cussion, that seems to me to be very important, and it has not been touched upon. In the matter of our statutes, for instance, in Oklahoma, the Supreme Court, or the Board of Law Examiners appointed by the Supreme Court, accepts the certificate of the law school that the student has done three years' work and has passed his examinations, without question, as the basis for admitting the student to the bar. That statute as it now exists admits students to the bar upon the presentation of a diploma from the State University. Now, how can we make that certificate, as a part of the honor system, when we do not know whether it is properly done or not? It seems to me that, if we were to do that, we would be certifying without the knowledge that the examination had been honorably passed, except in so far as the knowledge that might be gained from this pledge of the student or the certificate that the examination had been properly passed by the student himself.

Charles M. Hepburn, University of In

diana Law School.

The

I have been deeply interested in the honor system for a great many years, ever since I was at the University of Virginia under Dean Minor. Every now and then I have heard of its adoption elsewhere. Frequently I have been met with the plea that the honor system does exist in the University of Virginia, but it cannot be said to flourish anywhere else. I think that is a mistake, but it is the plea that I have often heard. honor system will flourish in any locality, if it is let alone. I want to approve the remarks of one of the speakers, when he said that the duty of the faculty in reference to the honor system is to let it alone. The students will take care of that without the faculty taking any action. Let me illustrate that by something that occurred at the Bar Association meeting two or three years ago. The Dean of a law school told me that he did not believe in the honor system, and he said: "I have a good reason for it. I have tried it, and I have found in my own experience that it will not work." He said: "I tried it on my boys. I said to the boys that I was going to adopt the honor system, and that I was going to leave the room. I went out of the room. The door was ajar

a little, and I stopped and looked through the opening, and I went right back on the honor system at once." I agreed with him that it was a mistake in his case. But if you will let it alone it will flourish. I don't think that it ought to be put upon the class by taking a vote-by asking for a unanimous vote. I have my doubts as to whether it ought to be brought up in the faculty, either. I believe that it ought to be impressed upon the class that they are preparing for an honorable profession, where the judge on the bench will take their professional statements, and that we are going to accept their statements as honorable men. Now, when this is done, in most instances you will find that it will be a success. I have tried it long enough to know. I have tried it for many years, and it has never failed to work. Very often there are times when I thought I could detect in a paper the fact that there had been cheating in it; perhaps no assistance given intentionally by any one, but where some student had written something on a paper, and some other student had taken it up, and you could tell by the answers that they were evidently written by the same party. But suppose that does occur in one or two cases out of hundreds of papers. It seems to me that it is very much better to let it go, as after years of experience I have found that there is very much less cheating than there is under any other system of which I have any knowledge.

New Officers

On the recommendation of the Nominating Committee, William R. Vance, of the Yale University Law School, was elected President, and George P. Costigan, Jr., of the Northwestern University Law School, was elected Secretary and Treasurer, of the Association for the ensuing year.

HE Section of Legal Education of

THE

the American Bar Association met in the United States District Court Room in the Federal Building at Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Wednesday and Thursday, August 31 and September 1, 1910. The chairman, William O. Hart of Louisiana, presided.

Mr. Hollis R. Bailey, of Massachusetts, in presenting the report of the Committee on Standard Rules for Admission to the Bar, said:

The Chairman of our Committee, Mr. Lucien Hugh Alexander, of Philadelphia, is unavoidably absent, and he has asked me to present the report of the committee. The report has been printed, and is upon the table for distribution, and I will simply summarize it, as the committee has wished. This committee has been in existence for some years, and consists of seven members from the different states, and, as you all know, we prepared a draft of some rules, which were discussed last year. Mr. Alexander goes on in the report to show what has been done during the year, and shows what has been done this year, after a discussion of these rules by the committee, and has simply prepared a report showing progress.

