Other notable former faculty members include U.S. President Barack Obama and U.S. Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia, John Paul Stevens, and Elena Kagan.

[5] At the time, Harper observed that, "[t]hus far democracy seems to have found no way of making sure that the strongest men should be placed in control of the country's business.

[7] Another adviser, a member of the Chicago bar, suggested that Harvard Law School, led by Christopher Columbus Langdell and influenced by the casebook method at the time, had "lost touch with great leaders among jurists and lawyers" and that the new law school in Chicago should focus on "social economics" or "principles of statesmanship" for lawyers.

[12][7] The law school prospered in its early years and fostered relationships with scholars in other fields, including economics, political science, psychology, and history.

In her autobiography, Breckinridge noted that "the fact that the law school, like the rest of the University ... accepted men and women students on equal terms was publicly settled".

Its longest-serving dean, James Parker Hall, who played a significant role in recruiting numerous distinguished faculty members to the law school, died in office in 1928.

[17] In the 1930s, new dean Harry A. Bigelow built on the interdisciplinary foundations laid by Freund and introduced classes in accounting, economics, and psychology.

[18] Faculty member Edward Levi also introduced economics in the antitrust course, permitting Director to teach one of every five classroom sessions.

[21] In the 1950s and 1960s, the law school experienced a period of profound growth and expansion under the leadership of Edward Levi, who was appointed Dean in 1950.

Other notable scholars, widely regarded as institutional figures and leading thinkers in their respective areas,[22] were Walter J. Blum and Bernard D. Meltzer, who studied and taught at the law school for their entire academic careers.

Geoffrey R. Stone, a leading First Amendment scholar and alumnus and former dean of the law school, joined the faculty in the same year.

Cass Sunstein, regarded as "the most cited legal scholar in the United States and probably the world",[26] began his teaching career at the law school in 1981 and served as a faculty member for 27 years.

[27] His future colleague on the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, began her career at the law school too, as did noted legal scholars Lawrence Lessig and Adrian Vermeule.

[28] The law school currently employs more than 200 full-time and part-time faculty members and enrolls approximately 600 students in its Juris Doctor (J.D.)

This method includes calling on students without prior notice, presenting hypotheticals, and continuously questioning them to test their knowledge and application of the material and to flesh out underlying assumptions in their responses.

The law school has five current and past policy initiatives:[41] Court Reform in the Juvenile Justice System International Best Standards for Guest Worker Programs (2015-2017) Bilateral Labor Agreements Dataset Animal Law Policy Initiative (Concluded) Foster Care to Adulthood (2005-2008) Kanter Project on Mass Incarceration (2013)

The Law Library is open 90 hours per week and employs 11 full-time librarians and 11 additional managers and staff members.

It contains over 700,000 volumes of books, with approximately 6,000 added each year, including materials in over 25 languages, and primary law from foreign countries and international organizations.

[53] According to the law school's official 2020 ABA-required disclosures, 98.5% of the Class of 2019 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment within ten months of graduation.

[73] The law school was originally housed in Stuart Hall, a Gothic-style limestone building on the campus's main quadrangles.

Needing more library and student space, the law school moved across the Midway Plaisance to its current, Eero Saarinen-designed building (next to what was then the headquarters of the American Bar Association) in October 1959.

The year saw a number of celebrations of the law school's new home, including a filming of The Today Show and appearances by Chief Justice Earl Warren, Governor (and later Vice President) Nelson Rockefeller and Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld.

[74] Renovation of the library, classrooms, offices, and fountain was completed in 2008, notable for the preservation of most of Saarinen's structure at a time when many modernist buildings faced demolition.

Attorneys General and Solicitors General, members of Congress and cabinet officials, Privy Counsellors, university presidents and faculty deans, founders of the law firms Kirkland & Ellis, Baker McKenzie, and Jenner & Block, CEOs and chairpersons of multinational corporations, and contributors to literature, journalism, and the arts.

Federal appellate judges who graduated from the law school include Douglas H. Ginsburg, David S. Tatel, Michael W. McConnell and Robert Bork, who was unsuccessfully nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Other federal appellate judges include Abner Mikva, who later served as White House Counsel in the Clinton administration; Frank H. Easterbrook, who currently teaches at the law school; and Jerome Frank, who served as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and, together with fellow alumnus Herman Oliphant, played a leading role in the legal realism movement in the U.S. More recently confirmed alumni federal appellate judges include Anthony Johnstone, Eric E. Murphy, Neomi Rao, Beth Robinson, Eric D. Miller, and Allison H. Eid.

Notable alumni in government and politics include Attorneys General John Ashcroft, Ramsey Clark and Edward H. Levi, who was Dean of the law school from 1950 to 1962.

Other graduates include the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Geoffrey Palmer; prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials and drafter of the U.N. Charter, Bernard D. Meltzer; former FBI director, James Comey; former United States Secretary of the Interior and key figure in the implementation of the New Deal, Harold L. Ickes; former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Abraham Ribicoff; the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray; current White House Counsel Ed Siskel; current U.S. senator Amy Klobuchar, and U.S. Representative and United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack Vice-Chair Liz Cheney, among other members of Congress.

[80] In business, notable alumni include the billionaire and founder of the Carlyle Group, David Rubenstein; the former CEO and president of Bloomberg L.P. and the current CEO of Sidewalk Labs, Daniel L. Doctoroff; the executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels Corporation, Thomas Pritzker; the chairman and president of Compass Lexecon and an emeritus professor at the law school, Daniel Fischel; former president of Weyerhaeuser and of Boy Scouts of America, Norton Clapp; the current commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver; the founder of Yammer, David O. Sacks; and Katherine L. Adams, the general counsel of Apple Inc..

The law school also counts among its alumni four recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom; two Pulitzer Prize winners; the first female African-American U.S. senator, Carol Moseley Braun; the first African-American to serve as a United States federal judge, James Benton Parsons; civil rights attorney and chairman of the Fair Employment Practices Committee, Earl B. Dickerson; the first female president of the American Law Institute and of the American Bar Association, Roberta Cooper Ramo; Pulitzer Prize-winner Studs Terkel; civil rights activist and the first woman to graduate from the law school, Sophonisba Breckinridge; and the founder of the intelligent design movement, Phillip E. Johnson.