[4] He attended Newark (now Barringer) High School where he was class president, editor of the newspaper, and a member of two fraternal groups, The Ramblers (later Omega Gamma Delta) and Lambda Tau.
[5] An appreciation of the changes brought to the New Jersey judicial system can be gained from a comparison between the structure of the courts before the new constitution and after.
Previously, filing the action in the wrong court was a fatal defect if the matter was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.
Professor John Lynch, who taught Constitutional Law and New Jersey Practice at the Seton Hall School of Law in the 1970s and 1980s, told the apocryphal story of a politically sensitive case in the 1930s or 1940s, in which the plaintiffs feared that the court would find it had no jurisdiction in order to avoid the political consequences of ruling in the plaintiff's favor.
He also served for many years as Dean of New York University Law School, currently housed in a building that bears his name.
[7] Vanderbilt authored many articles and a number of books, including:[8][9] For his work in law reform, he was awarded 32 honorary degrees and the American Bar Association Medal.
[5] His funeral was held at Christ Protestant Episcopal Church in Short Hills,[13] and he was buried at Restland Memorial Park in East Hanover, New Jersey.