He says

that these suggestions were made, some of them, last year, and that they were printed -that is, a draft of these rules was printed -and were distributed to the members of the American Bar Association, to the Chief Justices of the various states, members of all the State Boards of Bar Examiners, and the Deans of all the American Law Schools, and criticisms and suggestions were invited. He says he received a large number of suggestions and criticisms. I may say that our committee is widely scattered, and we have not gotten together, and what we have done has been done by correspondence chiefly, although we have had one meeting. Mr. Alexander says he received a large number of important and valuable suggestions, and he suggests that these be debated at this meeting, and that the committee be authorized to summarize these and embody them in a report for the 1911 meeting; that they be distributed among the members of the Amer

ican Bar Association, State Boards of Bar Examiners, and Deans of the American Law Schools, and such others as the committee deem advisable, and that we invite further suggestions and criticisms, so that next year we may really have a substantial debate upon the subject of Standard Rules for Admission to the Bar. Those are two of the recommendations that he makes, and that the committee may be continued, and authorized to prepare a report, print it, and distribute it again next year, when it is hoped that we may have time for a discussion of the report. A committee of three, consisting of Oliver A. Harker of Illinois, Francis M. Burdick of New York, and Alfred F. Mason of Minnesota, was appointed by the Chair to confer with a committee from the Association of American Law Schools for the purpose of arranging for a joint meeting of the Section of Legal Education, the Association of American Law Schools, and members of State Boards of Law Examiners.

better choice could have been made without difficulty either from the law school professors, who are members of the section, or from the ordinary lawyers who are affiliated therewith. After all, however, the duties of the chairman of the section are practically nominal, and I think, if the work of the section is to reach that dignity which the subject deserves, the term of the chairman ought to be for three years, and I recommend the appointment of a committee to consider that question and to report on the subject next year.

I believe that with such a term for the chairman he will be able to lay out a plan of work, which would benefit the cause of legal education, which he cannot do now, because immediately after his election the members of the section disperse and do not come together again for twelve months, and, of course, there are many who do not come back even then; but with the opportunity for conference and discussion which three meetings would give, the chairman of the section could carry out whatever ideas might occur to him for the advantage of its work.

I feel that I can approach the subject of legal education from an impartial standpoint, for the reason, unfortunately, I was unable to take a law school course, or a collegiate course, and but very little of a high school course. The condition of my health at the age of fourteen required me for several years to abstain from study, and, strange as it may appear, I began the active practice of law almost simultaneously with its study. No one, neither judges nor lawyers, raised the question of my having been admitted to the bar, and when, after two and a half years of study and practice, I applied for formal admission, the members of the committee, one of whom is now a Justice of the Supreme Court of

the United States, and another, a very eminent member of the American Bar Association, were surprised when I told them I had not been admitted previously. Be this as it may, though I have met with some success at the bar, I do not mean to give my case as an example to other students. After thirty-two years at the bar, I still find myself often severely handicapped by the fact that I had no preliminary legal education, and my advice to every one entering upon the study of law is to go to a first-class law school, and I believe that one having a three-year course is preferable to a shorter term.

Our Tulane Law School, located in New Orleans, was for many years the only civil law school in the United States. Three years ago our Louisiana State University, located at Baton Rouge, our capital, established a law school which has met with considerable success, but the course is only two years. My only connection with a law school was three years ago, when at the first session of this school I delivered a series of twelve lectures. The subject chosen for me was, "The Jurisprudence of Louisiana," but, of course, that subject could not be exhausted in a hundred lectures, and therefore I entitled mine, "Fragments of Louisiana Jurisprudence." When I closed my twelfth and last lecture, I told the students that I believed that I had obtained more benefit from the lectures than they had, and, the University kindly having printed the lectures, I find daily use for my copy. Through some authorities which I collected in one of them, I was enabled to have our Attorney General recall an opinion, in which he declared a very important law of our state unconstitutional, and in several important cases I have been successful through the study which I gave in preparing these lectures.

From my experience I must differ with many able men who have spoken before the association and this section, and written on the subject of legal education, as to the proposition that a law student should not go into a law office until he finishes his school course. In my humble judgment the two should be concurrent, for I believe that a student who is enabled to see the practical working of the law, and be interested through his office connection in the trial of actual cases, brings to his law school studies a human interest, which enables him to grasp abstract propositions, and reason from them to the concrete, far better than those who go to the law school alone. A student who finishes a full three-year course, during which time he has had actual court experience, is better fitted for the bar than one who goes in an office after he has completed his law school course, even though he spend in an office a full year subsequent to his graduation. Therefore I am opposed to the rule recommended by our committee requiring four years' preparation for the bar, provided the student has attended. a law school for three years. Whether four years' office study is wise instead of three, I am not at this time prepared to say. My state requires but two, and we have some eminent lawyers who have been admitted to the bar after that time and without law school training, among them two presidents of our State Bar Association, one of whom served four terms and one two, and all of their elections were unanimous. Notwithstanding this, however, I believe that three years is a short enough time, and hope that our laws may be amended in that regard.

