Wesley Alba Sturges
Encyclopedia
Wesley Alba Sturges was a professor of law at the Yale Law School
from 1924 to 1961, and served as dean of the law school from 1945 to 1954. He received his LL.B. from Yale in 1923. He retired from Yale in 1961 to become dean of the University of Miami Law School. He was a prominent figure in Yale’s Legal Realism
movement. In his article (with Samuel Clark), Legal Theory and Real Property Mortgages, 37 Yale L. J. 691 (1928), he sought to make the Legal Realist point that doctrinal distinctions between “lien theory” and “title theory” did not have any actual effect on how courts ruled in litigation about mortgage disputes. His casebook
, Cases and Materials on the Law of Credit Transactions, emphasized the contradictions in judicial decision-making and sought to dispel the view that “what judges said in one case with its setting can be used to [predict] what they will decide in another case” with a different factual setting.
After he stepped down from the deanship, Sturges taught only three courses, annually in rotation, one semester each year—arbitration
, real-property credit transactions, and chattel credit transactions. Using an advanced form of the Socratic method, he sought in these courses to teach students rhetoric and advocacy rather than substantive law—what he termed “learning to stand up on your hind legs and make noises like a lawyer.” He was famous at Yale for his technique of calling upon a student to recite what a case held, asking him whether he agreed or disagreed with the court’s ruling, and regardless of how the student replied, slowly forcing him by pointing out difficulties in that position, to adopt the contrary view, whereupon Sturges would by the same technique then argue the student back to conceding the validity of his original position. The point was to teach students both how to make noises like a lawyer and not to get led down the primrose path by an adversary.
Professor Grant Gilmore
said of Wesley Sturges:
Yale Law School
Yale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Established in 1824, it offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D. and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers...
from 1924 to 1961, and served as dean of the law school from 1945 to 1954. He received his LL.B. from Yale in 1923. He retired from Yale in 1961 to become dean of the University of Miami Law School. He was a prominent figure in Yale’s Legal Realism
Legal realism
Legal realism is a school of legal philosophy that is generally associated with the culmination of the early-twentieth century attack on the orthodox claims of late-nineteenth-century classical legal thought in the United States...
movement. In his article (with Samuel Clark), Legal Theory and Real Property Mortgages, 37 Yale L. J. 691 (1928), he sought to make the Legal Realist point that doctrinal distinctions between “lien theory” and “title theory” did not have any actual effect on how courts ruled in litigation about mortgage disputes. His casebook
Casebook
A casebook is a type of textbook used primarily by students in law schools. Rather than simply laying out the legal doctrine in a particular area of study, a casebook contains excerpts from legal cases in which the law of that area was applied. It is then up to the student to analyze the language...
, Cases and Materials on the Law of Credit Transactions, emphasized the contradictions in judicial decision-making and sought to dispel the view that “what judges said in one case with its setting can be used to [predict] what they will decide in another case” with a different factual setting.
After he stepped down from the deanship, Sturges taught only three courses, annually in rotation, one semester each year—arbitration
Arbitration
Arbitration, a form of alternative dispute resolution , is a legal technique for the resolution of disputes outside the courts, where the parties to a dispute refer it to one or more persons , by whose decision they agree to be bound...
, real-property credit transactions, and chattel credit transactions. Using an advanced form of the Socratic method, he sought in these courses to teach students rhetoric and advocacy rather than substantive law—what he termed “learning to stand up on your hind legs and make noises like a lawyer.” He was famous at Yale for his technique of calling upon a student to recite what a case held, asking him whether he agreed or disagreed with the court’s ruling, and regardless of how the student replied, slowly forcing him by pointing out difficulties in that position, to adopt the contrary view, whereupon Sturges would by the same technique then argue the student back to conceding the validity of his original position. The point was to teach students both how to make noises like a lawyer and not to get led down the primrose path by an adversary.
Professor Grant Gilmore
Grant Gilmore
Grant Gilmore was an American law professor who taught at Yale Law School, University of Chicago Law School, Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, and Vermont Law School...
said of Wesley Sturges:
What did Wesley teach us?...He taught us forever to be on our guard against the slippery generality, the received principle, the authoritative proposition. He taught us to trust no one's judgment except our own--and not to be too sure of that. He taught us how to live by our wits. He taught us, in a word, how to be lawyers.