Harry Augustus Bigelow

Background

Harry Bigelow was born on September 22, 1874, in Norwood, Massachussets, United States, one of three children and the only son of Erwin Augustus Bigelow, a merchant, and Amie Leighton (Fisher) Bigelow, natives respectively of Boxboro and Salem, Massachussets. The family, though not wealthy, was comfortably situated.

Education

Bigelow attended the Norwood high school, Harvard College (A. B. 1896), and the Harvard Law School, and received the LL. B. degree in 1899.

Career

After graduation Harry worked for some months as a law clerk in a conveyancing office in Boston and as a part-time instructor in criminal law at the Harvard Law School. In 1900 he moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, where he began a legal practice. In 1904 he gave up his practice in Hawaii and settled at the University of Chicago. There he helped President William Rainey Harper and Joseph Henry Beale, who was on leave from Harvard, in establishing a law school at the university. Bigelow was appointed to the faculty, was admitted to the bar in Illinois in 1908, and became professor of law in 1909 and dean of the law school in 1929. His highly analytical mind and his gift for presenting material with freshness and clarity soon earned him a reputation as a brilliant teacher. His students learned to regard him with affection, in spite of the scathing intellectual reprimands he often administered to those guilty of confused or careless preparation.

Bigelow was the author of casebooks on The Law of Personal Property (1917, 1930, 1942), The Law of Rights in Land (1919, 1933, 1945), and The Law of Property (1942, with Ralph W. Aigler and Richard R. B. Powell). The casebooks became standard material in the classroom, extending Bigelow's influence on students in many law schools. Bigelow himself was masterly in his use of the case method of instruction; he soon recognized, nevertheless, that in some aspects of the law it was so cumbersome and time-consuming as to be ineffective. Also he came to realize that studies of legal questions, based only on the materials in the law reports, were often sterile and that textbooks would be a valid aid to the student. Although this view was unorthodox at the time, he wrote an Introduction to the Law of Real Property (1919, 1934, 1945), a brief historical survey that proved to be an invaluable tool for the student of modern land law.

After the organization of the American Law Institute in 1923, Bigelow played a key role in the preparation of its Restatement of the Conflict of Laws (1934) and Restatement of the Law of Property (1936). In 1933 he was appointed trustee in bankruptcy of Insull Utility Investments, Inc. In the liquidation of the ill-fated enterprise of Samuel Insull, Bigelow's shrewd comprehension of the issues involved commanded the respect of both businessmen and lawyers. Although Bigelow retired as dean of the University of Chicago Law School in 1939, he did not give up his classes in conflict of laws and in property. In 1947 President Harry S. Truman appointed him a member of the National Loyalty Review Board, and he devoted the last years of his life to the work of that agency. Bigelow died in a Chicago hospital on January 8, 1950, of pulmonary edema, while hospitalized for cirrhosis of the liver.

Achievements

• Harry Bigelow was an authority on the law of real estate and personal property, and his reputation as a legal scholar was strengthened by his publication of a third edition of May on Criminal Law (1905). Under his tenure as dean, he effected a revision of the curriculum at the University of Chicago Law School so that it included accounting, economics, and psychology. He also encouraged the development of a tutorial program which greatly enriched the training that the school afforded its students. In his memory, the University of Chicago established a Harry A. Bigelow Professorship and Bigelow Tutorial Fellowships.

Works

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• book

  • Introduction to the Law of Real Property

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • Personal property

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • The law of crimes

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

Religion

Bigelow was a Universalist.

Membership

Bigelow was a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Order of the Coif.

Interests

• Bigelow had a lively interest in the arts and in travel. His collection of Japanese prints was an excellent one. In 1924-1925, with his Chicago friends Herbert and Mary Hastings Bradley, he took part in the first expedition to cross the unexplored country west of Lake Edward in the Belgian Congo.

Connections

On April 12, 1902, in Honolulu, Bigelow married Mary Parker of Georgetown, Colorado. They had no children, and she died in 1920.

Father:

Erwin Augustus Bigelow

Mother:

Amie Leighton (Fisher) Bigelow

Spouse:

Mary (Parker) Bigelow