, Warren became a professor at HLS in 1913, where he stayed until 1942.

Horace Gray, ca. 1880

By C.M. (Charles Milton) Bell, Washington, D.C.
Albumen silver print, 11 x 6.5 cm
Cabinet Cards and Cartes de Visite, 1866 - circa 1900
HOLLIS 6883220

During Horace Gray’s (LL.B. 1849) 20 years on the Supreme Court, he hired nineteen Harvard Law School (HLS) graduates for a period of one or two years to serve as law clerks. Several of these clerks returned to become HLS faculty, including Samuel Williston (LL.B. 1888) (the first to do so), Joseph Warren (LL.B. 1900), and Erza Ripley Thayer (LL.B. 1891) - the first clerk to serve as HLS Dean. Gray’s half brother, John Chipman Gray (LL.B. 1861), who taught at the Law School from 1869 into the early twentieth century, would identify and recommend HLS students for clerkships during this period. Chipman Gray continued this tradition once Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. joined the Supreme Court.