born May 22, 1826, New Boston, N.H., U.S.
died July 6, 1906, Cambridge, Mass.
U.S. legal educator.
He studied law at Harvard (1851–54) and practiced in New York City until 1870, when he accepted a professorship and then the deanship at Harvard Law School (1870–95). His case method of teaching law, in which students read and discussed original authorities and derived for themselves the principles of the law, eventually became dominant in U.S. law schools. His Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts (1871) was the first case-method textbook.