Another of the serious problems concerning law schools is, How shall the faculty be selected? Perhaps the most common method is for the governing body to select all teachers of the rank of professor, whether of full or less grade, and for the president or dean, sometimes with and sometimes without the concur

rence of the faculty, to select the teachers of less than professorial rank. The chief advantage of this method is that the professors feel independent one of the other. No one owes his place to the vote of one or more of his colleagues, nor has been employed against the vote of others. Its principal disadvantage is that the faculty who know in detail the needs of the school have no voice in the

selection of those who are to supply those needs. The better plan seems to be for the faculty, through the dean, to recommend several persons from whom the managing board shall make the selection. This secures the approval of two separate bodies each fairly competent to judge of qualifications, and gives perhaps as high a guaranty of efficiency as can be obtained.

w School Review

Dismissal.

Approaching the question of the teaching force from the other side, no satisfactory method of getting rid of undesirable professors has been devised. To guard against their retention by election for a short term is essentially bad. It introduces an element of uncertainty into the profession which is intolerable. Its tendency is to prevent good men from engaging in teaching at all, and particularly to prevent acceptance of any particular chair offered on such conditions. 'On the other hand, to depend upon the authorities to remove an unsatisfactory professor is hardly safe. All are loath to take the initiative in such disagreeable matters. In cases of great wrong or such conduct as to occasion public criticism, cognizance of the matter will be taken, but simple incompetency, or lack of fitness hardly amounting to incompetency, is almost beyond redress in this way, and yet a faculty and an institution can be badly handicapped by the accumulation of professors not good enough to keep and yet not quite bad enough to

turn out.

It might be well to elect untried professors for an indefinite length of time at a salary fixed for a short period, say two years, with the understanding that failure to raise the salary at the expiration of that time should be equivalent to a vote of want of confidence. During this short period his capacity and desirability as a teacher can be definitely ascertained. If he prove a success, increase his salary; if he has not demonstrated his worth, let him retire. The advantage of this method lies in the fact that it gives a negative way of escape. No charges need be preferred, no affirmative vote of incompetency need be taken. Absence of affirmative approval automatically settles the relations.

Salary.

No treatment of the operation of the law school is complete without at least brief reference to the matter of salaries. According to current reports, these vary from good compensation paid by some of the richer schools to quite meager pittances paid by others. It cannot be justly contended that law professors should receive salaries equal to the incomes of the members of the bar who enjoy the most lucrative practices; on the other hand, salaries ought not to be regulated by the income of mediocre lawyers.

Somewhere between these these extremes should be found a golden mean just alike to employer and employed. In state institutions, at least, the salary of a full professor should not be less than that of the judges of the courts of last resort in the state in which the school is located. If particular schools can and will pay more, so much the better for them, but the average salary might well be put at that of a Supreme Court judge.

Material Equipment.

The organization of a law school also involves provision for its material equipment. The most important of this equipment is a proper building and library. As to the need of well-constructed, comfortable and healthful rooms, with good acoustics, there can be no differences of opinion.. One who has not actually conducted class exercises cannot properly appreciate these material aids. It is difficult for any student to give undivided attention to a class exercise in a state of bodily discomfort. In most schools this actual discomfort is a thing of the past, but I fear that bad acoustics abide with us still. This condition is trying on the teacher, but still more trying on the students. If a class is of any size, it is very difficult for students in the remote parts

of many classrooms to hear the responses to the professor's questions with sufficient clearness to keep firm hold upon the thought sought to be developed by the teacher. At best, a good deal of the student's attention is given to the matter of simple hearing, and his power of concentration is diminished by that much. Often, after the most strained attention, he loses the connection and probably misses the point. Not only does he fail to benefit by the class exercise, but he is developing bad habits of study and unwillingly falling into practice of missing opportunities. In very large classes in rooms poorly constructed an oral quiz is almost without value as a means of systematic instruction to the class as a body.

Libraries.

