Select Cases on Torts

  • 1

    James Barr Ames, 1874

    This photograph of Ames was taken the same year that his Select Cases on Torts was first published.

  • 2

    Louis D. Brandeis' signature

    Here is Brandeis’ signature, dated 1875 on his copy of Select Cases on Torts.

  • 3

    Detail of page 295 of Select Cases on Torts

    Here are Brandeis' annotations for the case Turner v. Meymott (1823).

  • Brandeis c.1876_Harvard Law_olvwork282925_cropped-retouched.tif

    Louis Brandeis

    Pictured around the time he was a student at Harvard Law School.

James Barr Ames

Cambridge, Mass., 1874
HOLLIS 3183251, copy 4

This copy of future Harvard Law School (HLS) Dean James Barr Ames’ (LL.B. 1872) seminal casebook on Torts belonged to future Supreme Court Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis (LL.B. 1877), a student in then Assistant Professor Ames’ Torts class. Brandeis entered HLS in 1875, shortly after the Law School implemented Dean Langdell’s case method. From Brandeis’ copious annotations one can see that he viewed his Torts casebook as akin to a lab notebook, with general legal rules, notes about the cases, and citations to additional authorities scribbled in the margins.