Background

Karl Nickerson Llewellyn was born on May 22, 1893 in West Seattle, Washington, United States, the son of William Henry Llewellyn and Janet George. Two years later the family moved to New York City.

Education

Llewellyn graduated from Boys' High School. Then he entered the Realgymnasium in Schwerin, Mecklenburg, Germany, and in 1911 he returned to the United States and enrolled in Yale College. In the summer of 1914 he was studying at the University of Paris when war erupted. Later Llewellyn returned to Yale, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1915. He then entered Yale Law School, where he received the Bachelor of Laws (1918) and the Doctor of Jurisprudence (1920).

Career

A lifelong admirer of German culture, Llewellyn enlisted in the German army (78th Prussian Infantry). He was wounded in action near Ypres. Llewellyn began his teaching career while at Yale Law School. After receiving the J. D. , he practiced in New York City with Shearman and Sterling, but in 1922 returned to Yale as an assistant professor in the Law School.

In 1925, Llewellyn went to Columbia Law School, where he held the Betts professorship of jurisprudence from 1930 until 1951. Through most of his career Llewellyn was active in professional affairs, especially the Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, in which he represented New York State from 1926 to 1951, and of which he was a life member.

Llewellyn served as reporter beginning in 1944. He served on the Commission on the Rights, Liberties and Responsibilities of the American Indian and on the editorial board of the American Law Institute. In 1950 he was president of the Association of American Law Schools. Llewellyn greatly enjoyed teaching, and his students responded with affection and admiration.

In 1930 he published his book "The Bramble Bush". It went through numerous reprintings, and his wit and humanity, as well as his devotion to the law, were readily apparent in its pages. Llewellyn started from a firm grounding in traditional commercial law--his first book was Cases and Materials on the Law of Sales (1930)--and he retained this interest through his many years of work for uniform commercial codes.

But he explored areas far beyond the then-normal boundaries of the law, and he pioneered in cross-disciplinary work. With anthropologist E. A. Hoebel he wrote The Cheyenne Way (1941), an examination of where custom and tradition end and formal law begins. One of Llewellyn's most admired scholarly books was his study of the appellate process, The Common Law Tradition: Deciding Appeals (1960). One critic called it "the most emphatically useful work ever written on the subject of common-law appeals. " Many lawyers and judges were initially confused by the work, believing that Llewellyn was arguing that judges could intuitively predict four out of five decisions without recourse to complex legal precedents. What Llewellyn did, though, was to examine style and content of numerous state and federal appellate decisions, and find a certain predictability, which he did not disapprove, in most of them. This analysis derived in large part from the realism school of jurisprudence that Llewellyn and Jerome Frank led in the 1930's.

Most of the important essays Llewellyn wrote in this area were collected and published posthumously in Jurisprudence: Realism, Theory and Practice (1962). Realism emerged in 1930 as an alternative to the sociological jurisprudence advocated by Roscoe Pound. Applying some of the recent theories of behavioral scientists, Llewellyn distinguished between "paper rules" and "real rules. " The former constituted the acknowledged doctrines of the times, what the statute books said the law was; the latter were the real practices of judges and other government officials who made the law flesh and blood. Drawing a great deal upon Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 's interpretation of the common law, Llewellyn and Frank to some extent imposed an amoral context upon judicial decision making. The law, they argued, reflected not the accumulated wisdom and morality of the nation but the active predilections of its magistrates. Realism enjoyed much popularity in the 1930's, when the Great Depression made a mockery of many social theories based on high and noble motives. The law, the realists seemed to say, is what men in power make of it. With the rise of fascism, critics attacked this new jurisprudence as little different from the amoral "might makes right" of the fascists. In 1940, Llewellyn partly recanted, conceding that ultimately all legal decisions rested on "the fundamental principles of Natural Law. " In 1951, Llewellyn moved to the University of Chicago Law School, where his wife was a member of the faculty, and taught there until his death. He died in Chicago.

Achievements

• Llewellyn was a prominent jurisprudential scholar. One of his most important works was the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), adopted by forty-nine states. He also drafted the Uniform Trust Receipts Act and the Uniform Chattel Mortgage Act. One of Llewellyn's most popular books was "The Bramble Bush" (1930), consisted of lectures he gave in his course to first-year students, introducing them to the mystery, flavor, and challenge of the law. Llewellyn became the only American ever awarded the Iron Cross (second class) for his service during World War II.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Common Law Tradition: Deciding Appeals (Legal Legends Series)

    (Karl Llewellyn, a legal realist whose views on jurisprude...)

  • The Cheyenne Way (The Civilization of the American Indian Series)

    ( The Cheyenne Indians, in sharp contrast to other Plains...)

  • Jurisprudence: Realism in Theory and Practice

    ( Jurisprudence: Realism in Theory and Practice compiles...)

  • The Case Law System in America

    (Book by Llewellyn, Karl N.)

  • The Theory of Rules

    ( Karl N. Llewellyn was one of the founders and major fig...)

  • Bramble Bush: On Our Law and Its Study

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "There were not many hours in a week when a student was not facing him across a desk stacked so high with books that one could hardly see over the barricade. Students were the spice of his life. His excitement came with the growth of their minds and the flowering of their curiosities. He pushed them to the utmost--teasing, taunting, prodding--flattering, cajoling, scolding. " - William O. Douglas

Connections

In 1924, Llewellyn married Elizabeth Sanford. He married Emma Corstvet in 1933, and Soia Mentschikoff on October 31, 1946. He had no children.

Father:

William Henry Llewellyn

Mother:

Janet George

Spouse:

Emma Corstvet

Spouse:

Soia Mentschikoff

Spouse:

Elizabeth Sanford

References

• The Karl Llewellyn papers