12
F E ATURE
STETSON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAW:
A History of Innovation, Tenacity, and Achievement.
Photo credit: Emily Preu
B Y TOM D A N I E L
Just like a person, an institution often has its own personality,
a set of character traits that define it. At Stetson University
College of Law, this personality is distinct. Stetson Law is
dynamic and innovative. For more than 120 years, it has been a
pioneer, always looking for new challenges and opportunities, as
well as creative ways to address them. Above all, Stetson Law is
resilient and compassionate.
Stetson Law Firsts
Stetson Law’s history as an innovator began with its founding.
After repeated requests from members of The Florida Bar,
the College of Law opened in 1900 in DeLand, becoming
Florida’s first law school. Innovation also took shape in terms
of inclusivity when in 1908, Mary Stewart Howarth-Hewitt
attended Stetson and became the first woman in Florida to
attend law school and earn a law degree.
In their definitive book, “Florida’s First Law School, History
of Stetson University College of Law,” the authors, Michael
I. Swygert and W. Gary Vause, write, “… since its inception,
Stetson University’s College of Law offered not only substantive,
theoretical instruction in the law, it also required students to
take an intensive skills course in trial practice. Its program was
both comprehensive and innovative, a combination which, at the
time, appears to have been unique in American legal education.”
Tenacious Throughout History
From the start, Stetson Law was forward-thinking. However,
history often presented the school with unanticipated challenges.
During the Great Depression, approximately 1,500 institutions
of higher education in the country went bankrupt or were forced
to shut down. The Florida state economy was in shambles, yet
The Public Defender Clinic in 1969. Robert E. Jagger, together with Stetson Professor
Paul Barnard and 6th Judicial Circuit Senior Judge John Bird, organized the state’s first
clinical legal education program at Stetson in 1963.
Stetson Law survived. Dean Lewis H. Tribble kept the school
afloat by convincing teachers to remain at Stetson beyond their
retirement and work for a lower salary.
In the next decade, the school had
to cope with a challenge it could not
overcome – World War II. Facing
economic challenges and a shortage
of young men applying for the school
because of the lowering of the draft
age to 18, Stetson Law was shuttered
from 1943 to 1946. At the war’s end,
the Stetson Board of Trustees made
the decision that it was time to reopen.
In his announcement, then-President
William Sims Allen said, “We are
determined to have a law school of even greater distinction than
past years.”
Thus began a period of steady growth and achievement. Less than
a decade later, in 1954, Stetson Law moved to its current location.
University officials realized that to attract more students, present
them with the opportunities that other law schools offered, and
achieve the status the school desired, Stetson Law needed to move
to a metropolitan community. Once word got out, three cities –
Jacksonville, St. Petersburg, and Tampa – competed to be chosen
as the new home. The winner was St. Petersburg, offering to pay
Students study in the Law Library in 1903.
Stetson University President
William Sims Allen and his
secretary.