Education: Reading List for Lawyers

The Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are so overburdened with work that they rarely find time to read an extracurricular book.* Nevertheless, lawyers agree that lawyers should read something beyond Coke and Blackstone. Last week G.I.s who intend to become lawyers could get a helpful reading list of 90 books from two Harvard law professors, Zechariah Chafee Jr. and John M. Maguire. Some of the choices, such as ex-Dean Roscoe Pound’s The Spirit of the Common Law, were strictly on the legal beam. Some others:

¶Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers. “The most famous of all lawsuits in fiction is Bardell v. Pickwick for breach of promise of marriage. . . . Don’t be discouraged by the dull opening chapter. …”

¶Bernard Hart’s The Psychology of Insanity. “In dealing with wills . . . lawyers are often confronted with problems of mental illness.”

¶Anthony Trollope’s Orley Farm.. “A will case with a notable cross-examination.”

¶Stephen Vincent Benét’s The Devil and Daniel Webster. “Illustrates the lawyer’s duty of fidelity to his client.”

¶Shakespeare and the Bible. “Part and parcel of a lawyer’s expression of his ideas and arguments. . . . Judicial opinions frequently contain allusions . . . which a lawyer ought to grasp readily, like ‘Naboth’s vineyard’ and ‘the pound of flesh.’ ”

¶Edmund L. Pearson’s Studies in Murder.

*Notable exception: Felix Frankfurter, who gets through his Court chores with prodigious speed.