84G JAMES BARR AMES. 



From his appointment as an Assistant Professor in 1873, until his 

 death, Ames devoted himself with rare singleness of purpose to the 

 work of the Law School. He was appointed a full Professor in 1877, 

 becoming Bussey professor in 1879 and succeeding Professor Langdell 

 in 1903 in the Dane professorship. In 1895, he became Dean of the 

 School, and so remained until his death in 1910. 



Ames was a teacher of rare skill, and it is to him almost as much as 

 to Langdell, that the success is due of the Case method of study, 

 which has been adopted in all leading American Law Schools, and has 

 influenced instruction in many other branches of study. His endeavor 

 was by Socratic dialogue with his students to make them think for 

 themselves after they had prepared their minds by reading selected 

 cases. He became undoubtedly in the main the model for his younger 

 colleagues, and, in a large measure, for teachers of law throughout the 

 LTnited States. 



In connection with his work as a teacher, Ames prepared a number 

 of volumes of Selected Cases on different branches of the law. These 

 books have been used not only in his own School, but in many others. 

 His permanent reputation as a scholar and law writer, however, will 

 chiefly rest on a small number of essays published, from time to time, 

 in legal periodicals and collected in a volume after his death. In 

 these essays he showed great learning in the history of the law and 

 remarkable capacity for constructive legal theory. His work on the 

 early history of the Common Law won him reputation in Europe as 

 Avell as America. On the questions involved in the origin and develop- 

 ment of the Action of Assumpsit, his essays finally settled a problem 

 which had puzzled scholars, and had never before been fully solved. 



In recognition of his work the degree of Doctor of Laws was con- 

 ferred on him successively by the Universities of New York, Wisconsin, 

 Pennsylvania, Harvard and Cincinnati, by Northwestern and Har- 

 vard Universities, and by Williams College. 



He was Chairman of the Section of Legal Education of the American 

 Bar Association in 1904, and for some years a Commissioner of Massa- 

 chusetts for the Promotion of Uniformity of State Laws. He lived 

 to see his pupils Deans of ten of the leading law schools, and teachers 

 in almost all of them; and every pupil carried into his teaching not 

 only the method, but the ideas of his master. 



He married, June 29, 1880, Sarah Russell, daughter of George 

 Robert, and Sarah (Shaw) Russell, of Boston, who, with two sons, 

 Robert Russell Ames, and Richard Ames, survived him. Throughout 

 his service as a teacher, he lived in Cambridge during the School term, 



