Chafee, Zechariah, 1885-1957

Chafee was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and graduated from Brown University, where he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi, in 1907. Later, he received a law degree from Harvard University, completing his LL.B. in 1913. He was influenced by the theories of sociological Jurisprudence presented by Roscoe Pound and others at Harvard. He met Harold J. Laski, a political scientist and later a leader of the United Kingdom's Labour Party, who became a lifelong friend, there. He practiced at the law firm of Tillinghast and Collins from 1913–1916. Chafee joined Harvard Law School as an assistant professor at Harvard Law School in 1916, and was promoted to full professor in 1919. He was appointed Langdell Professor of Law in 1938 and university professor in 1950. He remained at Harvard Law School until 1956. Chafee was also an authority on equity, interpleader, negotiable instruments, and unfair business competition. In 1936 Chafee drafted the Federal Interpleader Act of 1936 (49 Stat. 1096); he considered this his foremost professional accomplishment. He became an expert on congressional apportionment and helped apportion seats in the United States House of Representatives based on the 1930, 1940 and 1950 censuses. In 1920 he was one of twelve lawyers reporting on illegal activities of the Department of Justice. Chafee nearly lost his job in 1921. He was brought before the Harvard Board of Overseers on a charge of radicalism for his questioning of the sentence handed down in Abrams v. United States 250 U.S. 616 (1919). He defended himself eloquently before a special committee in the Harvard Club of Boston and was allowed to remain at the law school. From 1929 to 1931 Chafee was a consultant to the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (the Wickersham Commission) for which he co-authored a report on lawlessness in law enforcement in 1931. He was Lowell Television Lecturer for the 1956-1957 academic year and finished a 16 lecture television series "The Constitution and Human Rights", an adaptation of a general education course he developed here in 1950, on Boston's educational Channel, WGBH just before he died. Chafee received the following honorary degrees: Doctor of Law from St. John's University, in 1936, Brown University in 1937, and the University of Chicago in 1953; Doctor of Civil Law from Boston University in 1941; and Doctor of Letters from Colby College in 1944. He was a Fellow at Brown University, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Bar Association, the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Alpha Delta Phi, Phi Beta Kappa, the Harvard Club of Boston, the Tavern Club (of Boston), and the Century Association).