Harry Hillel Wellington, American lawyer, Dean of Yale Law School (1975–1985) and New York Law School (1992–2000), died from a brain tumor he was , 84.

Harry Hillel Wellington was the Dean of Yale Law School from 1975 to 1985 and the dean of New York Law School from 1992 to 2000 died from a brain tumor he was , 84.


(August 13, 1926 – August 8, 2011)

Biography

Wellington was born in 1926. He received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1947, and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School in 1952. He taught at Stanford Law School for a year.^[2] He clerked for the Circuit Court Judge Calvert Magruder. He also clerked for Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter from 1955 to 1956.^[3]
He was a member of American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He served as Senior Fellow of Brookings Institution, and on Board of Governors of Yale University Press. He was a scholar at Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, Italy. He was a recipient of Ford and Guggenheim Fellowships. He was on the Board of Directors of the New York Legal Assistance Group.^[4]

Yale Law School

Wellington started teaching at Yale Law School in 1956 as an assistant professor. In his early years at Yale, he was a contracts scholar, focusing his scholarship on freedom of contract, organized labor, and collective bargaining. Wellington's best-known scholarly works are on legal process. He was made an associate professor in 1957, a full professor in 1960, and the Edward J. Phelps Professor of Law in 1967.^[5] He helped persuade John Simon to teach at Yale Law School in 1962.^[6]
He became the Dean of Yale Law School in 1975. He helped rebuild the faculty during his deanship, hiring over 30 professors,^[7] including Anthony T. Kronman,^{[nb 1]} Barbara Black, Drew Days, Paul Gewirtz, George Priest, Stephen L. Carter, Lucinda Finley, and Oliver Williamson.^[8] He was an excellent fundraiser.^[9] Starting with his deanship, Yale Law School became, “the most theoretical and academically oriented law school in America.”^[10] He became a Sterling Professor in 1983.^[5] As Dean, he developed the Yale Law School's loan forgiveness program.^[6] In 1985, he was succeeded as Dean by Guido Calabresi.
A professorial lecturership was established in his honor in 1995.^[3] He was a Sterling Professor of Law Emeritus and the Harry H. Wellington Professorial Lecturer. He was a Lifetime Honorary Member of the Yale Law School Executive Committee.^[11] In 2005, Yale Law School honored him by naming the Harry H. Wellington Dean’s Discretionary Fund for Faculty Support after him.^[12]

New York Law School Dean

In 1992, he retired from the Yale Law School faculty and became the 14th Dean of New York Law School.^[5] Under his deanship, the curriculum was revised to put greater emphasis on the practical skills of a professional attorney. Also, the Ernst C. Stiefel Professorship of Comparative Law was created.^[13] He was a John Marshall Harlan Visiting Professor at New York Law School.^[14] He retired from teaching in 2007.^[5]

Selected works

• Contracts and Contract Remedies with Harold Shepherd, 1957
• Legislative Purpose and the Judicial Process: The Lincoln Mills Case, with Alexander Bickel, 1957
• The role of law in the prevention and settlement of major labor disputes and in the terms of settlement: A preliminary report, 1965
• Labour and the Legal Process, 1968
• The limits of collective bargaining in public employment, 1969
• The Unions and the Cities (Studies of unionism in government), with Ralph K. Winter, 1972
• The nature of judicial review (The Cardozo lecture), 1981
• Labor Law with Clyde W. Summers and Alan Hyde, 1983
• The Least Dangerous Branch: Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics, with Alexander Bickel, 1986
• Interpreting the Constitution: The Supreme Court and the Process of Adjudication, 1990^[15][16]

 

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