George Wythe is recognized as the first law professor in the United States, beginning his teaching career at the College of William & Mary in 1779. Before that, he was a Virginia judge, a signatory of the Declaration of the Independence, and a Founding Father of the United States. Among his apprentices were Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and Henry Clay. In fact, he left his library to Jefferson in his will (and, conveniently, we have it digitized in HeinOnline in a handy subcollection of our Legal Classics database). Despite being born to a wealthy plantation family, Wythe opposed slavery and freed his slaves after the American Revolution. His anti-slavery views were reflected in his judicial decisions. He served at both the state and federal levels and participated in several notable cases, such as Commonwealth v. Caton, in which he upheld judicial review of the legislature and set the stage for Justice Marshall’s decision in Marbury v. Madison^[1]William Marbury v. James Madison, Secretary of State of the United States, 5 U.S. 137, 180 (1803). This case can be found in HeinOnline’s U.S. Supreme Court Library. two decades later.

Throughout her career, Lutie A. Lytle broke barriers placed before her because of her race and gender. Born to formerly enslaved parents in Tennessee in 1875, Lytle became a clerk for the Kansas legislature when she was 16 and wrote articles for a local African-American newspaper. She attended law courses at Central Tennessee College and graduated valedictorian, and she became the first woman admitted to the Tennessee State Bar. But she didn’t stop there. She returned to Central Tennessee College and in 1898 joined the law faculty, becoming one of the first women law professors in the United States. Lytle eventually married and moved to New York City, where she gave lectures and worked at her husband’s law practice, which she took over after his sudden death in 1913.

Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong was born in San Francisco in 1890. She graduated from University of California, Berkeley with an economics degree and attended law school at the University of California’s School of Jurisprudence. She was admitted to the California Bar in 1915. After working as the executive secretary of the California Social Insurance Commission for four years, she returned to Berkeley to earn a Ph.D. in economics. While there, she was appointed to faculty of the law school and economics department, becoming the first woman full-time faculty member at a law school approved by the American Bar Association. Armstrong traveled across Europe studying social insurance policies, and she became an expert in the subject, helping to draft the Social Security Act of 1935.^[2]To provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age benefits, and by enabling the several States to make more adequate provision for aged persons, blind persons, dependent and crippled children, maternal and child welfare, … Continue reading She also published various works about social insurance policies such as minimum wage.

Born to a working-class family in Pennsylvania in 1930, Derrick Bell attended Duquesne University and served in the United States Air Force. He graduated with an LL.B. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1957. After graduating, he worked for the Civil Rights Division in the United States Department of Justice, and he authored the first casebook that examined the law’s impact on race relations. After he left the Justice Department, he moved to Pittsburgh and was recruited by Thurgood Marshall to join the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense Fund. He worked closely with other civil rights attorneys and oversaw more than 300 school desegregation cases. Eventually, Bell turned to academia—he served on faculties at USC Gould School of Law, Harvard Law School (where he became the first Black tenured law professor), University of Oregon School of Law, and NYU School of Law.