aggregation of cases. Indeed, the system rests on the fundamental doctrine that, while the adjudged cases are numerous, the principles controlling them are comparatively few, and can and should be thoroughly mastered. 2. That the system does not proceed on the theory of learning law by the reading of cases only, as the student has the constant help of the instructor by way of suggestion, criticism, and the formal statement of propositions of law. 3. That the system, if not open to the objection just mentioned, cannot be open to the objection that the student is required to deduce the principles from the cases by himself. Even before the discussions and suggestions of the class room he has the benefit of the opinion of the court in every case, and of the argument of counsel in many cases, to aid him in reaching his first impressions. 4. That instead of involving the mere memorizing of cases, the danger to guard against is that the student may not have a sufficient regard for decisions which in his opinion are not based on principle. Judge Story's attitude when presiding at a moot court is very much the attitude of the professor and his class in the lecture room. Judge Story is quoted as saying, when presiding at a moot court: "Gentlemen, this is the High Court of Errors and Appeals from all other courts in the world. Tell me not of the last cited case having overruled any great principle,-not at all. Give me the principle, even if you find it laid down in the Institutes of Hindu Law." 5. That as the cases are selected to develop a particular branch of law, nothing is more erroneous than to suppose that the system consists of the study of isolated propositions. To say that the study of cases is only the study of isolated propositions, is to deny that the law has been developed through the cases. In conclusion it should be said that the cardinal difference between the method of instruction by cases, and any other method of instruction by which law is taught as a science, is that the student is required to deal with the original sources of the law, and does not take his law at second hand. The method is not a rigid system, but is so flexible that two men may use it as a basis of instruction, and the teaching of the one hardly suggest the teaching of the other. It is distinctly a method productive of individuality and efficiency in teaching, and of a scientific spirit of investigation, independence, and selfreliance on the part of students. STATEMENT FROM THE PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR THE ACADEMIC YEAR 1890-1 AS TO THE CHANGES IN THE CURRICULUM OF THE SCHOOL OF LAW. The differences between the new arrangement of the course and the old are clearly indicated by the following points: 1. The new course assumes three years as the unit of the course, instead of adding a third year to the old two-years' course, as though that were a thing complete. This is in accordance with the report of the special committee, to which was referred the subject of a third-year's course in the Law School, presented to the Trustees May 7, 1888. 2. The new course is based upon the concurrent study of different subjects. 3. It permits the study of public law as part of the equipment for the degree. 4. It adjusts the hours so as to discourage office work during the first two years, while facilitating it in the third year. 5. The hours have been so arranged as to throw open to the students of law many privileges of study in other departments of university instruction which would otherwise be denied to them. 6. The new course offers a broader range of choice in legal subjects by establishing numerous elective studies. 7. It relieves the professors from repeating the same work twice a day, but it requires their attendance at the school throughout the entire academic year. Nor is it to be inferred that any radical change in the system of instruction has been desired. Each professor will be left to his own methods in the expectation that he will aim at accomplishing the best results. The university has been criticised for fixing the hours of attendance for the second-year class at times which will make it impossible for such students to be in offices during that year, as though by so doing the university discriminated against poor but worthy students. It would be better for Columbia to cease to be than to forget that she owes a duty to the whole community. But that duty is not to be discharged by levelling down her work to the demands of those who can give to it but a portion of their time. Columbia believes that her duty as a university to the profession of law is only discharged when she offers the best possible education in law, even though, as an incident thereto, she demands the whole time of the student. TABLE SHOWING THE CHANGES AS TO THE NUMBER OF HOURS OF INSTRUCTION REQUIRED OF CANDIDATES FOR THE DEGREE OF LL.B. THE METHODS OF INSTRUCTION AT AMERICAN LAW SCHOOLS. II. Columbia College, in the City of New York. SCHOOL OF LAW. BY S. STANWOOD MENKEN. HE article on the "Methods of Instruction," recently published in the Law School Circular, will be read with interest: as would be any official statement expository of the new system in operation at Columbia, it will be criticised by many. Those who have never studied law according to the case system, and who have attained, financially, a professional position under the older methods, may hesitate in sanctioning the innovation which retires any method by which they acquired affluence, and take issue with the article to which we refer; while, even the more liberal-minded, who recognize that to succeed in law we, the sons, must be better men than our fathers, and that qualification for a new age calls for better preparation, may doubt the practical efficacy of the theory to criticise which even the most conscientious are incompetent unless born and bred in the case system. Since the series of reviews descriptive of the different law schools is appearing in the LAW TIMES, a few words on our method, from the student point of view, may, perhaps, at this time, be an aid to those on the outside, who, while anxious to form a correct estimate, are skeptical as to