Office of the Dean records (Dean's Papers) - University of Virginia School of Law
Scope and Contents
The Dean's Papers date back to 1912, which was eight years after the first dean was appointed, and go forward to the early twenty-first century. These records document the growth of the administration from a time when there was one dean, a part-time clerical assistant and a faculty of five, to a time when there are four deans, three secretaries and a faculty of more than fifty; from a time when there were two hundred students, to the 1970s when there are more than a thousand students. Although the earliest extant document is dated 1912, substantial retention of administrative records did not begin until the late 1930s.
The 1978 accession of records spans the years 1912-1977, although the concentration of material covers 1937-1975, and touches the terms of deans William Minor Lile, Armistead Mason Dobie, Frederick D. G. Ribble, Hardy Cross Dillard, and Monrad G. Paulsen. Included are copies of the deans' reports to the president from 1904 to 1968; these reports are an excellent starting point for researching practically any facet of the Law School's history.
In the deans' correspondence files, the researcher may expect to find several issues which have concerned all the deans of this century. The question of the best ratio of in-state to out-of-state students has been routinely debated, with the deans and faculty consistently arguing that a substantial proportion of non-Virginians would contribute to the school's maintaining national status and that a decline of out-of-state students would have a significant negative effect.
Through these records may also be traced the campaign for higher faculty salaries and for more funds for the library. The immediate result of this campaign was the rallying of alumni in the form of the Law School Foundation in 1952. Only in the late 1960s was the school relatively comfortable financially, no longer relying almost exclusively on state funds.
The library files in the Dean's Papers cover most of Catherine Lipop Graves's term as the first law librarian, all of Frances Farmer's term and the selection of Larry Wenger as Farmer's successor. These records document particularly well the labor of Frances Farmer to raise the collection from average status to eleventh among American law libraries. There is ample evidence of alumni interest and support for this achievement.
In these papers are continuous files on visiting lecturers and the Doherty Lecture, established in 1954. There are also records on the development and growth of some of the student publications and organizations. And, finally, there is alumni correspondence which is primarily concerned with fundraising. There are, however, many letters from graduates who maintained close ties with the Law School and often voiced opinions about curriculum, grades, admissions, and other matters of policy.
With the exception of a few confidential files, these records are open, with the current dean's permission, to any legitimate scholar in the field of law or serious researcher of the history of the University. Researches who wish to study the records should place a request with the archivist, who will submit it to the dean. The Dean's Papers are Record Group 100, and the accession for 1978 contains four series. This finding aid includes a complete box listing.
Dates
- Creation: 1912 - 2009
Biographical / Historical
It was not until the University was almost ninety years old that its first president was appointed. Previously, the chairmanship of the general faculty was filled by a faculty member elected annually. By the turn of the century, however, the administrative duties had become too demanding for a teaching professor to handle efficiently, and so in 1904 Edwin A. Alderman assumed the newly created position of president. He appointed deans for each of the four "minor" faculties: academic, law, medical and engineering; these men, in turn, carried out most of the administrative responsibilities of their departments.
When William Minor Lile, an 1882 graduate of the Law School, became the first dean of the School of Law in September 1904. At that time, the law faculty was comprised of himself, Raleigh Colston Minor, and Charles A. Graves. Classes for about two hundred students met in a wing of the recently restored Rotunda and the law library was housed in a section of its basement. The size of the student body held at about two hundred until after the Law School moved to John B. Minor Hall in 1911, but the faculty had already begun expanding to include Armistead M. Dobie, Charles W. Paul, and George B. Eager Jr. Both Eager and Dobie filled in for Dean Lile at times when his health was poor. In 1932, when Dobie became dean, the administrative duties had grown to the point that the dean needed an assistant. Eager was the obvious choice. In that same year, and only twenty-one years after moving to Minor Hall, the Law School moved to a new, larger building donated and named after William Andrew Clark Jr., Class of 1899. During the 1930s the number of faculty members remained below ten, and administrative chores were relatively slight.
An alumnus and law professor since 1921, Frederick D. G. Ribble became the third dean in 1939. His service was soon interrupted by World War II, which came close, as had the Civil War and World War I, but did not succeed in bringing the Law School to a halt. After the war, as the size of the student body mushroomed, Ribble patiently and persistently began his campaign for expanding the faculty and raising salaries to a level competitive with comparable law schools. It was not until the mid-1960s, when Ribble had retired and Hardy Cross Dillard had succeeded him, that these goals for the faculty were realized. During that decade, there were about seven hundred law students and thirty-five faculty members. This became too demanding for two administrators and another assistant dean was hired. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Monrad G. Paulsen, the first non-alumnus to become dean of the Law School, implemented an even greater increase in the size and quality of the faculty, as well as raises in their salaries, and oversaw continued growth of the student body. In 1974, the Law School changed quarters for the third time since the turn of the century, moving about a mile north of the Rotunda to North Grounds.
Full Extent
68.5 Linear Feet (171 boxes)
Language of Materials
English
Processing Information
The Office of the Dean Records were recatalogued in September 2019, adding the University of Virginia classification for the Law School: RG 32 to the previous identifier.
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Repository Details
Part of the Arthur J. Morris Law Library Special Collections Repository
Arthur J. Morris Law Library
580 Massie Road
University of Virginia
Charlottesville Virginia 22903 United States
archives@law.virginia.edu