certain number of such men, and more and more students should be encouraged by one means or another to do likewise. A further development of the system of prizes and scholarships might help toward this end. An effective means of broadening the preliminary education would be, of course, the insistence by the Inns of Court and the Law Society upon a higher standard in their own preliminary examinations.

The critic's second point, that the time now spent in the study of English Law is far too short, and that there is consequently too little detailed study of the various different branches of the law, is a point that demands serious reflection. At certain schools two years are spent upon English Law, but at other and perhaps at most schools the course in English Law is essentially a one-year or a one-and-one-half-year course. The time to be spent on English Law could be increased by reducing somewhat the time spent on such subjects as Roman Law, Jurisprudence, and Public International Law; but there can be no doubt that English legal educators are right in insisting upon the high importance of such subjects, for they not only have an educational value, but also a practical significance as regards various branches of the English Law itself. The general standard of the English legal educational system would undoubtedly be reduced by any step calculated to decrease the importance of these great subjects. The critic's objection might be answered by an extension of the entire law course from the usual three to four or even five years. In principle such a step would undoubtedly be admirable; but, as the legal course of study is so embedded in the whole educational system of England, any such proposal would demand the most serious study, both from theoretical and practical standpoints. Taking the system of legal education as it actually exists to-day, there can be no doubt that the number of students who spend four or even five years in legal study might be materially increased by an extension of the curriculum to include more courses in English Law of a special and advanced character, and also, perhaps, by a further judicious use of prizes, scholarships, and other distinctions and emoluments as an aid and stimulus to a higher quality of work in English Law.

The critic's third contention, that the present method of instruction aims more at the acquisition of knowledge for examination purposes than at the highest training of the student in mastery of principles and in capacity for legal reasoning, is supported in part anyway by conditions as they exist. But instructors differ both in capacity and in opportunity, and, while the critic's contention may well apply in certain cases, it certainly does not apply in others. Instructors of the highest type certainly do not aim

merely at preparing their pupils for an examination, but they have also constantly in mind the student's preparation for the best possible career as a barrister or as a solicitor. Undoubtedly the present method of instruction does lead in many cases to cram work, with the assistance of private coaches, and, in general, the extensive use of textbooks and the large amount of time spent in private tuition, either by official or unofficial teachers, does prevent students from relying upon themselves as much as they should. There are those who believe that the advantages of the English method of instruction by means of public formal lectures and of private informal discussions would be in all essential particulars retained in the employment of the inductive case method of study and instruction; the hour spent with the instructor under this latter system combining as a matter of fact both the lecture and the class discussion. But the study of decided cases in preparation for lecture and class discussion demands, of course, a considerable amount of time, and any extensive use of the inductive case method in English Law Schools would necessarily involve a higher standard of preliminary or nonlegal education on the part of students generally and an extension of the time to be spent in the study of English Law. Even under present conditions, however, the inductive case method might well be employed in the case of those students who have superior preliminary training and superior intellectual capacity; and experience in conversation classes on cases, under the present system, leads one to the conclusion that the better men would welcome such a departure and would greatly profit by it. The extensive use of this inductive case method would, I believe, do much toward the rooting out of mere cramming for examinations; for this method necessarily involves careful preparation and the development of the student's own reasoning capacities.

The critic asserts, in the fourth place, that too many students carry on their studies and their practical work in chambers or in offices throughout one and the same period of time; this system resulting in serious detriment to the theoretical education of the student, his time for study being interrupted at every step by the necessities of his practical work. I assume that our critic is of the opinion that the student's education in the history and principles of law should precede in time his education in the practice of law; his idea being that the student, with the greater time for study and the consequent advantage to his theoretical training as a whole, will be better enabled to grasp and to solve the problems that await him in his practical work. There is undoubtedly a good deal to be said in favor of the carrying on of studies and practical

work during the whole period of a student's education in law; the theoretical and the practical aiding and supplementing one the other. But it would seem desirable, on the whole, that at least a very considerable portion of his course of study should not be interrupted, as it is at present, in a good many cases. Law students at certain of the Universities, more especially Oxford and Cambridge, perhaps, do of course spend a considerable part of their time in uninterrupted study before they become immersed in practical work, and certainly, from the point of view of the highest possible training of students generally, the number of such men should be greater in the future than at the present time.