When I speak of three years in a law school and three years study in an office, I mean three calendar years, and not three terms, as is sometimes the method

of reckoning. By this means the three years become two and a half years; and I believe that, where a law school's three terms are less than three years from the beginning of the student's course, he should be required to study in some office until the full three years have expired before being admitted to practice. In my state a diploma, either from Tulane or the Louisiana State University, entitles the applicant to admission to the bar without examination or question, but the diploma of a law school of another state has no effect whatever with the committee in its examinations, though I am told that the holder of same is admitted to the last year of either law school, thus requiring only one term, say six months of study in the state itself.

A certificate of admission from anoth-. er state entitles the holder to immediate admission after examination, which is usually purely perfunctory by one Justice of the Supreme Court or by two District Judges, and this brings at once to mind an evil which should be promptly corrected.

I presume it is best that each state should decide for itself what method of recognition it gives to lawyers from other states, but there ought to be a uniform. law that no lawyer from another state should be admitted to practice until he presents, not only his diploma or certificate of admission, but also a certificate that at the time of his applying he is a member of the bar in good standing in the state where he was originally admitted, as well as in other states in which he might have been subsequently admitted, and in every case the original certificate. of admission should have endorsed on it the action of other states, if any. Otherwise an attorney disbarred in one or more states might go to still another state and be admitted to the bar because

the disbarment could not deprive him of the physical possession of his certificate, and that is the only proof now required, and the courts might thus be often imposed upon. Just such a case happened in Louisiana. A lawyer from Indiana applied for recognition, presented his certificate, which was found in proper form, and, after examination, was admitted to practice, and not until he did a criminal act in Louisiana and ran away was it found that he had been disbarred in his own state. The wrong to the people of Louisiana had then been done, and the striking of his name by the court from the roll of members of the bar could not repair the damage which had been done.

Referring again to the time of study, whether in the law school or in the office, or both, I believe the highest court of each state should keep a register of law students, as recommended by our committee, and no student should be entitled to admission, or be allowed to stand examination, until full three years have elapsed from the date of his registration, and I believe the court should have the power, upon a proper showing, to order the name of any registered student stricken from the roll without waiting until he comes up for examination. In my state, under our Constitution, the Supreme Court, which is the highest court, has exclusive jurisdiction of all suits for disbarment, and the provision works well in practice. We have, I am sorry to say, four boards of examiners, which, of course, destroys uniformity, and I hope the time is soon coming when we shall only have one, as we had for several years after the adoption of our last Constitution in 1898. I have no doubt that all of the boards do their full duty, but I have no personal knowledge of those outside the city of New Orleans, but, as

to that, I want to say that I am satisfied there is no board in the United States which has done more to elevate the standard of admission to the bar than that board, and my only regret is that it is handicapped by the law, which requires only two years' study, and which admits without examination graduates of our two universities. The Tulane law school adopted the three-year course several years ago, and I hope the time is not far distant when the Louisiana State University will do the same, and that we may soon have a law requiring graduates of both universities to go before the state board of examiners for examination before admission to the bar.

I have said before that our two law schools are the only civil law schools in the country, but I want also to say that in each university the common law is thoroughly taught by competent professors, and to those desiring it a special common-law course is provided in Tulane. The Bar of Louisiana has always stood deservedly high, and to my mind the greatest lawyer this country ever produced was Mr. Thos. J. Semmes of Louisiana. When I came to the bar in 1878, I asked the question: "Who is the greatest lawyer in Louisiana?" And the answer was: "Mr. Semmes." And so he continued up to the time of his death in 1899. From the time of my acquaintance with him, I found that every judge and every lawyer in Louisiana looked to him for inspiration and instruction, and, though he has been dead for 11 years, his place has never been filled, and I do not believe that it ever will be, and that we shall never look upon his like again.

Of course, I feel that I must protest against any recognition of correspondence schools of law, though I know several lawyers of eminent ability who have acquired their education in this way.