ough the adoption of new civil procedure codes which were designed to remedy the delays of which Dickens had written, liberalization of the criminal law and the amelioration of conditions in prisons and other state institutions. The first graduate law schools were established at Harvard and elsewhere. Learning by rote was abolished and the case method of instruction was introduced under which law students were trained in the underlying moral principles and policy considerations which shaped the law. Bar associations established the first ethical codes for lawyers.
Lawyers played a leading role in the Progressive movement to clean up corruption in city governments, and, through regulation, to curb some of the worst excesses of industrialization. Other lawyers, known as corporation lawyers, organized in law firms, played a creative role in the development of new legal instruments which facilitated the creative financing of railroads and later other industrial enterprises. The Supreme Court, slowly at first, then with increasing vigor after the late 1930s, t
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