Arthur L. Corbin (1875-1967), an alumnus of the Law School (1899), became the school’s first full-time professor in 1903, and remained a force at the School for over five decades. Corbin was a giant of American contract law and an intellectual father of the Legal Realist movement that blossomed at Yale in the 1930s. His comprehensive treatise Corbin on Contracts, in updated versions, still serves as a standard reference for judges and lawyers.

Typical of Corbin’s scholarship—and central to the Realist project—was the effort to probe whether important legal principles did in fact inhere in the cases that ostensibly supported them. A famous example was Corbin’s demonstration that “consideration” was not always required to make a contract binding. His recognition that “reliance” often supplied an alternative basis to consideration for contract enforcement was ultimately embodied in section 90 of the Restatement of Contracts.