Harvard Law School is the law school of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States and one of the most prestigious in the world, it is ranked first worldwide by QS World University Rankings and the Academic Ranking of World Universities. Each class in the three-year JD program has 560 students, among the largest of the top 150 ranked law schools in the United States; the first-year class is broken into seven sections of 80 students, who take most first-year classes together. Harvard's uniquely large class size and prestige have led the law school to graduate a great many distinguished alumni in the judiciary and the business world. According to Harvard Law's 2015 ABA-required disclosures, 95% of the Class of 2014 passed the Bar exam. Harvard Law School graduates accounted for more than one-quarter of all Supreme Court clerkships between 2000 and 2010, more than any other law school in the United States.

Harvard Law School's founding is traditionally linked to the funding of Harvard's first professorship in law, paid for from a bequest from the estate of Isaac Royall Jr. a colonial American landowner and a slaveholder. Today, it is home to the largest academic law library in the world; the law school has 392 faculty members. Harvard Law School's founding is traced to the establishment of a "law department" at Harvard in 1817. Dating the founding to the year of the creation of the law department makes Harvard Law the oldest continuously-operating law school in the nation. William & Mary Law School opened first in 1779, but closed due to the American Civil War, reopening in 1920; the University of Maryland School of Law was chartered in 1816, but did not begin classes until 1824, closed during the Civil War. The founding of the law department came two years after the establishment of Harvard's first endowed professorship in law, funded by a bequest from the estate of wealthy slaveowner Isaac Royall, Jr. in 1817.

Royall left 1,000 acres of land in Massachusetts to Harvard when he died in exile in Nova Scotia, where he fled as a British loyalist during the American Revolution, in 1781, "to be appropriated towards the endowing a Professor of Laws... or a Professor of Physick and Anatomy, whichever the said overseers and Corporation shall judge to be best." The value of the land, when liquidated in 1809, was $2,938. The Royalls were so involved in the slave trade, that "the labor of slaves underwrote the teaching of law in Cambridge." The dean of the law school traditionally held the Royall chair, deans Elena Kagan and Martha Minow declined the Royall chair due to its origins in the proceeds of slavery. The Royall family coat-of-arms, which shows three stacked wheat sheaves on a blue background, was adopted as the school crest in 1936, topped with the university motto; until the school began investigating its connections with slavery in the 2010s, most alumni and faculty at the time were unaware of the origins of the seal.

In March 2016, following requests by students, the school decided to remove the emblem because of its association with slavery. Royall's Medford estate, the Isaac Royall House, is now a museum which features the only remaining slave quarters in the northeast United States. In 2019, the government of Antigua and Barbuda requested reparations from Harvard Law School on the ground that it benefitted from Royall's enslavement of people in the country. By 1827, the school, with one faculty member, was struggling. Nathan Dane, a prominent alumnus of the college endowed the Dane Professorship of Law, insisting that it be given to Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story. For a while, the school was called "Dane Law School." In 1829, John H. Ashmun, son of Eli Porter Ashmun and brother of George Ashmun, accepted a professorship and closed his Northampton Law School, with many of his students following him to Harvard. Story's belief in the need for an elite law school based on merit and dedicated to public service helped build the school's reputation at the time, although the contours of these beliefs have not been consistent throughout its history.

Enrollment remained low through the 19th century as university legal education was considered to be of little added benefit to apprenticeships in legal practice. After first trying lowered admissions standards, in 1848 HLS eliminated admissions requirements entirely. In 1869, HLS eliminated examination requirements. In the 1870s, under Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell, HLS introduced what has become the standard first-year curriculum for American law schools – including classes in contracts, torts, criminal law, civil procedure. At Harvard, Langdell developed the case method of teaching law, now the dominant pedagogical model at U. S. law schools. Langdell's notion that law could be studied as a "science" gave university legal education a reason for being distinct from vocational preparation. Critics at first defended the old lecture method because it was faster and cheaper and made fewer demands on faculty and students. Advocates said the case method had a sounder theoretical basis in scientific research and the inductive method.

