The Law School at the College of New Jersey began instruction in 1847 as a modest effort consisting of three professors: Joseph Coerten Hornblower, Richard Stockton Field, and James S.

The short-lived experiment was the furthest the university got in a recurring ambition, marked by varying levels of effort, to establish a law school.

[2] From 1923 to 1925, the university once again formed appreciable plans for the start of a law school but abandoned the idea due to cost and financial risk.

[2] In 1974, then president of Princeton, William G. Bowen, selected a committee to investigate and advise on the achievability of a law school.

A 2003 National Review Online commentary blundered when the author, Candace de Russy, identified the law school at Princeton as real: "These yearnings are embodied in a doctrine called ‘transnational progressivism,’ which is gaining prominence in law schools, for example, at Princeton and Rutgers".