ABSTRACT
A legal scholar and earnest defender of civil liberties, Zechariah Chafee Jr. was educated at Brown University. He graduated in 1907. After working in his father's foundry for three years, he determined he was not suited to be an industrialist. He entered Harvard Law School in 1910, graduating at the top of his class in 1913. After practicing law at a firm in Providence, Rhode Island, for three years, Chafee joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1916. He became a full professor in 1919 and occupied the Christopher Columbus Langdell chair in law later in his career. In 1950 he was named a University Professor, a position that released him from teaching duties and gave him more time to write. Despite the eventual popularity of his constitutional vision, Chafee's perspectives were criticized. In 1920 alumni of the Harvard Law School charged that he was a radical for publishing the 1919 article.
