Schulich School of Law - History

History

Dalhousie Law School lays claim to being "the first university-based common law school in the Commonwealth." Unlike Ontario's Osgoode Hall, which was first established in 1862 under the auspices of the Law Society of Upper Canada and subsequently shut down several times before re-opening in 1889, Dalhousie Law School sought to treat the study of law as a liberal education. It was not, as Osgoode was, an outpost for the province's professional law society where the law was "merely a technical craft." In fact, at that time the establishment of a full-time professional university common law school was so radical and the School's influence so great that legal historians cite Dalhousie Law School's founding as the beginning of the first period of common law education in Canada that laid the basis for law school as it is known today.

Dalhousie's early experiments in legal education eventually served as the foundation on which numerous common law schools based their curricula across Canada. For instance, in W. Wesley Pue's Story of Legal Education in British Columbia, which chronicles the establishment of the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law some 62 years after Dalhousie Law School first opened its doors, Pue notes that:

"Dalhousie" serves as a sort of code-word among legal educators in Canada, much as "Harvard" does in the United States of America. It invokes a vision of intellectually ambitious, rigorous, and scholarly approaches to education for the profession of law. In British Columbia, the transformation from part-time to full-time study involved the implementation of a model of legal education that was "Dalhousie" in all respects.

This rigorous training in legal education became synonymous with the tenure of Dalhousie Law School's founding Dean, Richard Chapman Weldon. In discussing the motivations that led to the establishment of a full-time common law school, Weldon described the "'legitimate ambition' of 'generous spirits who wish their country well' to build a law school 'that shall influence the intellectual life of Canada as Harvard and Yale have influenced the intellectual life of New England.'" Weldon himself demonstrated this commitment to public service time and again, both as Dean of Dalhousie Law School and as a Canadian Member of Parliament.

Based on Weldon's comments in his inaugural address at the opening of the School, it is perhaps not surprising that Dalhousie Law School has shared a storied connection with its counterpart at Harvard University. Although Dalhousie was influenced early on by the high standards of academic excellence set by Harvard Law School, it placed a decidedly unique emphasis on the subjects of public law, constitutional history, and international law, fields that were notably absent from Harvard's curriculum in the 1880s. As a result, many Dalhousie Law graduates have gone on to pursue distinguished careers in public service.

The so-called "Weldon Tradition" of commitment to unselfish public service is taught to Dalhousie law students to this day.