Roscoe Pound

Nathan Roscoe Pound (October 27, 1870 – July 1, 1964) was an American legal scholar and educator. He served as dean of the University of Nebraska College of Law from 1903 to 1911 and was dean of Harvard Law School from 1916 to 1936. He was also associated with Northwestern University, the University of Chicago Law School, and UCLA School of Law. The Journal of Legal Studies identified Pound as one of the most cited legal scholars of the 20th century. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Pound studied botany at the University of Nebraska, earning bachelor's and master's degrees before beginning his law studies. He passed the bar without a law degree after attending Harvard Law School for a year. In 1898, he received the first PhD in botany from the University of Nebraska. Pound taught law at the University of Nebraska College of Law from 1899 to 1907, becoming dean in 1903. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1911. He taught at Harvard starting in 1911 and became dean of Harvard Law School in 1916, serving until 1937. His prolific writings include "Spurious Interpretation" (1907), Outlines of Lectures on Jurisprudence (1914), The Spirit of the Common Law (1921), Law and Morals (1924), and Criminal Justice in America (1930). Pound was a founder of the movement for sociological jurisprudence and an influential critic of the Supreme Court's "liberty of contract" cases. He was also an early leader of American Legal Realism, advocating for a pragmatic interpretation of law. In 1929, he was appointed to the Wickersham Commission. Initially supporting the New Deal, Pound later turned against it and Legal Realism. He resigned as Dean of Harvard Law School in 1937 to become a University Professor and became a critic of legal realists. He proposed government reform ideas to Chiang Kai-shek. In 1934, he received an honorary degree from the University of Berlin. Pound was among jurists who expressed a liking for Adolf Hitler. He was considered for a judgeship on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in the 1940s. He joined the faculty of UCLA School of Law in 1949. In 1922, Pound and Felix Frankfurter studied crime reporting in Cleveland newspapers, concluding that the press manufactured a "crime wave" with real consequences for the justice system. His theory of "social engineering" posited that lawmakers use law as a tool to solve societal problems by examining the "interests" served by laws. Pound co-founded the Society of Innocents at Nebraska and was a Freemason. He passed away in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at age 93 and was inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame in 1976.