The University of Chicago Law School occupies a unique niche among this country’s premier law schools. Located on a residential campus in one of America ‘s great cities, Chicago offers a rigorous and interdisciplinary professional education that blends the study of law with the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. Students, faculty, and staff form a small, tightly knit community devoted to the life of the mind. Learning is participatory. Chicago does not seek to impose a single viewpoint or style of thought on its students. Instead, our faculty exposes students to contrasting views, confident in students’ abilities to choose their own paths.
The University of Chicago , one of the youngest of the major American universities, was granted its charter in 1890 and opened its doors for classes in October 1892. The generosity of its founding donors, led by John D. Rockefeller, enabled the first president of the University, William Rainey Harper, to realize his bold ideas and extraordinary standards in the creation of a new university. Harper insisted that the new institution must be a true university, with a strong emphasis on advanced training and research, as well as undergraduate education.
The Law School, part of Harper’s original plan but delayed in fulfillment until 1902, was a product of an innovative spirit and a devotion to intellectual inquiry. The objective, in the view of Harper and faculty members associated with him in the project, was to create a new kind of law school, professional in its purpose, but with a broader outlook than was then prevalent in the leading American law schools. The aspiration of the new school was set by Harper’s conception of legal education in a university setting: education in law “implies a scientific knowledge of law and of legal and juristic methods. These are the crystallization of ages of human progress. They cannot be understood in their entirety without a clear comprehension of the historic forces of which they are the product, and of the social environment with which they are in living contact. A scientific study of law involves the related sciences of history, economics, philosophy – the whole field of man as social being.”
This animating philosophy has resulted in the Law School playing a leading role in legal education since its founding. Chicago was pivotal in almost all of the innovations made in legal education during the last century: the recognition of administrative law, legislation, and comparative law as legitimate fields of law study; the introduction of other disciplines into the law school curriculum and the appointment of faculty outside the law; the extension of the field of legal research from concern with the rules of the law to empirically oriented investigations of the legal system; and the broadening of the curriculum to include clinical as well as academic offerings.
For more on the history of the Law School , please visit the archival web page for our Centennial, celebrated in 2002-03. You may also be interested in this slide show documenting the opening of our building’s cornerstone in 2009.
Listed below is the estimated Law School budget for entering students during the 2010-2011 academic year. In determining a student’s budget, the University uses Bureau of Labor Statistics figures to estimate expenditures for the nine-month academic year. In the case of a student with dependent(s), the family’s additional actual costs, within reason, will be used to determine the student grant budget. Some students may have additional personal expenses included in the standard budget. Examples of such additional expenses are expenses incurred by a handicapped student, if the expenses are not covered by insurance, and additional childcare or day care expenses. Students with special circumstances should verify the final amount of their budgets with the Student Loan Administration.
Tuition $45,405
Medical Insurance* $2,220
Student Life Fee $780
Room and Board $13,455
Transcript fee (one time) $45
Books $1,650
Personal Expenses/Misc. $2,670
Transportation Expenses $1,785
TOTAL $68,010