The Pound Foundation toasts 40 flourishing years.

The Roscoe Pound Foundation, the trial bar's think tank and emissary to the judiciary and law professors, celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. The Foundation honors Roscoe Pound - dean of Harvard Law School from 1916 to 1936 md one of the giants of American law-through its programs for lawyers, scholars, and judges. The Foundation builds on Pound's seminal insight that the law must continually evolve to account for current social conditions and also to enable people to exercise a measure of control over them.

Today, the Foundation stimulates judicial discussion of the U.S. civil justice system by publishing the Civil Justice Digest, which is sent quarterly to judges, law professors, and others with a serious interest in civil justice. Each year the Foundation, in cooperation with Yale Law School and other institutions, brings more than 100 state court judges together with plaintiffs' lawyers and academics for a vigorous exchange of theories and experiences. The Foundation supports academic research that helps the law evolve.

The Foundation's publications are widely, distributed and are increasingly being cited. Two recent major publications are The Jury in America by John Guinther and Demystifying Punitive Damages in Products Liability Cases: A Survey of a Quarter Century of Trial Verdicts by Professor Michael Rustad. Rustad's landmark study, one of the first empirical analyses of punitive damages in products liability cases, remains an authoritative source in the vigorous debate over this controversial subject.

Dean Pound spent much of his long professional life in the company of law professors and law students, working continually to improve the practice of law. Today, the Foundation makes four annual awards, reflecting Pound's concern for excellence among teachers and students: the Richard S. Jacobson Award for Excellence in Teaching Trial Advocacy, the Award for Excellence in Teaching Trial Advocacy as an Adjunct, the Roscoe Hogan Environmental Law Essay Contest, and the Elaine Osborne Jacobson Award for Women in Health Care Law.

All of this work is supported by Pound Fellows, or members of the Foundation, many of whom have been associated with the organization since its inception. According to Pound President - and former ATLA President - Roxanne Barton Conlin of Des Moines, these days the composition of the Foundation's membership and leadership reflects the increasing diversity of ATLA - it includes younger people, women, minorities, and others historically absent from bar leadership roles. "Responding to the more diverse views and needs of our membership has strengthened our programs and has helped the Foundation's work evolve as Roscoe Pound believed that the law itself should," said Conlin.

Pound helped transform U.S. jurisprudence around the turn of the century. His analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of our legal system was refined over many years, producing what came to be known as sociological jurisprudence - the view that while the law must be stable, it must also continually evolve. He was especially scornful of the doctrine called liberty of contract - which, as applied to labor relations, permitted courts to invalidate wage, hour, and safety regulations on the grounds that they violated the rights of employees to contract tract at will their labor. Pound argued that in the new industrial state that was evolving at that time, it was absurd to think that employer and employee negotiated as equals.

Pound's earliest training was in botany, a field in which he earned a doctorate from the University of Nebraska. He spent only one year - 1889 to 1890 - at Harvard Law School, where he studied with such legendary, figures as James Barr Ames, John Chipman Gray, James Bradley Thayer, and William A. Keener.

Pound returned to Lincoln, Nebraska, without completing a law degree, and he was admitted to the bar in accord with the regulations of the day. All his life, he took great pride in being a practicing lawyer and a scholar of the system. He never lost his zeal for giving members of the bar a strong professional consciousness, an enthusiasm reflected in his decision to work with the National Association of Claimants' Compensation Attorneys (NACCA), the precursor to ATLA.

Dean Pound remained active for nearly 30 years after he retired in 1936 at age 65. In 1953, he became editor of the NACCA Law Journal, which provided the inspiration for the ATLA Law Reporter. After Pound left that position, NACCA established the Roscoe Pound Foundation in 1956, and Pound himself was active in setting forth its mission.

It was Pound's wish that the Foundation conserve his extensive and remarkable library of 8,700 volumes, which reflected his wide-ranging interests in law, botany, jurisprudence, the social sciences, linguistics, and literature. To house the library and the Foundation, Pound donated his home in Watertown, Massachusetts, which also became the office of the NACCA Law Journal and a research center. (Since 1992, the library has resided in Harvard's Langdell Law Library.)

In 1969, the Foundation and ATLA joined forces in a new home in Cambridge. Chief Justice Earl Warren gave the keynote address at the dedication. In his honor, the Foundation established the annual Chief Justice Earl Warren Conference on Advocacy, to which jurists, academics, practitioners and other experts were invited every year. In 1989, the conference gave way to a series of smaller roundtables reported in the Foundation's publication series, Papers of the Roscoe Pound Foundation.

The Warren conferences served as the catalyst for several significant efforts in the U.S. legal community. The 1976 conference on trial advocacy as a specialty was the impetus for the creation of the National Board of Trial Advocacy. The 1978 conference on Ethics and Advocacy stimulated drafting and publication of the American Lawyers Code of Conduct.

Through an emphasis on excellence in legal education and research, a commitment to stimulating debate among all associated with the law, and a focus on multidisciplinary, explorations, the Foundation helps perpetuate the legacy of Dean Roscoe Pound, truly, one of the giants of American law.