No Butterflies

It was not the first time Yale Law School had surprised the legal priesthood by employing laymen to help train its lawyers. First, in 1928, Yale made Economist Walton Hamilton* a full law professor, without benefit of LL.B. Then it signed on Political Scientist Harold Lasswell. Last week Hamilton and Lasswell made room for another layman: Philosopher F. S. C. Northrop, author of The Meeting of East and West (TIME, Aug. 12). Northrop, who has been teaching philosophy at Yale College since 1923, will now teach jurisprudence at the Law School.

The lay invasion is part of Yale's plan for producing not just casebook lawyers but what Dean Wesley A. Sturges calls "the policy-making man of tomorrow." Even the lawyers on Yale's faculty soak their casebooks in a heady wine of history, sociology, politics and economics, like to call in everybody from coal barons to clinical psychiatrists as guest experts. Says Sturges: "Our idea of law is more than the butterfly-&-microscope approach, the anatomy of legal proceedings. We try to put the rules of law into their social setting."

*When his wife was arrested for speeding in Pennsylvania recently, Amateur Lawyer Hamilton argued that the fine was illegal because the Justice of the Peace admitted he was getting a kickback in fees. "Who says it's illegal?" demanded the magistrate. "The U.S. Supreme Court? I knew it was one of those courts that has no jurisdiction up here in Pennsylvania. That'll be $7.50."

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