The value of the library is also beyond dispute. Libraries upon an extensive scale are beyond the financial ability of many good law schools. It is, however, within the power of almost every school to obtain the most essential books. With the law school as with the lawyer, development depends more upon the use made of the books that are accessible than upon the number of unused volumes stored away upon the shelves. Within five or six thousand volumes, judiciously chosen, may be embraced all the books essential for the use of a student in the prosecution of his undergraduate study. If a larger number can be obtained, it is very desirable that this should be done. I simply wish to make the point that the large library is not essential to thoroughness in undergraduate study. For research work by the faculty, or by graduate students, a large library is indispensable. The ancient adage admonishes the practicing lawyer to "beware of the man of one book." The thought expressed in it may be fairly applied to the modestly equipped law school which by its

methods of instruction induces its students to become so familiar with the four or five thousand volumes within its library that they know all about a few of them, and how to use those of each kind effectively.

Methods of Teaching.

At the beginning of this paper attention was called to the different conceptions of a law school-one line of thought emphasizing teaching and another studying; one stressing the work of the professor to the neglect of the work of the student; the other stressing the work of the student to the neglect of the work of the professor. Attention was also called to the different views regarding law. Is it a system of general principles, or is it a mass of arbitrary rules? If it is not strictly a system of principles, are there, nevertheless, fundamental principles which underlie the law and from which it proceeds, and a knowledge of which is indispensable to a correct appreciation and application of the law? Again, is the law general, applying everywhere, or local, applying only in one jurisdiction? Whether we conceive it to be the one or the other, is it best taught by this or by that or by the other method? Shall lecture or quiz predominate in the classroom exercises? If lecture, shall it be preceded or followed by assignment of text or case? If it be quiz, shall it be confined to an effort to ascertain the diligence and appreciation of the particular student quizzed, or be so conducted as to develop systematically the thought covered by the exercise and show its relations to the lessons which have preceded it and those which are to follow? Shall text-book or casebook be given to the pupil? Shall all the time be given to substantive law, or shall it be divided between substantive and adjec

tive, and, if so, in what proportion? Is there any natural order of sequence in legal topics, and, if so, what is that order and can it be preserved in the actual arrangement and carrying out of a law curriculum?

As these different questions are answered, so, consciously or unconsciously, will those in authority arrange the particular curriculum and methods of teaching. If the predominant idea of law is its ethical quality, stress will be laid upon it as a manifestation of the present public conscience. If the predominant idea is its historical development, stress will be laid on the present rules as the outgrowth of former precedents.

Extreme undue emphasis on the teaching side leads to the exclusive lecture method, eliminating text and case book alike. Extreme undue emphasis on the studying side leads to the exclusion of all aid by the teacher further than is involved in showing the pupil how little he really knows and sending him back. again to the sources of the law. Neither of these extremes is tolerable. The middle course blends earnest research and careful thought by the pupil with skillful suggestion and illuminating exposition by the teacher. Under it the pupil's best effort is stimulated and directed by the teacher's superior knowledge and judgment. The teacher is not an apostle of despair, the principal result.of whose work is to stifle hope and so discourage thought, but an inspiring leader to higher intellectual effort, and more profound professional understanding. Instead of heaping difficulty upon difficulty by continued suggestion of unanswered and to the student unanswerable questions, starting in many directions, but going nowhere, he meets the student where he is, and by judicious and helpful co-operation leads him to intellectual heights

where the hope of professional mastery and success dawns bright upon him.

A number of years ago, when I first read some of the discussions on the methods of teaching and the arrangement of curricula, I believed that the differences of view among the several schools, and in a few instances among the different professors in the same school, were fundamental and beyond adjustment. Since that time I have had occasion to look more closely into the actual work of these valiant disputants, and my present opinion is that we differ more in expression than we do in thought, and more in thought than we do in actual classroom work. I have been in the classroom of men who in the heat of argument make declarations which would incline one to believe that it is little less than a crime to give a pupil a text-book, that he must at all times be thrown upon his own resources, and made to develop the law from the original sources by his own unaided effort, and have caught these professors redhanded in the act of making most masterly expositions of a point on which the assigned cases had apparently confused and overwhelmed their pupils. On the other hand, many of the most ardent advocates of lecture and text-book are daily giving tribute to cases as a valuable means of instruction by assigning them to their pupils and insisting on their mastery. The amusing part of the matter is that cach of us commits his particular solecism without apology and seemingly without sense of inconsistency. The truth is none of us, even law professors, are quite so good as we believe ourselves to be, nor quite so bad as we paint ourselves, when we are trying to frighten "the party of the second part" in an argument regarding our hobbies. So, after all, I have concluded the real differen

