Ames, James Barr

Related Category: Law: Biographies

1846–1910, American jurist, b. Boston, grad. Harvard Law School, 1873. At Harvard he became associate professor (1873), professor (1877), and dean (1895). A disciple of C. C. Langdell, Ames insisted that legal education should require the study of actual cases instead of abstract principles of law. He was instrumental in introducing the case method in the teaching of law, a method in general use by American law schools at the time of his death. Ames's careful historical and legal scholarship is displayed in his Lectures on Legal History (1913).