Viewing Charles B. Elliott: "An Outline of the Law of Insurance" (1895).

Charles B. Elliott: "An Outline of the Law of Insurance" (1895).

In 1895, Charles Burke Elliott was serving his first year on the District Court of Hennepin County, Minnesota. The previous three years he was on the Minneapolis Municipal Court. The day-to-day work of a trial judge did not consume Elliott, for he was a man of boundless energy. He was a prolific author of books and journal articles, some of which he wrote while a Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota College of Law. There he taught insurance law, among other courses. To assist his students, he prepared and distributed an outline of the principles of insurance law. It came to the attention of West Publishing Company which published "An Outline of the Law of Insurance" subtitled "An Outline of a Course of Lectures Delivered to Students of the College of Law, University of Minnesota" in 1895. It is posted here. The following year, West published his "An Outline of the Law of Insurance, With Illustrative Cases."

These lectures show the state of insurance law in the late 1890s but, more important, they show that Professor Elliott taught insurance law by delivering lectures to his students. At this time, he did not practice the "case method" of teaching that had been introduced years earlier by Dean Langdell at Harvard Law School. Langdell's method would not be used at the University of Minnesota College of Law until after William R. Vance became Dean in 1911.

In 1902 Elliott published "The Law of Insurance: A Treatise on the law of Insurance, Including Fire, Life, Accident, Casualty, Title Credit and Guarantee Insurance in Every Form." Over the years, it was revised and published by different publishing companies. A revised edition published in 1907 by the Bobbs-Merrill Company is posted in the "Treatises/Textbook" category in the Archives of the MLHP.

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Posted: August 18, 2016.

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