Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 05.djvu/523

LEFT LEGAL EDUCATION 447 LEGAL EDUCATION years, and educated about thirty men each year. The second school was established in 1817, at Harvard University; and in its integral association with a university represents the method generally obtain- ing in making a law school a part of a university foundation. The more fam- ous of the schools, subsequently founded, are that of Yale in 1843, that of the University of Pennsylvania in 1852, and, in or about 1859, the three schools of the University of Michigan, of Columbia University, and of Northwestern Uni- versity (originally founded as the Union Law School of Chicago), and, in or about 1892, the schools of Western Reserve University and of the University of Chi- cago. _ From year to year the State Uni- versities have established schools. There are now registered in the Reports of the United States Commissioner of Educa- tion one hundred and twenty-four schools, with an annual attendance of 22,880 students. These figures are based on statistics given in the report of the United States Commissioner of Educa- tion, issued 1917. Figures in the latest report, 1918, affected by war conditions, were a little over one-half the previous year. One hundred law schools in the United States reported an attendance of 10,998 men and 820 women, making a total of 11,818 students for 1917-1918. Admission to the schools represents a wide variety of standards. In a few schools evidence of the possession of a good moral character is the chief condi- tion. In the better schools graduation from a good high school is required. In a few schools — and as a consequent gen- erally regarded as the best — either two, or three, or four, years of study in a college of liberal learning, are requisite for admission. The present tendency is toward an increase in the requirements. The course of study in the schools, usu- ally covering three years, includes such fundamental and primary subjects as contracts, criminal law, torts, property, agency, equity, evidence, insurance, pub- lic utilities, trusts, damages, law of per- sons, conflict of laws, constitutional law, corporations, partnerships, bankruptcy, quasi-contracts, jurisprudence, adminis- trative law, history of the common law, patent law, and professional ethics. In certain schools, as Harvard, the special laws or procedure in several of the indi- vidual commonwealths is considered. The variety of subjects of the course of study increases, as laws increase in num- ber, and as society becomes more com- plex. The profession of the law is a practical profession. Those who enter upon the study of it as a science, do so in order to use it as an art. They learn law in order to practice it. But the right to practice it, the individual State or Com- monwealth controls within its own terri- tory. The standards which the different States set up for the exercise of this right manifest a variety from the "pos- sessing of a good moral character" to the passing of a hard and prolonged exam- ination in the science of the law itself. Such an examination is commonly, and to a certain degree always in the charge of either the Supreme Court or the Bar Association of the State. Of the great names in the history of the law schools in the last half-century the name of Christopher Columbus Long- dell is the most illustrious. Called from the New York bar to the Harvard Law School in 1870 by President Eliot— ;-in the early years of his great executive career — Longdell inaugurated what has since become known as the case system of teaching and of learning law. The case system represents the study of the law from cases, or decisions, as reported in the official records of the courts. It is the inductive system. It reaches general principles from specific instances or facts. The previous method was rather deductive, beginning with general princi- ples. It might also be called the labora« tory method. It has obtained wide cur- rency. It has been subjected to certain changes; but the essential elements of the system are still maintained both at Harvard and other leading schools. As has been said, legal education pre- pares for a practical profession. The schools have neither made nor sought to make, as a rule, jurists. The philosophi- cal aspects of the science have made only a slight appeal to students. Perhaps the nearer approach to the philosophical re- lationship lies in the courses on the con- stitution of the United States — courses which the best schools give. Research occupies a very insignificant place in the legal curriculum; but many teachers do recognize that the opportunity for the philosophic study of the law is command- ing or even obligatory. At the present time the public influence of the study of the law and of the mem- bers of the profession is of peculiar in- terest. In the political judgments law- yers as a class are conservative. They recognize the rights of persons and of property, inherited from a long historic tradition. By comparative reasoning they also recognize the duties which both persons and property represent. In a time, therefore, of social stress and storm, of radicalism in thought, speech and act, they can be relied upon as