Concept
Yale Law School
Overview
Yale Law School (YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824.
Each class in Yale Law's three-year J.D. program enrolls approximately 200 students. Yale's flagship law review is the Yale Law Journal, one of the most highly cited legal publications in the United States. According to Yale Law School's ABA-required disclosures, 83% of the Class of 2019 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required or JD-advantage employment nine months after graduation, excluding solo practitioners. The 2025 acceptance rate was 4.1%, the lowest of any law school in the United States. Its yield rate that year was the highest of any law school in the United States.
Yale Law alumni include many prominent figures in law and politics, including U.S. presidents William Taft, Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton, U.S. vice president JD Vance, U.S. secretaries of state Cyrus Vance and Hillary Clinton, U.S. secretaries of the treasury Henry H. Fowler and Robert Rubin, and nine U.S. attorneys general. Other alumni include current U.S. Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Brett Kavanaugh, as well as multiple former justices, including Abe Fortas, Potter Stewart and Byron White; several heads of state, including German president Karl Carstens, Philippine president Jose P. Laurel, and Malawi president Peter Mutharika; and U.S. senators, governors, and officials.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
The law-lectures very soon fared not any better, for I already knew just as much as the professor thought good to communicate to us. My stubborn industry in writing down the lectures at first, was paralyzed by degrees; for I found it excessively tedious to pen down once more that which, partly by question, partly by answer, I had repeated with my…
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Autobiography
States what Yale Law School is.
The technical course prepares students for college, the architectural course prepares for work in an architect’s office, and the general trade course prepares for immediate entry into industry. During the first two years of work the student devotes his time to the study of general subjects, and during the last two the major part of his time is put in on work that leads directly to the vocation that he has chosen…
John Dewey, Schools of to-morrow
Close in meaning to Yale Law School; the term itself is not named.
Their subsistence, so far as it arises from their salaries, is evidently derived from a fund, altogether independent of their success and reputation in their particular professions. In some universities, the salary makes but a part, and frequently but a small part, of the emoluments of the teacher, of which the greater part arises from the honoraries or fees of his pupils. The necessity of application, though always…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Close in meaning to Yale Law School; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Yale Law School
- Jeremy Waldron
- Judith Jarvis Thomson
- Brian Leiter
- Ronald Dworkin
- Catharine A. MacKinnon
- Robert Maynard Hutchins
- Duncan Kennedy (legal philosopher)
- Nadia Maftouni
- Jules Coleman
- Judith N. Shklar
- Scott J. Shapiro
- Robin West
- Moshe Halbertal
Related ideas
- Human rights
- Ivy League
- Harvard Law School
- Pulitzer Prize
- Supreme Court of the United States
- Yale University
- New Haven, Connecticut
- Connecticut
- Robert Maynard Hutchins
- Environmental law
- Samuel Moyn
- Scott J. Shapiro
Place in the tradition
Part of Deism.