page_title: Harvard Law School
section_title: 21st century
hierarchical_section_title: Harvard Law School / History / 21st century
caption_attribution_description: English: Dean Professor Martha Minow, Harvard Law Commencement 2010
context_page_description: Harvard Law School is the law school of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States and one of the most prestigious in the world.
  Each class in the three-year JD program has approximately 560 students, among the largest of the top 150 ranked law schools in the United States. The first-year class is broken into seven sections of approximately 80 students, who take most first-year classes together. Harvard's uniquely large class size and prestige have led the law school to graduate a great many distinguished alumni in the judiciary, government, and the business world.
  According to Harvard Law's 2015 ABA-required disclosures, 95% of the Class of 2014 passed the Bar exam. Harvard Law School graduates accounted for more than one-quarter of all Supreme Court clerkships between 2000 and 2010, more than any other law school in the United States.
  Harvard Law School's founding is traditionally linked to the funding of Harvard's first professorship in law, paid for from a bequest from the estate of Isaac Royall Jr., a colonial American landowner and a slaveholder.
context_section_description: Under Kagan, the second half of the 2000s saw significant academic changes since the implementation of the Langdell curriculum. In 2006, the faculty voted unanimously to approve a new first-year curriculum, placing greater emphasis on problem-solving, administrative law, and international law. The new curriculum was implemented in stages over the next several years, with the last new course, a first year practice-oriented problem solving workshop, being instituted in January 2010. In late 2008, the faculty decided that the school should move to an Honors/Pass/Low Pass/Fail (H/P/LP/F) grading system, much like those in place at Yale and Stanford Law Schools. The system applied to half the courses taken by students in the Class of 2010 and fully started with the Class of 2011.
  In 2009, Kagan was appointed solicitor general of the United States by President Barack Obama and resigned the deanship. On June 11, 2009, Harvard University president, Drew Gilpin Faust named Martha Minow as the new dean. She assumed the position on July 1, 2009. On January 3, 2017, Minow announced that she would conclude her tenure as dean at the end of the academic year. In June 2017, John F. Manning was named as the new dean, effective as of July 1, 2017.
  In September 2017, the school unveiled a plaque acknowledging the indirect role played by slavery in its history:
  In honor of the enslaved whose labor created wealth that made possible the founding of Harvard Law SchoolMay we pursue the highest ideals of law and justice in their memory
caption: Martha Minow, dean, 2009-2017
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