Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 23.pdf/659

 Samuel Williston, Professor of Law ally agreed that the author has here displayed his powers of exposition at their best; one sees his familiar ways of arguing out diﬁicult problems which

anyone who has had the good fortune to have been among his pupils will instantly

recognize. that

Altogether, the book shows

balance

between

the

accurate

statement of the particular rules and the full debate of the principles involved which makes the highest type of law treatise. This is no place to revive the contro versy which for a generation after the

establishment of the case system by Dean Langdell divided the law schools of this country. By the time Professor Williston began to teach, the superior ity of that method of study had become evident, and its eventual success through out the land was assured. That induc tion really educates while deduction only instructs is now generally recognized. And the Langdell method made of the law school a scientiﬁc school, where the laws

governing a situation are found by the methods of the laboratory. This theory of studying law was fully developed by

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case is right, Mr. X? You, Mr.Y,do not? Then Mr. X, what would you say to this? Would you agree with that, Mr. Y? Well Mr. Z, there is something in what you say! But what bothers me is this! You wouldn't say this, would you, Mr. X?

Then how can you reconcile that with what you said a while ago? I think Mr. Y was right at ﬁrst. I do not see any other way to explain,” etc., etc.

This

looks like strange stuff in type, but it is the real thing to the class. Everybody in that class has got the problem long since, and is worrying about it as the discussion advances. One learns law slowly thus, but he never forgets

what he has learned. It is not so much that one gets the principle, it is that he has learned to apply it.

There is little that can be reduced to description in writing of Professor Willis ton as a teacher. His great gift as a teacher is an incommunicable thing, de fying analysis as much as the lovely per

sonality of the man. It is impossible to explain just how the discussion, what ever may be its course, is brought ﬁnally to its inevitable conclusion. And yet

Dean Langdell; what Professor Willis

day after day his students are made

ton has done is to work it out into

to feel that they are working out new law with him, and that he is anxious

practice better than anyone else has

yet succeeded in doing.

It may almost

be said that he found study of law

reduced to a science, and that what he has done is to make the teaching of law an art. The basis of that art is as simple as the teaching of Socrates, and as subtle. Socrates showed his disciples the im possibility of answering a series of

questions consistently unless one has got the sound principle. And I do not believe that there have been many teachers since

the days of Socrates

who have employed the Socratic method with such success as Professor Williston does today. "You think this

for their aid to help him out. Once a class is made to feel that they are fellow workers in a great cause, their interest is aroused as it could be in no other way.

I do not mean to say that there is any artiﬁce in this art; it is probably his in

herent modesty of opinion which makes Professor Williston year after year exam ine his chosen subjects to see what new light a class may have to throw upon

them.

He realizes the perplexities of

his pupils and states them better than they can. He works out the solution with them, but goes further than they

could without him. Upon the whole, I feel that it is his ability to make himself