Inevitably, Ezra Cornell's "Any person ... any study" extended to law education. Andrew D. White, the university's first president, proposed a school of law in 1866.

By 1885, White, according to historian Morris Bishop, "asserted that the time was at last ripe. President Adams heard and applauded. To make a law school one needed, after all, only a small library and a few professors." The trustees approved White's proposal and advised a two-year course "with an entrance requirement equivalent to one year of high-school work -- whereas four high-school years were demanded for entrance to Arts or Engineering." Alumni protested; entrance requirements stiffened. The Law School opened in fall 1887, quartered in "the inconvenient and uncomfortable fourth floor of Morrill Hall." The Cornell Law Review began publishing in 1915, and by 1917 two years of college was required for entrance. The Law School's current home, Myron Taylor Hall, was dedicated in 1932, a gift from Myron Taylor, Class of 1894, chairman of U.S. Steel Corp. and ambassador to the Vatican, who hoped to make Cornell a center for international law "that prepared young men for foreign service." The building's "majestic tower contains apartments for distinguished guests or professors, with a dizzy view of lake and valley," Bishop wrote.

-- Adapted by George Lowery from Morris Bishop's "A History of Cornell."