Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/481

436 to the Constitution of the United States," is an instance of this. It is also an instance of the methods of encouragement to study used by the faculty. It was read to a large audience, a considerable part of which was composed of members of the bar. Leaders of the bar pronounced it a thesis of extraordinary and very unusual merit. The several great dailies of the city aided in this by publishing copious extracts from it. In every way the meed of applause, so far as that is an incitement to study, was given. The student thus took rank at once. This is of value to any ambitious young lawyer; it gives him an opportunity to show his professional brethren what he is good for.

As a whole, then, these results are satisfactory, even if not as yet very marked. The future of the Buffalo Law School is promising, though beset with difficulties. Its way to public esteem and to public confidence in its methods must be won. This may be the result of some years of work, but its projectors look forward to those years with confidence.

COMMON ERRORS AND DEFICIENCIES IN LAW REPORTING.

HAVE had it in mind for some time to call the attention of law reporters to what I regard as common, and yet inexcusable, errors in law reporting. Some of the errors of which I shall speak, are to be laid at the door of the publishers, but for most of them the reporters are responsible.

In the first place, law reports should be published in large open type, or not at all. I know that it has become the recent practice on the score of economy, and having reference to the vast number of judicial decisions which invite the work of the reporter and the editor of the legal periodical, for publishers of legal periodicals to print the cases, which they report in full, in small and crowded type. This vice exists in the so-called "Reporters," which are now issued by two different publishers, and in most of the law journals which report cases, except the "American Law Register." To print the report of a judicial decision in type so small that no one can read it, is equivalent to not printing it at all; to print it in type so small that no one will read it at all except under some sort of compulsion, is next to not printing it at all. In books of reference merely, such as "Digests," and some works upon Evidence, notably the work of Roscoe and that of Abbott, the use of small type is permissible and even commendable, because it is more convenient to have a large amount of matter crowded into one volume than to have the same amount of matter scattered through two or three volumes,—especially in a book which is to be used merely as an index or as a dictionary. But the report of a judicial opinion must be read and studied; and, in order that it may be made available in the argument of counsel upon a trial or an appeal, it must often be read by old practitioners in dark court-rooms. Hence, the use of small type in such books is intolerable, and the profession ought to set its face against it, and discountenance it until publishers will abandon the practice. Within the scope of this malediction, come the whole series of reporter's issues by the Wests of St. Paul, those issued by the "Co-ops" of Rochester, the "Albany Law Journal," the "Central Law Journal," and several others that might be named. Where fine type is used, its legibility is greatly increased by "leading," as is done by the "Central Law Journal," by the "Albany Law Journal," and by the Wests in