Langdell's graduates became leading professors at other law schools where they introduced the case method. The method was facilitated by casebooks. From its founding in 1900, the Association of American Law Schools promoted the case method in law schools that sought accreditation. During the 20th century Harvard Law School was known for its competitiveness. For example, Robert C. Berring, Jr. called it "a samurai

Saint-Philbert-de-Grand-Lieu is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department in western France. It is about 400 km southwest of Paris, via Chartres, Le Mans and Nantes; the town is twinned with the Welsh suburb of Radyr in Wales's Capital. Vicomte Bertrand Jochaud du Plessix, a lieutenant in the Free French Forces who died, reposes in the local cemetery, he was first buried at Gibraltar. His daughter is the American writer Francine du Plessix Gray. Communes of the Loire-Atlantique departmentVicomte du Plessis died on 30 June 1940 – he and three comrades had appropriated a Glenn Martin plane and were attempting to land in Gibraltar when they were shot down by the Spanish. All four were interred in the War Graves section of the North Cemetery on the Rock. After the war the remains of the Vicomte were repatriated to France and buried in the church of St. Philbert INSEE commune file

Rugby union in France is a popular team sport. Rugby union was first introduced in the early 1870s by British residents. Elite French clubs participate in the professional domestic club league, the Top 14. Clubs compete in the European knock-out competition, the European Rugby Champions Cup, which replaced the Heineken Cup from 2014–15; the national side competes annually in the Six Nations Championship, last winning the competition in 2010. France has participated in every Rugby World Cup since its inception in 1987, has been a runner-up on three occasions. France hosted the 2007 Rugby World Cup. France is the world's most populous country in which rugby union has a large and dedicated following, with over 65 million people, it is more than the populations of other popular rugby nations such as New Zealand, Tonga, Fiji, Ireland and Wales combined. Fédération Française de Rugby is the rugby union governing body in France, it was formed in 1919. In 1934 the FFR set up the Federation Internationale de Rugby Amateur in an attempt to organize rugby union outside the authority of the International Rugby Football Board.

It included the national teams of Italy, Catalonia, Czechoslovakia and Germany. In 1978, the FFR became a member of the IRFB, known from 1998 to 2014 as the International Rugby Board and since November 2014 as World Rugby. In 1995, the same year that rugby union became a professional sport, FIRA recognised the IRFB as the worldwide governing authority for the sport and turned itself into an European governing body. FIRA adopted its current name of Rugby Europe in 2014. Rugby football was introduced into France by the British in the early 1870s, it was in 1872 that a group of British residents formed the Le Havre Athletique, which played a hybrid form of football, a cross between rugby and soccer, called "combination". The English Taylors RFC formed by British businessmen in Paris in 1877, followed by Paris Football Club a year later. Racing Club de France was formed in 1882 and their rivals Stade Français in 1883. On 20 March 1892 the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques organised the first French rugby union championship, a one off game between Racing and Stade Français.

The game was refereed by Pierre de Coubertin and saw Racing win 4–3. The USFSA remained the main controlling body of French rugby, until the formation of the French Rugby Federation in 1920. In 1900, rugby was played at the Paris Summer Olympics, France entered a team, along with Germany and Great Britain. France won the gold medal, the first rugby event at the Olympics. In 1905, for the first time and France played each other. In 1910, France coined the term The Five Nations, though they had competed in the home nations tournament four times the tournament would be known as the Five Nations for most of the rest of the 20th century. Rugby was again played at the 1920 Summer Olympics, though this time, in what is considered one of the most surprising results in rugby history, France fumbled in the gold medal match, being defeated at the hands of the United States, eight points to nil; that same year, the FFR was formed. France again participated in rugby at the 1924 Summer Olympics – the last time 15-player rugby would be played as an Olympic sport – where the United States defended their title.

The French rugby union was ousted from the Five Nations championship on charges of player violence and professionalism in 1932. In 1934, Rugby league was introduced to France, half a century after the amateur code had established itself in the country. In 1934, FIRA was founded by Czechoslovakia, Germany, Italy, Romania and Sweden. During the second World War, the French Rugby Union collaborated with the Vichy Regime to have Rugby League banned. In so doing, the Rugby Union were handed all of the vast assets built up by the French Rugby League since 1934; as of 2014, these assets have not been returned to the Rugby League. In 1939, France was re-invited to participate in the following year's Home Nations tournament, but the onset of the Second World War put all international rugby on hold; the first post-war Five Nations championship took place in 1947, was the first top-level rugby tournament France had played in since 1931. In 1978, the FFR joined. In 1959, the national team won the Five Nations for the first time, subsequently won another consecutive three championships.

This success was repeated at the end of the 1960s, when France won both the 1967 and 1968 championships, the 1968 being a Grand Slam. France has nearly always been in the top three teams of the Northern Hemisphere since then; the first Rugby World Cup was held in 1987. After a low period in the mid-1990s caused by FFR's hesitation to join in the introduction of professional rugby in 1995, the national team has regained its top-tier status. In 1998, France's women's team competed at the first official Women's Rugby World Cup, held in the Netherlands. In 2003, France was awarded the right to host the 2007 Rugby World Cup, the country hosted the 2014 Women's Rugby World Cup. Rugby union is more popular in the South of France, whilst in the North of the country, association football can be viewed as the leading code. There are 1,737 clubs in France and the number of licensed players has increased over the recent years, reaching 390,000 i