A Discourse Pronounced at the Inauguration of the Author as Royall Professor of Law: In Harvard University, August 26, 1834

by Simon Greenleaf

Excerpt from A Discourse Pronounced at the Inauguration of the Author as Royall Professor of Law

IN accepting the office to which I had the honor of your invitation, I have not been insensible of the difficulty and peril of the undertaking. To follow out the designs and continue the courses of exact and thorough instruction, projected by men of vigorous and exalted 'intellect and various learning who have here preceded me, and to act daily and constantly, by precept and example, with all the in?uences of an elder brother, on the minds of so many young men already the hope of our country, is a work of magnitude sufficient to oppress a stouter heart than mine. And perilous indeed is the position, exposed to the brilliant lights of jurisprudence and of science by which I am surrounded. Yet, believing that an honor like this, unsought, was not to he declined, 1 have not felt at liberty to withhold this testimony of devotedness to a science of such surpassing value as the law; affecting, as it does, all we hold dear in civil or social life, and imparting, as it may be well or ill understood and administered, either health and vigor, or disease and death to our institutions.

34 pages, Paperback

First published July 13, 2015

About the author

Greenleaf is an important figure in the development of that Christian school of thought known as legal or juridical apologetics. His principal work of legal scholarship is A Treatise on the Law of Evidence (3 vols., 1842–1853).