Mary Clark, The Founding of the Washington College of Law: The First Law School Established by Women for Women, 47 Am. U. L. Rev. 3 (1998)

This paper is a wonderfully wirtten history of the Washington College of Law at American University. In 1896, Delia Jackson asked Ellen Mussey for an apprenticeship in her law office. Mussey said if she could recruit more students and get Emma Gillett to teach, Mussey and Gillett would teach her. Jackson succeeded, and the Women’s Law Class met for the first time. The foundation of the Washington College of Law was established.

Several factors facilitated the opening of a law school for women. In the late 1800s, women’s enrollment at seminaries and colleges increased, and several women’s colleges were founded. As women pursued higher education, they wanted broader career opportunities, but they lacked access to the education necessary to enter the professions. In addition, women’s voluntary associations for social reform became increasingly active during the last half of the nineteenth century. Reform efforts, including work on suffrage, became a springboard to political activity for women.

Mussey and Gillett, active in a variety of social reform efforts and believers in gender equality, established WCL as a coeducational institution. They rejected the “separate spheres” approach to education and legal practice, and contended that co-education would allow women to demonstrate their legal acumen and accustom them to working in a male-dominated field. The admission of men also gave the fledgling law school credibility and greater financial viability. Though the accomplishments of the female students were highly publicized during the school’s initial years, the student body became increasingly male during the early twentieth century. The size of the school grew more quickly than the application rate of women and other law schools began to admit women.

Although Gillett obtained her legal education at Howard University, the Washington College of Law admitted only white students until the 1950’s. Mussey’s and Gillett’s narrow focus on white women may have been an outgrowth of their own racial attitudes. Bias was deeply embedded in suffrage and other reform movements of the time. The law school’s founders may also have reacted to the segregationist preferences of the Washington, D.C. legal and political communities, concluding that their financial viability depended on maintaining a whites only admissions policy.

Mussey, who served as dean until 1813, was the first female law school dean in the United States. When the Washington College of Law opened, it held classes part-time and at night in order to attract working students. The school had no endowment, no permanent location, and charged only $50 in tuition. Mussey and Gillett taught practically for free. After Mussey’s retirement, Gillett took over as dean. She raised an endowment for the school, which became majority male in 1914. In 1920, the law school bought a town house on K Street and held classes there. A day division was opened in 1930, gained accreditation by the ABA in 1939, appointed its first male dean, Horatio Rogers, in 1947, and merged with American University in 1949.