Rand on Conflict of Laws: An Independent Voice. (Canada‪)‬

INTRODUCTION In 1909, at twenty-five years of age, Ivan Rand commenced studies at Harvard Law School, perhaps then the only place for the study of Conflict of Laws (also known as Private International Law). This commitment is easily traced (1) to the influence of its Dane Professor of Law, Joseph Story, who published the first edition of his famous treatise on the subject in 1834. (2) Through various editions, Story's Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws served as primary course text until 1870 when Harvard Law dropped the course from the curriculum. (3) In 1886, it reappeared as a course "offered, at most, twice", and limited to the study of domicile, capacity and property. (4) In 1894, Conflict of Laws became a permanent course and enjoyed an annual place in the curriculum. (5) This commitment at Harvard and a few other law faculties was not necessarily shared by all law teachers. Upon the occasion of his address as the new president of the Association of American Law Schools in 1904, the then dean of law at Cornel l University identified Conflict of Laws as "an excellent subject for broadening the mind ... [but] might well be omitted" from a more streamlined curriculum that stressed the value of more fundamental courses. (6) Ivan Rand did not go to Cornell; he went to Harvard.