852 RARE: Lounging with the Law Review: A Shoeless Celebration

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This image shows the editorial board of Volume 51 of the Harvard Law Review celebrating another successful year outside of Austin Hall. In the center of the photograph, Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr., the Review’s President, is hoisted up by his colleagues and classmates. Sidney H. Willner, the note editor of Volume 51, stands with one fist raised and his other hand supporting one of Huddleson’s feet. To the left of Willner, hand jauntily perched on his hip, is Theodore R. Colborn, Volume 51’s case editor. Robert Amory, Jr., Volume 51’s treasurer, stands to the right of Huddleson.

Harvard Law Review Board of Editors, Vol. 51, 1937-38
Harvard Law Review Board of Editors, Vol. 51, 1937-38 (VIA record ID: olvwork401246)

Huddleson, like all Review presidents since the early 1930s, holds a staff in his hand. The staff was given to the Review in April 1931 by U.S. District Judge John Munro Woolsey. Woolsey, a founding member of Columbia’s Law Review, served at Harvard on the Advisory Commission on Research in International Law. He is better known, however, as the judge who delivered the decision in the case of United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, which allowed James Joyce’s infamous novel to be brought into the U.S. and to eventually be published here.

This advertisement for the yearbook was printed in Volume 51 of the Harvard Law Review.
This advertisement for the yearbook was printed in Volume 51 of the Harvard Law Review.

Historical & Special Collections (HSC) holds papers from three members of Volume 51’s editorial board. These include Robert Braucher, visiting professor at Harvard Law in the late 1940s, full professor from 1949-1971 (teaching courses on commercial law, contracts, and the legal profession)*, and Associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts from 1971 to 1981; Philip Elman, law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter from 1941 to 1943 and professor of law at Georgetown University in the 1970s; and David Schwartz, attorney and member of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Alien Property. HSC also holds Braucher’s 1937-1938 yearbook, the first yearbook ever published by the Law School.

 

Robert Braucher’s name and campus address—38 W. Hastings Hall—are written inside the front cover of HSC’s Special Collections Reference copy of the 1937-38 yearbook.
Robert Braucher’s name and campus address—38 W. Hastings Hall—are written inside the front cover of HSC’s Special Collections Reference copy of the 1937-38 yearbook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images from the 1937-1938 yearbook and photos of the class of 1938 and 1939 can help uncover who’s who in the Board of Editors photo. The question remains, though, what happened to Huddleson’s shoe? Perhaps he purchased a replacement from The Coop, whose advertisement for Bostonian men’s shoes graced the pages of Volume 51.

Bostonian was the first footwear brand to introduce a flexible men’s dress shoe. The advertisement above highlights “the Flexmore Process.”
Bostonian was the first footwear brand to introduce a flexible men’s dress shoe. The advertisement above highlights “the Flexmore Process.” (Harvard Law Review, v. 51, no. 2, pg. xxix)

* Many thanks to Professor Andrew Kaufman, Charles Stebbins Fairchild Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, for sharing this information about some of the courses Robert Braucher taught at HLS.

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