I feel sure that the distinguished legal educators who are to take part in the discussion of my paper will materially assist the critic and all of us to a way out of the difficulties. I wish merely to say, in conclusion, that the organization of the new Society of Public Teachers of Law in England and Wales, with Professor Goudy, of Oxford, as President, is an earnest of the future; for the labors of this new Society I will be somewhat the same as those of the Association of American Law Schools, and I feel sure that teachers of law on the other side of the Atlantic will undertake the solution of problems with the same earnestness and high purpose that you have manifested here.

The present is, indeed, a time of hope. There are now about 2,000 law students and about 100 public teachers of law in the various English Law Schools, and these numbers are constantly augmenting. More interest is being shown both by teachers and by students, the curriculum is gradually expanding, the system of electives is being further developed, and more and more work in advance and special subjects is being undertaken.

These are happy auguries for the future. From age to age, schools of law in England have adapted their courses of study and their methods of instruction to meet the needs and the desires of English society. From the day of the early Edwards down to the present time there has been gradual progress in harmony with the structure and the spirit of institutions peculiarly English in their origin and in their development. Students still attend the courts and take notes somewhat as they did in the time of the early Year Books; but the mediæval and modern centuries that stretch between Edward the Second and Edward the Seventh have gradually and almost unconsciously developed those University and Professional Law Schools with which we have been concerned to-night. We may have every expectation that the future has still further developments in store, and that the system of legal education at these schools will be

improved from reign to reign as best befits the social requirements of the home of English Law and the homes of other legal systems administered by British Courts in all parts of the Empire.

In the discussion which followed Prof. Hazeltine's paper, SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK said in part:

I have not discovered the slightest inaccuracy in the excellent exposition of the state of legal education in England which you have just heard. We have not heard the complete text of Prof. Hazeltine's paper, but I think it gives a somewhat too optimistic impression of what we have so far succeeded in doing in England. I doubt whether you can fully realize, from hearing the paper, that there is not in any law school in England what you would call a course of study; not a prescribed course of study in any of our schools. Take the case of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The University does not require a candidate for a law degree, or for any degree, to have actually attended any particular course of lectures or to have taken the lectures in any particular order. It prescribes certain tests which he has to fulfill before presenting himself for examination at stated periods. How he is to prepare himself for these examinations is a matter left to him and his particular advisers. He has, of course, to be a resident, but precisely what he does with his time while he is a resident is a matter which the University does not prescribe, and, as a University, has no means of testing. What happens is that the undergraduate consults a college tutor, who in turn consults a special expert of the University, and he advises what lectures the student should follow.

There is another serious question in our Universities, which is not an actively developed question, but is a serious question in the minds of some hundreds of us; that is, whether it was a good thing when, some thirty-five years ago, our Universities undertook to teach law to our undergraduates at all. Personally I have the greatest doubt that very few men at the undergraduate age are capable of acquiring a legal habit of mind and an understanding that law is not a proposition to be learned out of text-books and in examinations, but is concerned with men's living business and with the decisions of live judges in very active courts. At all events, those who teach law at Oxford have always found serious difficulty and even trouble with the undergraduate student to make him understand text-books are not authority. I must have said this ten hundred times in the course of the twenty years I was professor at Oxford, and I very much doubt whether my words were believed in more than one per cent. of the cases stated. Now they are

beginning to teach law in an academic manner to undergraduates, but the results are doubtful. We have at Oxford one institution which is excellent, so far as it goes, in regard to the time it takes a man to get an arts degree. After he has an arts degree, or whatever degree, if he likes to study law with a view of taking a special law degree, the special law degree might be obtained in a year. Our professors are beginning to pay attention to the civil law degree, and accordingly the special examination for the degree of civil law is based on the academic examination, and from my experience I can say that sometimes candidates show, not merely what you may call text-book or class knowledge of the subject, but a real grasp of legal problems and principles. That is, I think, the most valuable academic institution that we have at present in England for the University study of law and encouragement of legal research. It is possible, of course, for a man to come to Oxford or Cambridge and pursue a special course of legal research, and ultimately to get a law degree upon it; but such examples are far from numerous.

In England we have lectures and examinations; but we have no definite and prescribed course of study. We do not compel a man to go to lectures. I say "we," because, as I have been for about two and a half years a member of the Council of Legal Education which has been explained to you by my learned friend, I have my little share of the responsibilities for what we do in the Inns of Court. We do not require of a man that he shall have actually attended the lectures, or, indeed, have done anything but eat, or appear to eat, a certain number of dinners in the Hall of his respective Inn. The examination is but an indirect encouragement to a man to attend lectures. It is attempted to so arrange the examinations that they shall be much more difficult upon those who have not attended the lectures. I think, myself, that is a bad arrangement, and that to do indirectly what we can and ought to do directly is not worthy of the Inns of Court. I merely state that, however, as my opinion.

