Articles in Periodicals

Children. Children in the cities. Florence Kelley. Nat. Munic. Rev. Apr.,

1915.

City Housekeeper. The city's housekeeper. Hugh Molleson Foster. Nat. Munic. Rev. Apr., 1915.

City Trees. The movement for city street trees--a survey. Carl Bannwart. Nat. Munic. Rev. Apr., 1915.

Glasgow. Studies in municipal government. No. 4. Glasgow. J. W. Pratt. Polit. Quart. Dec., 1914.

Municipal Bonds. Municipal bonds as popular investments. Howard F. Beebe. Nat. Munic. Rev. Apr., 1915.

Municipal Revenues. Municipal revenues in Ohio. S. Gale Lowrie. Nat. Munic. Rev. Apr., 1915.

Noise Nuisance. Public health versus the noise nuisance. Imogene B. Oakley. Nat. Munic. Rev. Apr., 1915.

Woman's Work. Woman's work for the city. Mary Ritter Beard. Nat. Munic. Rev. Apr., 1915.

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5/18/15

There is no country in which it is as important that the lawyers should be well educated for their profession, as it is in the United States. Here they hold a political position. They are a recognized part of the machinery of government. All are officers of courts that have the acknowledged power of interpreting constitutions and statutes, which may be invoked as grounds of action or defence in pending litigation, and of holding statutes inconsistent with a constitution so interpreted to be void. Other nations may confer on the judiciary a similar authority in terms, but nowhere else is the exertion of such authority common and accepted by all as conclusive. In the last resort, questions of constitutional law and statutory construction will be decided in a court, manned exclusively by those who have been trained for the bar, after hearing argument from lawyers who have been educated in the same manner.

The constitution of the American Bar Association has a standing committee on "Legal education and admission to the bar." Their reports, from time to time, have been influential in securing action which, since the foundation of the association in 1878, has served to lengthen the general term of study required for the admission to the bar, to broaden the field of study, and to trans

fer the general place of study from a lawyer's office to a law school.

In February, 1913, this committee unanimously addressed an important request to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. It was for a "searching and far-reaching" investigation of the conditions under which the work of legal education is carried on in this country, and a "frank and fearless" statement of "the facts which the investigation may reveal." The sending of this request was reported by the committee to the association at its next meeting, in 1913, but not in season to allow it, under the rules, to be the subject of any action at that time.1 The Foundation undertook to do what the committee asked, and entered on the work early in 1913. Its purpose is to make an examination of all the law schools of the United States, their various curriculums of study, their libraries, and their general facilities for teaching; to consider the relation of the legal profession to the administration of the law and to the obligations of modern society; to trace the evolution of the profession, its relation to legislation and administration, and that of the number of lawyers to the amount of litigation; and to investigate the cost of the legal process.2

In December, 1914, the Foundation published a preliminary paper, entitled "The common law and the case method in American university law schools." This constitutes "Bulletin No. 8" of its publications, and a copy will be sent to any one who requests it. The presentation of the final report is not expected before the summer of 1916.

To quote from the preface of this bulletin (p. vi), “it seemed clear to the officers of the Carnegie Foundation that it would be difficult to obtain from any teacher of law or any practitioner of law in America a thoroughly sound, fair-minded, and scholarly report" on the question of the case method of instruction.

They therefore determined to employ a foreigner for this work, selecting Dr. Josef Redlich, professor of law in the University of

1See the reference to the subject in the Reports of the American Bar Association, xxxix, 18.

2 Reports of the American Bar Association, xxxviii, 476.

Vienna, who has published two volumes on certain forms of government in England. He had made an extended visit to this country in 1910. Two months more he spent here in the fall of 1913, visiting ten of our hundred and fifty law schools, and attending class exercises in each.

Dr. Redlich praises highly the opportunities afforded in the law schools of the United States, where the case method prevails. "The American student," he says, "gains in the modern law school of his country, all the practical knowledge of the law that any school can give to a future attorney or judge, in unparalleled manner." But what, to him, is the case method? It is not the case method now practiced in most of our law schools which have adopted that system. It is not a method which excludes special instruction of an introductory character in the elementary principles of American law. To quote his words (p. 41):

cases.

"It is characteristic of the case method that where it has thoroughly established itself, legal education has assumed the form of instruction almost exclusively through analysis of separate The result of this is that the students never obtain a general picture of the law as a whole, not even a picture which includes only its main features. This is, in my opinion, however, just as important for the study of Anglo-American law as for the codified continental systems, and is a task which should also be accomplished by the law courses in the universities. To this end, the following seems to me above all things requisite:

"First, as an introduction to the entire curriculum, care should be taken to introduce to the students, in elementary fashion, the fundamental concepts and legal ideas that are common to all divisions of the common law. Or, to express it in a word current in European pedagogy, the beginners in American law schools should be given a legal Propädeutik, or preparatory course, which in a simple yet scientific manner shall set forth the elements of the common law; shall furnish, that is to say, a comprehensive view of the permanent underlying concepts, forms, and principles, not forgetting the elementary postulates of law and legal relation

Bulletin No. 8, 40.