Noel Thomas Dowling

Background

Dowling was born on August 14, 1885, in Ozark, Alabama, the son of Angus Dowling, a Methodist circuit rider, and Laura Lavinia Boswell.

Education

Dowling attended the Bowen Preparatory School in Nashville, Tennessee, and then worked his way through Vanderbilt University in three years. His classmates voted him the most popular man on campus. After receiving his B. A. in 1909, he studied law at Columbia, earning an M. A. in 1911 and Bachelor of Laws in 1912.

Career

After studies Dowling held several quasi-public service jobs, including positions with the Columbia University Legislative Drafting Research Fund and the United States Commission on Industrial Relations.

During World War I he served as a major in the judge advocate general's office of the army and as an associate director of the War Risk Insurance Bureau, a forerunner of the Veterans Administration. With the conclusion of the war, Dowling began his long career as a teacher of law. He joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota in 1919. Three years later he returned to Columbia, where he remained the rest of his life, becoming professor of law in 1924, Nash Professor of Law in 1930, and the first occupant of the Harlan Fiske Stone chair in constitutional law in 1946. He retired from active teaching in 1958 but continued his work with the university Legislative Drafting Research Fund until his death.

Dowling's writings encompass a number of fields, but he is best remembered as a constitutional scholar. His Cases on Constitutional Law first appeared in 1931 and went through six more editions in his lifetime. Gerald Gunther took over the editorial duties beginning with the seventh edition in 1965, and the book remains one of the most widely used of all law school texts. During the constitutional turmoil of the 1930's, Dowling firmly allied himself with the liberal bloc on the Supreme Court, at least in part because of his friendship with, as well as high regard for, Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, who as dean of the Columbia Law School had been instrumental in bringing Dowling to the faculty.

Throughout his teaching career, Dowling remained active in a variety of public services. He retained a strong interest in the Columbia Legislative Drafting Research Fund, and during the 1930's helped to establish legislative drafting bureaus in both houses of Congress. The Roosevelt administration consulted him in drafting the Agricultural Administration Act and the Tennessee Valley Authority legislation. A number of private insurance companies retained him to advise them regarding the constitutionality of federal and state legislation that affected their business. He also found time in 1937 to aid his native state in testing the constitutionality of the Social Security Act, and in 1941 he was able to resolve a crippling transit strike in New York City at the request of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

During World War II, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal named Dowling to a special board to review the organization and practice of naval courts. In 1939, Dowling was elected to the board of trustees, which included John D. Rockefeller, Jr. , Winthrop W. Aldrich, and several other members of New York's most prominent families. They quickly came to respect Dowling's good sense and in 1945 elected him president of the board. He found the demands of the church and his teaching to be too great, however, and so in 1946 gave up the church office.

Dowling died on February 11, 1969, in New York City.

Achievements

• Dowling is best remembered as a scholar, working on various educational comissions during both World Wars. He is also known as the author of Cases on Constitutional Law, the book which still remains one of the most widely used of all law school texts. For this work, in 1948 he received the Distinguished Public Service Award, the highest honor the navy can bestow upon a civilian.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Cases on Constitutional Law; First Edition 1937

    (True first edition of this legendary reference material. ...)

  • Materials for legal method,

    (Materials for legal method.)

  • Cases on constitutional law. 1958 Supplememt (University casebook series)
  • American Constitutional Law

Religion

Outside of the law, Dowling devoted a great deal of his time to church affairs. Although the child of Methodists and married to a Presbyterian, Dowling, along with his wife, joined the nominally Baptist Riverside Church near Columbia University, where the renowned Harry Emerson Fosdick served as senior minister to a congregation that many of its members considered "interdenominational. "

Views

Harlan Fiske Stone, Dowling believed in a broad interpretation of the federal commerce power. But he also believed in the doctrine that the Court serves as the ultimate arbiter of the validity of both federal and state laws and that it plays a key role in balancing the federal system.

He excelled in the Socratic approach, but where the Socratic method usually involves a question-and-answer interchange to move the students to the "right" conclusion, Dowling wanted students to realize that in certain areas of the law there is no single right answer. Dowling emphasized the complicated process by which constitutional doctrine is developed, especially the broader matrix of powers shared by the various branches of the federal government, as well as those shared by the state and national governments.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• According to colleagues and students, Dowling was an exceptional classroom teacher.
  
  Louis Lusky, who knew him as both a teacher and a colleague, described Dowling as "a gentleman. He treated his students as gentlemen and ladies. And, so doing, he taught them more than the law. "

Connections

On June 19, 1918, Dowling married Elizabeth Brown Molloy, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister; they had two children.

Father:

Angus Dowling

Mother:

Laura Lavinia Boswell

Spouse:

Elizabeth Brown Molloy

colleague:

Louis Lusky