Miscellany: Abe Lincoln's Birthday

On this day, nearly 200 years ago, Abraham Lincoln was born. Lincoln has been written about and analyzed incessantly even shortly after his assassination, and in the end, people do forget that he was actually a pretty good lawyer, too.

In those days, of course, "law school" as we know it did not exist, and legal education in the U.S. was conducted very differently. Nowadays, "reading the law" (an extended apprenticeship under a judge or practicing attorney) is the exception, not the rule (only CA, VT, and WA allow admission to the bar without law school attendance). Most lawyers today come from a formal law school that grants a JD after three years of coursework.

Legend has it that Lincoln happened upon Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Law of England" and taught himself the law, like he did most everything else. In Lincoln's time, either a simple appeal to the court or an oral interview with a judge was enough to get admission to the bar. By all accounts Lincoln was a fine lawyer, though he quickly switched to politics. A longstanding personal opponent of slavery, he nevertheless was a shrewd politician, as the Emancipation Proclamation shows.