He was born on September 17, 1871, in
McGregor, Iowa, to Louis Rowe and Catherine Raff. His family moved to Philadelphia and he attended high school and graduated in 1887. He attended the University of Pennsylvania and graduated with a
Bachelor of Philosophy degree in 1890. He received his
Ph.D. from the
University of Halle in 1893. He received his
J.D. from the
University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1895. He was appointed professor at the
University of Pennsylvania in 1894. He taught there until 1917. Rowe was elected to the
American Philosophical Society in 1911 and the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1932. In 1900, Rowe was appointed by President McKinley to a commission that revised the laws of Puerto Rico. A now-digitized transcript at the
University of Pennsylvania shows that the
suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist,
Alice Paul, was one of his students, in the class he offered on Municipal Government and Institutions in the United States and Latin America. ==Works==