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 The Green Bag Volume XXIV

II.

May, 1912

Number 5

The State University Law School: Its Duty to Democratize Legal Knowledge1 BY ANDREW ALEXANDER BRUCE ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF NORTH DAKOTA

AMONG the many marvels of mod ern days has been the growth in efficiency, standards and ideals of our state universities. These universities have come to stay. They are the result of democracy. They are in a large meas ure necessary to its perpetuation. They are an outgrowth of the idea which was expressed in the clause of the NorthWest Ordinance, which ordained that "Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education should forever be encouraged." They will be permanent because back of them and inspiring them are farms and towns and villages and hamlets, and because in them are ex pressed the ideals and the intellectual yearnings of free and democratic peoples. They are in a large degree the highest expressions of our democracies. They 1 This is the second in the series of articles deal ing with the State University Law School. [Pro fessor Charles M. Hepburn, dean of the Indiana University School of Law, having written on "Its Rise and Its Mission" in the April Green Bag. Professor Walz will write the third paper of the series, on the subject: "The State University Law School: Its Duty to Teach the Law of the Jurisdiction." Judge Harger has also promised an article, and it is hoped that others will follow.— Ed.

are a measure of the hope that the people have in themselves and of the trust which they have in the future. They are becoming more and more woven into the bone and tissue of the states which have created them. Already, of the forty-eight American states, thirtyeight have established state universities pure and simple, and already in most of the states of the Union the state university has become the most impor tant single institution of higher learning. In states not a century old we already have institutions, which number their students by the thousands, whose build ings and equipment represent the ex penditure of millions of dollars, and whose incomes, voted annually by the representatives of the people, exceed those of most of the ancient foundations of Europe. The state university is the people's university. Its function is primarily to furnish leadership — to educate those who may lead in the democratic ad vance. Its function is to furnish to the state an intelligent, self-respecting, selfsupporting, law-loving and law-know ing citizenship. In a nation which is governed by law, and by law alone, in a