Theodore William Dwight

Who was Theodore William Dwight?

Theodore William Dwight, American jurist and educator, cousin of Theodore Dwight Woolsey and of Timothy Dwight V, was born July 18, 1822 in Catskill, New York.

His father was Benjamin Woolsey Dwight, a physician and merchant, and his grandfather was Timothy Dwight IV, a prominent theologian, educator, author, and president of Yale University from 1795-1817. Theodore Dwight graduated from Hamilton College in 1840 where he studied physics under Samuel F.B. Morse and John William Draper.

Dwight taught the classics at Utica Academy in 1840-1841. He studied law at Yale and was admitted to the bar in 1845. Between 1842-1858, he taught at Hamilton, first as tutor and later as professor of law, history, civil polity, and political economy. In 1853 he became dean of the Hamilton Law School.

In 1858, he accepted an invitation to develop a department of law at Columbia. He was the sole professor of law at Columbia until the department was expanded in 1873, eventually becoming Columbia Law School. He served as the dean at Columbia Law School until 1891. That year, he and other faculty, students, and alumni protested the Columbia trustees’ attempts to convert the law school to the case method, and left to found New York Law School.