With regard to the primary education of the student, we have a standard, although it is not a very high standard, and considerable difficulty is found in enforcing even that standard in practice, where students at the Inns of Court are supposed to know Latin, and our University students are even supposed to know much more. Certain men who come up, not for the pass examination, but for the honors degree, and without be ing examined in law, show just a sufficient range of Latin to stumble through an examination in Julian's Institutes; and I have seen an Oxford man presenting himself for a law degree who could not construct a sentence from Justinian when the book was put in his hand. Shortly after I became a member of the Council of Legal Education, I

heard of a man preparing for examination in one of the Inns of Court, who borrowed a pocket edition of the Institutes of Justinian and began to read it at South Kensington, and by the time he had arrived by the underground route at the Temple, a space of four miles, or thereabouts, it would seem he knew enough about it to pass the examination. I would not want to believe that is a good thing. Our standards are rather low, and we are rather slack in enforcing even those standards, and the reason for that is simply that a great many of our lawyers do not believe that law can be taught at all, or that the serious teaching of law is a thing seriously worth the attention of our professional governing bodies.

The late Lord Shelburne found considerable difficulty in his attempts to found a really adequate law school in London, and you must not suppose we are altogether satisfied with what we have done. I agree with my learned friend that we have the advantage of an ancient and complicated machinery which is set to grind out work not particularly adapted to it.

Our Law Society, I think, had its origin about 1820, and is a much better organized and efficient organization than we barristers bave; but all these things are the parts of institutions that are incumbered by an ancient history.

I am not sure that you will have gathered from the paper what a sharp distinction is made in our profession between the academic and the professional teaching of law. Our professors do not pretend to teach law in a professional manner. They have not the means for it. What they do profess is to add to the ordinary academic education such instruction in the theoretical doctrines of law as to make a man more capable of profiting by professional instruction when he comes to that. That, I think, is the theory, so far as we have any theory.

I do not think there is anything I can usefully add to the lucid and accurate exposition which you have heard from my friend, Mr. Hazeltine.

Continuing the discussion of Prof. Hazeltine's paper, JAMES BARR AMES, Dean of the Harvard Law School, said:

As I listened to the enlightening account of education in law in England, I found myself thinking what a striking illustration of English conservatism it was. As you know, for centuries on the Continent of Europe the University Law School has been the regular -indeed, the only-avenue to practice. We began in this country nearly a hundred years ago to take the same path, and we have been advancing very rapidly in the last half century, or twenty-five years. I

should say practically there is very little University education in law. Certainly the bulk of the men who fit themsleves for the profession do not take University courses in law, and as I am told those who do attend them are not the best men of the University. One wonders why that should be so. It seems to me though I may be wrong, for it is always dangerous for a person to try to explain institutions of another countrybut it seems to me that the reason why the English are satisfied not to change their present institutions in the matter of legal education is that some way or other they do turn out the best bench and hold a higher place in legal literature than we do. Of course, I think they succeed in spite of the want of legal education at the Universities. Lawyers in England are concentrated in London, the bulk of them, and the competition there is keener than anything we know of in this country. The judges, of course, are the best men in the profession, because the prizes are so great. You don't find the best lawyers in England declining an offer of the bench, except under exceptional circumstances.

The argument of all this, of course, is not that the English system of legal education is justified, but rather that, if they had a better state of education, they would have even better fitted men, and turn out better law books, than they do now. I wish it were possible that a hundred or two hundred of the best young graduates of our best schools could be transported to England and given an opportunity to compete on equal terms with the Englishmen of a corresponding age. I have very little doubt that our graduates would carry off the prizes, and that there would be a very sudden awakening as to the need of reform in legal education in England. And not only that, but I think that it would mean the turning out of a better class of law books. It is my belief that in the next twenty-five or forty years the best treatises on English law will be written by Americans. When that comes, I think it will set the English lawyers to thinking.

The first order of business at the second session of the Association, held on Thursday, August 26th, was the reading of a paper prepared by JOHN H. WIGMORE and FREDERIC B. CROSSLEY of the Northwestern University Law School on the subject of "COLLEGE AND HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION AS A PREPARATION FOR LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP." The paper consisted largely of statistical comparison.

Of the reasons that have hitherto been offered for making compulsory a college education prior to entering a law school, the chief are reducible to three:

"(1) A college education is highly important for all intelligent citizenship; therefore, college attendance should be fostered indirectly, and not merely directly; therefore, a college education. should be required for entrance to a law school. With this argument we are not here concerned. We leave it, with the remark that we agree with the premise, but do not see the logic of the conclusion.

