Columbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University, a member of the Ivy League, in New York City, New York, United States. It offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in law.
Founded in 1858, Columbia is surpassed only by Yale and Harvard in the number of alumni who have served on the Supreme Court and has more alumni in the Forbes 400 than any other law school. Admission to Columbia Law is among the most selective in the U.S., with only 12% of applicants being accepted in 2010. Notably, the law school ranked #2 in the 2011 U.S. News report of "Law Schools that Receive the Most Applications." Columbia is historically the highest ranked law school in its home state of New York and holds the highest average pass rate for the New York bar (95.6%).
Columbia has produced a large number of distinguished alumni including, among others: two Presidents of the United States (Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt); nine Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States (three of whom were Chief Justices); numerous U.S. Cabinet members and Presidential advisers; U.S. Senators, Representatives, and Governors; members of the federal trial and appellate courts; academicians and diplomats, civil rights and human rights activists, as well as prominent non-U.S. government judicial and political figures. Alumni of the Law School have been the president or founder of more than thirty colleges and universities in the nation.
For its teaching and scholarship, Columbia is lauded in international and comparative law, corporate and securities law, administrative law, bankruptcy law, commercial law, criminal law and procedure, critical race theory, gender studies, intellectual property, labor and employment law, legal history and legal theory, public interest and human rights law. Constitutional law, family law, law and economics, and tax law, among others, are also exceptionally strong. Columbia has a storied job placement rate in general and, well known for corporate law, at the nation's top law firms in particular.
Read more about Columbia Law School: History, Rankings, Columbia Law School Today, Law Centers and Programs, Arthur W. Diamond Library, The Columbia Law Review and Other Student Journals, Joint Degree Program, Dual Degree Programs and Alliances, Abroad, Clinical Programs, Facilities, Columbia Graduate Legal Studies Program, Columbia Law School Alumni, Columbia Law School in Popular Culture
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—The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, the first sentence of the article on “life” (based on wording in the First Edition, 1935)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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