Before 1955

Join your fellow Stone-Ager Reunion celebrants from the Classes of 1950, 1945, and 1940 to celebrate your 60th, 65th, and 70th Reunions on June 11th and 12th! Reunion is a wonderful, and rare, opportunity to spend time with classmates, introduce loved ones and become reacquainted with Columbia Law School. The weekend includes various activities including thought-provoking panels, a family BBQ, tours of campus and Morningside Heights and intimate dinners.

If you have questions about reunion, please call the Office of Alumni Relations at (212) 854-2680 or e-mail reunions@law.columbia.edu.

What's a Stone-Ager?

Stone-Agers take their name from The Hon. Harlan Fiske Stone, who attended Columbia Law School from 1895-1898, served as a professor from 1902-1905, and served as dean from 1910-1923.

After leaving the Law School, President Coolidge appointed Stone the United States Attorney General (an honor fellow alumnus Eric Holder shares eighty-four years later), and then an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Stone, along with Justices Brandeis and Cardozo, was considered a member of the Three Musketeers, who were highly supportive of President Roosevelt's New Deal programs, which many of the other Supreme Court Justices opposed. Stone's support of the New Deal brought him in Roosevelt's favor, and in 1941 the President elevated him to Chief Justice, a position that he occupied for the rest of his life. To date, Justice Stone is the only justice to have physically filled all nine seats on the bench, having incrementally moved "seniority" positions from most junior Associate Justice to most senior Associate Justice and finally to Chief Justice.

The name's meaning may be lost on any non Columbia Law School graduate, who will mistakenly think it simply refers to age, but those who who have toiled away in its libraries, competed in the HFS Moot Court Competition, or have walked through its corridors, looking at the portraits of past deans know that this self-ascribed name was chosen by alumni who graduated 50 years or more ago in memory and honor of one of Columbia Law School's finest graduates.