Qualla: Howard University School of Law

Howard University School of Law: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ajay_suresh, CC BY 4.0. Charles Hamilton Houston was thirty-five years old when he became dean of the Howard University School of Law in 1929. He had Harvard Law degrees, a stint editing the Harvard Law Review, and a private practice in Washington. He took the deanship at Howard because he believed that the strategy to dismantle American segregation would have to be designed by lawyers who themselves were Black. He spent the next six years transforming Howard Law from a part-time night school into a full-time accredited institution. He trained a generation of Black lawyers including Thurgood Marshall, Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson III, and James Nabrit Jr. The legal cases that ended segregated public education in the United States were drafted by Houston and his students. They worked out of an unremarkable brick building on the Howard University campus in northwest Washington.

Image: ajay_suresh | CC BY 4.0

Howard University School of Law: Founding and Early Years

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sdkb, CC BY-SA 4.0. Howard University itself was chartered by Congress in 1867, two years after the end of the Civil War, as part of Reconstruction's effort to expand educational opportunity for newly emancipated Black Americans. The School of Law was established the following year, in 1868, origina...

Image: Sdkb | CC BY-SA 4.0

Howard University School of Law: Houston's Reforms

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek E. Morton, CC BY-SA 4.0. Houston had a simple thesis: a lawyer was either a social engineer or a parasite on society. He came to Howard from a position as Justice Department special counsel and Howard part-time faculty. He demanded that Howard Law transform itself if it was going to produce the social en...

Image: Derek E. Morton | CC BY-SA 4.0

Howard University School of Law: Marshall, Robinson, Hill, and Nabrit

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APK, CC BY-SA 4.0. Thurgood Marshall arrived at Howard Law in 1930 after the University of Maryland's law school refused his application on racial grounds. He graduated first in his class in 1933 and joined the NAACP shortly after. The litigation strategy he eventually executed was the strategy Hou...

Image: APK | CC BY-SA 4.0

Howard University School of Law: Pauli Murray's Bible

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek E. Morton, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pauli Murray graduated first in her class from Howard Law in 1944. She was the only woman in her graduating class. She had been rejected by Harvard Law on the explicit grounds of her sex. In 1950, while at the University of California at Berkeley working on a graduate law degree,...

Image: Derek E. Morton | CC BY-SA 4.0

Howard University School of Law: Today

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0. Howard Law operates today from the same northwest Washington campus, though the law school occupies its own buildings on Van Ness Street NW rather than the main university grounds. It confers about 185 J.D. and LL.M. degrees a year to students from the United States, the Caribbea...