Langdell replaced textbook lectures with Socratic casebook teaching

Evidence

Langdell also introduced the case method of teaching law. This was his most far-​reaching reform, the one for which he is most remembered. Langdell drove the textbooks out of the temple, and brought in casebooks instead. These were collections of reports of actual cases, carefully selected and arranged to illustrate principles of law, what they meant, and how they developed. At Langdell’s Harvard, the classroom tone was profoundly altered. There was no lecturer up front, expounding “the law” from received texts. Now the teacher was a Socratic guide, taking the student by the hand and leading him to understand the concepts and principles hidden inside the cases. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3518

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the case method in its original institutional setting, essential vocabulary for understanding American legal pedagogy.
• XREF: The case method’s Socratic structure sets up chapter 55 on dissents and the wider judicial-opinion culture. — connects to: Bella Cohen’s Socratic questioning drilled literary comprehension into her children — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 152