ces between us are largely matters of emphasis or relative importance. Some of us put the stress here and some there, each earnestly striving along the lines of his own greatest efficiency to transform the crude and untrained freshman into the capable and effective graduate.

The most important single factor in this process of transformation is an enlightened enthusiasm for the law as the highest human expression of practical justice. He who kindles this enthusiasm. most successfully has found the best method of teaching. He who kindles it even fairly and keeps its fires burning with steady glow, though they be not at intensest heat, has found a method too good in his hands to be set aside except for weighty reasons.

Personally I do not think it well for any school to adopt any one method to the exclusion of all others. Conditions as they exist do not seem to me to justify, much less to force, such an election. The desirable thing is that each professor shall use with each class and in each topic the method best adapted to doing the thing that is then being done.

It is altogether conceivable that one teacher may excel in one method of teaching and another in another. It is also conceivable that different methods may be better in different topics and in different classes, and even in the same class in the different stages of its development. The important thing is to get a clear conception of the ends to be accomplished in attempting to teach the law and to press forward toward those ends by the method, which, under all the facts of the particular case, is best calculated to command success.

The primary object of the law school is to train men to be successful and effective lawyers, not moneymakers or skillful practitioners merely, though each

of these is good when achieved honorably, but profound lawyers, who will do honor to their profession and subserve the public good. To take the young man in the professionally crude condition in which he enters the law school and develop him into such a lawyer involves much training along many lines. In its final analysis it is a process of character building, the fitting of a man for the exercise of some of the most important and far-reaching functions that pertain to any profession. It is a process which necessarily involves development and growth morally, intellectually, and in legal information. May it not be that work with and for and by the same individual should be varied to meet his varying needs during the various stages of this gradual growth? It seems not only .possible or even probable, but altogether reasonable, that this may be true. If it is true, no fixed method of dealing with a student throughout his entire career in the law school can be best. Some amount of adaptation and adjustment is inevitable. How much there shall be and in what it shall consist are different questions.

In the school with which I have the honor to be connected, from its foundation in 1883 to the present time, the course has begun and still begins with the study of text-books. This is kept up to the practical exclusion of all other methods until the end of the first term; that is, until Christmas of the student's first year. At that time, we begin assigning a few illustrative and expository cases in connection with the text, requiring thorough study of both. As the student advances in his familiarity with legal terms and legal processes of thought, the proportion of cases to text is gradually increased so that in his senior year almost his entire work is done with

cases. The catalogues of many other schools show that this method is employed in them.

Returns from Pupils.

There are many processes involved in teaching; among these, on the one hand, are giving out information by the professor and affording opportunities by him for the student to learn, and, on the other, getting returns from the pupils, showing to what extent they are availing of and profiting by such instruction and opportunity.

Oral Quizzes.

In large classes it is difficult to test the students adequately by oral quizzes. The number of pupils who may be quizzed satisfactorily in any class period is necessarily limited, and the frequency with which any one pupil shall be subjected to quiz, if the quizzing be impartially distributed, of course, depends upon the number of pupils in the class. If the class is much above 50, it is difficult, if not impossible, for the quiz to constitute a satisfactory test of the work of any one of the students and its results, or to train any student so to stand quizzing as to be an effective means through which to develop a subject to the edification of the class. To select a few students and quiz them exclusively is objectionable, first, because of the seemingly invidious distinctions made between men who have equal claims upon the teacher and the school, and also because it leaves the great mass of students without the stimulus which is afforded by liability to quiz before the class, and also deprives them of the benefits which come from being quizzed. It also subjects this large unquizzed majority of the students to the temptation of putting off their daily work and trusting to their capacity