Several months back, the Harvard Law School was racked with faculty plagiarism scandals. Roscoe Pound was, of course, one of the great figures in the history of Harvard Law School, and a major influence in American legal education and scholarship. But now Professor Brian Tamanaha (Law, St. John's) writes:
I recently read Roscoe Pound’s book, The Lawyer from Antiquity to Modern Times (1953), and discovered several passages which appear to be lifted, without attribution, from Charles Warren’s A History of the American Bar (1911). The offending passages came in a discussion of the drop in status of lawyers after the Revolution. Warren’s account is the standard resource on the subject.
Here is Pound’s statement (p. 178):
“Unhappily, a large number of the older and stronger lawyers were loyalists and left the country or ceased to practice.”
At the end of this sentence, Pound cites Warren’s book, p. 213, which reads:
“In the first place, a large number of the most eminent and older members of the Bar, being Royalists, had either left the country, or retired from practice.”
So far Pound is doing okay. But then, with no citation to Warren, Pound continues (p. 178):
“Thus one result of the Revolution was to leave or put the practice of law chiefly in the hands of lawyers of a lower type and of less ability and training.”
Warrren’s passage (p. 214):
“This left the practice of law very largely in the hands of lawyers of a lower grade and inferior ability.”
Being charitable, we could say that Pound was paraphrasing Warren, and didn’t need to cite him again so soon after an earlier attribution. But that does not explain what follows:
Pound, with no citation (p. 179):
“Public debts were enormous and required ruinous taxation.”
Warren (p. 214):
“Public debts were enormous, necessitating ruinous taxation.”
Oops, I can’t think of any charitable interpretation for that one, or the one that follows:
Pound, with no citation (p. 179):
“The chief law business was collection of debts and recovery of property held under confiscatory tax.”
Warren (p. 214):
“The chief law business, therefore, was the collection of debts and the enforcement of contracts…”
In Pound’s favor, at the end of the final sentence of the discussion, he included the following footnote (p. 180): “This is well brought out in Warren, History of the American Bar, 214-217.
It is obvious that Pound sat with Warren’s book when he wrote his book. That is not objectionable (we all do that to one extent or another). But Pound borrowed liberally from the ideas and words (I have left out more paraphrasing in those pages), giving the impression that they were his own. Without doubt, this would violate our plagiarism policy.
Among other interesting questions this raises, are the following:
How often did Pound (who published an extraordinary amount on a range of subjects) do this?
What does this say about his work? Should it diminish his reputation?
Was it considered improper at the time? Have our citation practices become stricter? If so, why?
Is the plagiarism issue overblown anyway (I think not, but wonder)?
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