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William & Mary Law School, located in Williamsburg, Virginia, is the oldest law school in the United States still in operation. William & Mary Law School is a part of the College of William & Mary, the second oldest college in the United States. The Law School maintains an enrollment of about 650 students seeking the juris doctor, the fundamental legal degree in the United States today. ==History== William & Mary Law School was founded in 1779 at the impetus of the governor of Virginia Thomas Jefferson, an alumnus of the College, during the reorganization of the originally royal institution, transforming the college of William and Mary into the first University in the United States. At Jefferson's urging, the governing board of visitors of the College established a chair of law and appointed George Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, delegate to the Philadelphia Convention, and Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, its first holder. (In the English-speaking world, older law professorships include the chair at Oxford University, first held by William Blackstone, the chair at Edinburgh University's School of Law (1709), and the Regius Chair of Law at Glasgow University). Before filling the chair of law at William & Mary, Wythe tutored numerous students in the subject, Henry Clay, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe among them. John Marshall, who became Chief Justice of the United States in 1801, received his only formal legal education when he attended Wythe's lectures at the College in 1780. St. George Tucker, who succeeded Wythe as Professor of Law and edited the seminal early American edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, also was one of Wythe's students. The growth of the Law School was halted abruptly by the beginning of the American Civil War. The start of military campaigns on the Virginia Peninsula compelled the College to close its doors. It would be another sixty years before the historical priority in law could be revived in a modern program that is now nearly ninety years old. After William & Mary Law School was reopened early in the twentieth century, it was moved around the main campus of the College to several different buildings in succession. In 1980, the School was moved to its current location on the outskirts of Colonial Williamsburg, a short distance from the main campus. The building has been renovated several times since 1980, with the addition of a new wing of classrooms and renovation of older classrooms in 2000, the overhaul of the Henry C. Wolf Law Library, and the construction of a new admission suite. W. Taylor Reveley III, formerly managing partner of the law firm of Hunton & Williams, was dean of the Law School until he was promoted to President of the College itself in the spring of 2009. Davison Douglas (J.D., Ph.D., M.Phil., M.A., M.A.R.), a nationally renowned legal historian, is the current dean. The former chancellor of William & Mary, Sandra Day O'Connor, delivered commencement remarks to the graduating class of the Law School in 2006, 2008 and 2010. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「William & Mary Law School」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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