"(2) A college education is highly important for the knowledge and intellectual strength required by the legal profession in its professional administration of justice and in its legislative leadership; therefore, a college education should be required for entrance to a law school. With this argument, also, we are not here concerned. We leave it, with the comment that we believe in the premise, but we also believe that the only logical conclusion is to apply the requirement to admission to the bar, not merely to a law school.

"(3) A college education is essential to that scholarship which is needed for the scientific study and mastery of the law; therefore, a college education should be required before entering on study in a law school."

Dean WIGMORE, in presenting the subject to the Association, limited his remarks to the third matter; his conclu- . sions being:

"(1) For developing the very highest powers, a college education is essential. Whether two years of it is as efficient, relatively or absolutely, as four years of it, does not fully appear.

"(2) For developing the very lowest powers, a college education is essential. "(3) For developing ordinary and

high powers, a college education has, in some aspects, the chances in its favor; but, on the whole, and for the vast majority of men, it appears not to be essentially different in its results in legal scholarship.

"But,

"(4) These inferences are based on the observation of a single school and a limited number of students, hence are provisional only, in any aspect; and,

"(5) In view of their significance if found to be universally true, they should be tested on as large a scale as possible before any policy is adopted for which their correctness or incorrectness has any important bearing."

Prof. HARRY PRATT JUDSON, President of the University of Chicago, who followed Dean Wigmore, said in part:

The state has seen fit to prescribe certain conditions precedent to the practice of some professions-especially the professions of medicine and law. In each case it may be supposed that these requirements are laid down primarily for the protection of society, as the individual otherwise would find it difficult to insure in the practitioner whom he might call in the knowledge and skill requisite for the proper care of his person or his property. It hardly need be said that the legal conditions in question are a minimum. The ablest physicians and attorneys far transcend these. Not a few who can fulfill them are really ignorant and incompetent. The most that can be said, perhaps, is that on the whole many who would be glaringly unfit are prevented from practice, to the material benefit of society. In other words, the benefit is primarily negative, and only to a moderate extent positive. By virtue of possessing a state certificate of qualification to practice, one may be presumed to be to a certain extent likely to know his profession. But the more important consideration is that one who has no such certificate may practically invariably be presumed to be unqualified.

With such state standard necessary to attain in order to secure the privilege of legal practice, it is obvious that in many ways provision will be made for providing young men with the requisite knowledge. Private enterprise, wholly or largely commercial in character, has established many schools of

this kind. Clearly such schools will aim at the largest practicable attendance, and hence will demand from their students a minimum of preliminary education. The main object is to fit the largest possible number of candidates to pass the state examination, and accordingly any amount of intelligence, no matter how small, compatible with that end in view, will suffice. Moreover, such schools need not look beyond the examination alone. Their success will, on the whole, be determined by the considerable number of suc cessful candidates whom they prepare. The later record of these candidates, and especially the relation of their professional worth to the welfare of the community beyond the narrow limits of their practice, may well be negligible quantities.

But when established and reputable universities whether on private or public foundations, set before themselves the task of training students for the legal profession, quite different and much broader considerations should be taken into account. It is not here alone the question of providing a legal education adequate to meet the state test of fitness to enter on the profession, for two further questions of moment are also to be considered: What is the likelihood that the candidate may look forward to an honorable career in the higher walks of his learned and worthy profession? What is the likelihood that he will be of value to society as a man and a citizen, beyond mere success as a legal practitioner? To meet these ends, the whole education of the student must be taken into account. Mere technical legal instruction is not enough. That may suffice for the school which fits for the bar examination only. It should not suffice for the university. The question then is merely what sort of schooling and how much is to be expected as a condition precedent to specific legal study.

Thus far there are, on the whole, two views usually held by university law teachers. One is that a high school course will answer sufficiently. The other is that a college course, either as a whole or in the main, should also be required. Evidently the first of these alternatives makes it possible for a much greater number of students to take a university law course. The second limits the candidates to those who have the time and the means for at least a considerable college training. Are the results of the second plan so much better as to warrant the limitation?

It is held by some that the sole test lies in the manner in which the different classes of students handle the legal courses, and that if, on the whole, the high school graduates show equal or substantially equal ability with the college trained men, the matter is settled. By the courtesy of Dean Wigmore I have been shown in advance the very interesting study of this subject in the law classes of Northwestern University. It