the extent of the actual benefit received by the instructed. The best evidence for them is the answer of the' students themselves. After two years' experience with the new course, the student body of Columbia are unequivocal in its favor. To give the student who has the intelligence requisite for the successful lawyer, not only the substantive rudiments, but that analytic feeling which distinguishes the attorney from his counterfeit, is an object of our school. We feel that it cannot be acquired except by the comparative study of cases, and that the requisite effort is not beyond any who possess the ability that can justify a university maintaining the significance of the baccalaureate degree in recommending him to the community as legally competent. The classified cases of which so much has been written are arranged under chapter headings, and reprinted in book form for our use. Carefully chosen, they cover almost the whole of the particular subject. So thoroughly are they collated that the reader, taking any standard text-book, and comparing it section by section with one of our collections, would find that the best cases exemplifying the principles stated by the author, and referred to by him in the footnotes, are in our case-books; and if the question chance to be one on which the courts of different jurisdictions are reasonably divided, the latter work would contain, at least, two illustrative decisions embodying the conflicting views. These antagonistic adjudications on similar facts, we feel ourselves privileged to study at length, and find by experience that we deduce the correct results, though often the suggestive questions and remarks of the professor facilitate the process of reaching positive conclusions. This plan of work, in sympathy with modern pedagogical tendencies, develops the student generally, instead of having the narrowing influence credited to concentrated study in technical institutions. It calls for the exercise of the highest intellectual faculty, generalization. It brings the student into a pure legal consciousness, and exacting the discrimination "of the relevant from the irrelevant," demands the formation of legal concepts. These conclusions are necessarily far more intelligible to us than those we would get had we forced upon us the second-hand deductions of the clearest of text writers from the same material to which we claim access. Our system, besides necessitating the formulation of the facts of a case, often an excellent tonic for the beginner, gives us an opportunity to study the arguments of the judges, to estimate the theories which have induced the decisions, while determining for ourselves which is better on principle. With us much of the study is done in the class-room, the burden of bringing out the true principle being on the instructor, who, at the same time, does his share to prevent by positive statement any incorrect ideas taking root. It is to be remembered that the results are many times not reached till after the final summing up by the professor, which, sometimes assuming the dignity of a short lecture, is in such cases a comprehensive statement of not alone what the law is, as illustrated by our cases and outside decisions, but what the law ought to be. These supplemental talks are most important, not to be undervalued in considering our work. The writer, while believing that the regular delivery of half or twenty minutes lectures, following possibly every third lesson, would be an acceptable innovation to many, recognizes that if not very cautiously limited such a change might impair the utility of the system. Statements of the law in the ideal, as it should be on principle, are the most grateful helps, and far from being useless time expenditures in hobby-riding, they serve to keep clear the legal sense, which serves as the touchstone in our analysis. With bad law as a standard all law is a matter for a confused memory. With the true principle as a primal concept, we find the genius of our jurisprudence a systematic development, the irregularities of which history explains. Thus, the student, aided at first by the concrete succeeds in absorbing the essential general proposition, acquires a superior legal consciousness. Though absorption is at times slow in the system which offers, as Mr. Carter says, no royal road, no primrose path," but rather one "full of difficulties," we find in the very difficulties the stimulus which calls forth our strongest efforts. To this "impractical theory," we have become so enamored that many of us regret that lack of time often renders it unwise to conduct the instruction without the use of any text, other than the adjudication. The success of the purely case system makes us feel that pedagogy does not compel variations only made to meet the necessities of classes anxious to cover, within a limited period, the many branches of the law, the knowledge of which must be mastered to entitle the lawyer to the prestige of a professional man. The preservation of the dignity of the bar is a duty imposed on the school of instruction, "even though, as an incident thereto, she demands the whole time of the student" during three years. This period seems to young men, especially embryo lawyers, who are nothing if not ambitious, a particularly long one to wait before making some start, in even acquiring the routine of office work. Yet this clerical bugbear, the first lessons in which we are to exercise from the office boy, should never terrorize anyone, no matter how strong the personal inducements to forego the benefit of a third year, devoted entirely to the storing of knowledge which the previous preparation in the school should make especially advantageous. This year of study we all need. It should be particularly profitable to the college graduate, whose previous systematic training, and large time expenditure in self-culture, justifies his making any sacrifice to complete his legal education, to make it a harmonious whole. "As we sow, so shall we reap." In the field of knowledge there can be no outlay without a corresponding gain. There is here a natural law, in which the limit of return is the capacity of the student. |