News Archive

The catalogue that details what courses were offered for law students for the 1895-96 academic year and commencement programs from the turn of the previous century are among the historic documents that have been scanned and posted to the IUPUI eArchives website. The IUPUI University Library Special Collections and Archives is available to anyone who wishes to take a look.

Benjamin Harrison and Eli Lilly were on the board of trustees for what was then known as the University of Indianapolis. Harrison and Lilly also served on the law school’s board of advisory trustees. In 1895, the university was made up of Butler College in Irvington on the city’s east side, the Medical College of Indiana at the corner of Market Street and Senate Avenue; the Indiana Dental College, located on the southwest corner of Ohio and Delaware streets; and the Indiana Law School, then located at No. 71 West Market Street.

Some of the classes available in 1895 may sound familiar to contemporary law students: evidence, torts, history of the common law. But there also was a course in railway law, and “special topics in railway law” also was a subject of study. (The photo at left shows a page from the 1895-1896 academic year catalogue. Listed there are the school’s advisory trustees and the course offerings.)

Such materials speak to the historic beginnings of the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, said Steve Towne of IUPUI’s Special Collections and Archives at University Library. The McKinney school is well over 100 years old, as are many of the schools on the IUPUI campus, he said. “Documents like this are not merely valuable for their nostalgia,” Towne said. “They are part of the school’s history, proving the lineage of the McKinney School of Law.”