Roscoe Pound
(1870-1964)

Twenty or so years ago, looking through our centennial history, I
was dumbfounded to learn that Roscoe Pound had been a member of
the Chicago Literary Club. Pound was dean of the Harvard Law School
from 1916 to 1936 and was still a presence there in the 1950s. I
had never associated him with our own city, but discovered later that
he had taught here for a brief period in the early years of the century.
--Clark L. Wagner

Pound was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, on October 27, 1870.
He studied botany at the University of Nebraska, earning his un-
dergraduate degree in 1888, at the age of eighteen, and a doctor-
ate in 1897. Interrupting his studies in botany, he left Nebraska for
a year in 1889 to study law at Harvard Law School. He passed the
bar on his return to Nebraska a year later and went into private
practice. Several years later he became commissioner of appeals in

the Supreme Court of Nebraska, at the same time also teaching
law at the University and becoming dean of the College of Law in

1903. All the while he stayed immersed in the field of botany, as a
researcher, author and administrator. He subsequently served a
a professor of law at Northwestern University, from 1907 to 1909,
and at the University of Chicago, from 1909 to 1910.

Pound returned to Harvard Law School as a professor in 1910.
Six years later, still one of the newest members of the faculty, he
was appointed dean of the Law School, a position he held for
twenty years. Shortly after his retirement as dean, he received one
of the first of Harvard University's "roving professorships," whidh
entitled him to teach in any faculty of the University. Ten years
later he went to China, at the invitation of the Chinese govern-
ment, to begin the task of reorganizing the Chinese judicial sys-
tern. In connection with this task, he began studying Chinese,
having already mastered French, German, Italian, Spanish, San-
skrit, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and some Russian.

Pound was one of the three American jurists best known to
scholars of modern jurisprudence throughout the world. The
other two were Justice Holmes and Justice Brandeis. His twenty
years as dean of Harvard Law School have been regarded as the
School's golden age. In 1938 he was listed as one of 1000 leading
scientists in the United States. As of 1940, he had been credited
with 773 books, articles and addresses, and twenty years later, as
he entered his 90s, he was still a productive scholar. Erwin Gris-
wold, the dean of Harvard Law School in the 1940s and 50s and
also one of Pound's students at Harvard, considered Pound an
authentic genius and remarked on one occasion that Pound could re-
cite from memory entire legal articles and court cases, including
accompanying footnotes.

Pound became a member of the Literary Club in 1910, the year
in which he taught at the University of Chicago, and remained a
member until his death in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on July i,
1964. He held no offices in the Club and delivered only one paper.
This remarkable man was in Chicago for only a brief period of
time, but stayed long enough, in any event, to leave his name in the
Club's annals.

Read before the Club: April 26, 1999