William Draper Lewis

William Draper Lewis (1867–1949) was the first full-time dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School (1896–1914) and the founding director (1923–1947) of the American Law Institute.

William Draper Lewis was an Episcopalian, probably of Quaker stock, born in Philadelphia in 1867. He received a B.S. from Haverford College in 1888 and both an LL.B. and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1891.

In 1896, Lewis, though only 29, was the perfect candidate for the first full-time dean of the University's Law School. His law practice had all but disappeared under what was to become a lifelong obsession: the cataloging of American law. Only four years out of law school, he had committed himself to an overwhelming smorgasbord of editorial projects, the major ones in conjunction with friend, business associate and later U.S. Senator George Wharton Pepper. Notably, the two men served as editors of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, published at the time under the name American Law Register and Review.

Lewis saw a national role for the Law School, one that would fill the role of the fading apprenticeship system for young lawyers. Development of a core of full-time faculty sat at the top of Lewis’s agenda, but he gave equal attention to curriculum, admissions and graduation standards, and facilities — in particular the library. A pragmatist and a humanist, he established the tradition at Penn Law of the dean as first among equals.

Lewis treated his colleagues and friends with enormous good humor and tolerance. He was, perhaps more than anyone before or since at the Law School, a grand master of consensus. He was also continually concerned with student welfare; a goodly part of each faculty meeting was given over to the discussion of student "petitions" for relief of one kind or another.

He cared about, stewed over, and poked into every conceivable aspect of the School. He arranged stays for sick students at sanitariums. He even toured the guts of his grand new building (opened in 1900) to understand and correct malfunctions of the heating and ventilation system.

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