Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/411

 And the case-system of teaching law had begun.

Consider the man’s courage. What would be said to-day if some obscure lawyer from a distant city, without even his college degree, should arrive at the School and to its distinguished staff say in effect, “Your teaching is all wrong—inefficient, second-hand, obsolete. I have a new method that in the course of a generation or so will put your lectures about on a par with those of the University of Pekin.” Moreover, a change of instruction at the Harvard Law School to-day would be backed with ample funds, aided with every modern device, received with the open mind of the truth-seeker, and tried out by a phenomenally able corps of teachers on a picked body of students whose intellectual average probably exceeds that of any other body of students in the world.

Langdell had none of these advantages. He was experimenting in darkness absolute save for his own mental illumination. He had no prestige, no assistants, no precedents, the slenderest of apparatus, and for the most part an unpromising corpus vile. He was the David facing a complacent Goliath of unshaken legal tradition reinforced by social and literary prejudice. His attempts were met with the covert disapproval of the other instructors, and the open hostility of the bulk of the students. His first lectures were followed by im-