Category:Bachelor of Laws Graduates
The Bachelor of Laws was the standard American first law degree until the second half of the twentieth century, when United States law schools converted to the Juris Doctor, and it remains the standard first law degree across much of the Commonwealth. That single fact explains the whole shape of this category: it holds American lawyers who qualified before the conversion and Commonwealth lawyers who qualified after it, and almost nobody in between. It collects biographical entries on people recorded as holding the degree.
Background
The degree appears in this roster under two spellings, LL.B. and LLB, and against two very different kinds of institution. On the American side it is a Harvard, Yale or Berkeley credential from the first two thirds of the twentieth century, and it belongs to people who went on to the federal bench, the Cabinet or the Supreme Court. On the Commonwealth side it is a Queen's University Belfast, University of Melbourne or National Taiwan University credential from the 1970s and after, and it belongs to barristers who entered politics.
Because the American conversion to the Juris Doctor was a renaming rather than a change in training, this category and the Juris Doctor category on this wiki describe the same qualification at different dates, and they should be read as one sequence rather than as two credentials.
The American bench and the Cabinet
Supreme Court Justices run through this category from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first, and they arrive from a much wider set of law schools than the modern bench does. Benjamin Robbins Curtis, Edward Terry Sanford, Louis Brandeis and Anthony Kennedy took the degree at Harvard, as did Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Elliot Richardson. Willis Van Devanter took his at the University of Cincinnati, Frank Murphy at the University of Michigan, Sherman Minton at Indiana, Abe Fortas at Yale, Tom C. Clark at the University of Texas at Austin, Sandra Day O'Connor at Stanford, Earl Warren at Berkeley, Warren Burger at the St Paul College of Law and Charles Evans Whittaker at the Kansas City School of Law, later the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law.
The executive branch is represented as heavily. Attorneys General in the category include Francis Biddle, J. Howard McGrath, Clark, Griffin Bell, William French Smith, Edwin Meese, Michael Mukasey and Robert F. Kennedy, whose degree is from the University of Virginia. Secretaries of State include John W. Foster, Dean Rusk, who took the degree at Berkeley after Oxford, Cyrus Vance, who took his at Yale, and James Baker, who took his at the University of Texas at Austin. Henry L. Stimson and Clark Clifford round out a group whose members shaped American law and foreign policy across the whole span of the twentieth century.
The Commonwealth line
The other half of the category is not American at all. Julia Gillard took hers at the University of Melbourne and Malcolm Turnbull his at the University of Sydney before Brasenose College, Oxford; both served as Prime Minister of Australia. Keir Starmer took his at the University of Leeds before a Bachelor of Civil Law at Oxford, and Michael Howard took his at Peterhouse, Cambridge; both led British political parties, Starmer from Downing Street. David Trimble took the degree at Queen's University Belfast and became the first First Minister of Northern Ireland. Eric Wu took his at National Taiwan University. Kwek Leng Beng took his at the University of London and runs City Developments Limited in Singapore; Ted Lerner took his at George Washington University and Sumner Redstone took his in the United States, and both built businesses with the qualification rather than practicing with it.
See also
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