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ceive individual attention and criticism from an Instructor in the course.

foremost law faculties of America. The council will meet at stated periods for the consideration of any question which concerns the course or methods of legal instruction in the Institute or the needs of

In shaping the educational policy of the Institute, the Dean of the Faculty will have the assistance of an Advisory Educational Council, selected from the legal education.

The New Society of Public Teachers of Law in
England and Wales.

By CHARLES noble grEGORY, A. M., LL. D.,
Dean of the College of Law, State University of Iowa.

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N Tuesday December 15, 1908, a meeting of law teachers was held. in the Council Room of the Law Society in London. This meeting, which is noteworthy as marking a new era in the development of legal education in England, was convened "to consider the advisability of forming a society to further the course of legal education and to discuss matters affecting the work and interests of public teachers of law in England and Wales."

Professor Gaudy, Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, presided at the meeting. Among the more important of those attending were Prof. A. V. Dicey, Professor Holland, and Messrs. E. J. Trevelyan and W. M. Gedart (Readers), all from Oxford; while Cambridge was represented by Professor Clark, Professor Kenny, and Mr. H. D. Hazeltine (Reader), from London University, Professor Sir John Macdonell, Professor Gault, Professor Murison, Dr. Blake Odgers, and Messrs. Hugh Fraser and J. A. Strahan (Readers to the Council of Legal Education), and from Liverpool University, Mr. H. C. Dowell (Lord Mayor of Liverpool). The principal members of the teaching staff of the Law Society

were in attendance as were also Professor Phillips from Leeds University, and Professor Levi from the University of Wales. Letters of regret and encouragement were read from Professor Vinaradoff, of Corpus Christi, Oxford, Sir Frederick Pollock, Vice Chancellor Hopkinson, Professor Copinger, of Manchester University, and from many others prominent in legal education.

The speakers dwelt particularly on the remarkable expansion which has taken place in legal education in England during the last twenty-five years, and on the problems, both many and new, which have arisen in consequence. To-day there are in England and Wales approximately 100 public teachers giving and 2,000 students receiving instruction in the law. In this work various organizations are assisting, notably the Council of Legal Education, the Committee on Legal Education of Law Society, and the Newer Universities founded in the more important provincial cities. There are municipal arrangements for instruction in law, and, furthermore, the local professional bodies take part in the general movement for the improving of legal education. An interesting feature of the pres

ent movement is the development of a class of students which, heretofore, has never existed in England, but with which. we in America have long been familiar. This is composed of men who, from necessity or otherwise, can give to the legal study only a portion of their time, and who must give a part, often a large part, of their working hours to occupations entirely unconnected with the law.

The statement as to the number of law students in England and Wales seems very moderate as compared with the number of young men studying law in the United States. Mr. Henry Wade Rogers, in August, 1907, as Chairman of the Committee on Legal Education of the American Bar Association, reported the number of students in our law schools as 17,200; and the number must now considerably exceed 18,000.

At the meeting the speakers emphasized the advantages to be derived from occasional personal intercourse between men engaged in a common work under very diverse conditions and at widely scattered centers. Accordingly proposals were introduced for founding a society open to all holding positions as public teachers of law in England and Wales. These were received cordially and were unanimously adopted. Provision. was made for honorary membership, by invitation, in the case of those who have held such positions in the past in England or Wales, as well as those who have held or now hold such positions elsewhere in the United Kingdom, or in other countries.

A Drafting Committee was appointed to shape and report on rules. This committee, headed by Sir John Macdonell, will submit its recommendations at a meeting to be held in July next. The officers of the Society were chosen as follows:

President, Professor Goudy (Oxford).
Treasurer, Mr. Hazeltine (Cambridge).
Hon. Secretary, Mr. Edward Jenks, of No. 9
Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, London, W. C.

The Daily London Times of December 18, 1908, devotes almost a column of its editorial space to the new organization. The editor points out how impossible the formation of such a society would have been twenty years ago, simply because there were not then law teachers in such number as to make it feasible. He then goes on to say: "The old Universities had their staff of teachers. The Inns of Court gave instruction to their members. At a few other institutions lectures were delivered. But the students were not many, and the teachers were few; and it must be added that there was not much life, or zeal, or always intelligent purpose in the instruction. The nutriment supplied was too often thin and unsatisfying. Frigid platitudes were sometimes served out to men who, in their hearts, believed the system was, more or less, a make-believe or fraud. For a time there was a belief that, if only large doses of Roman Law were administered, the pupil could not fail to benefit. The scientific study of law was taken to be synonymous with an acquaintance, generally short and not very intimate, with the rudiments of Roman Law. The result in most cases was that instruction which might have. given a comprehensive view of law too often served only to bring about confusion or to leave adhering to the mind at few catch words and phrases. Those days, so near us, were the dark ages of legal teaching." The editor remarks that some of the wisest of the students "shut their ears to the instructor and turned to a novel"; but he adds that there were brilliant exceptions, as in the case of Maine, to the didactic dullness usually

displayed by the lecturer, although in general both teachers and students recognized the unprofitable character of the work. Moreover, the lecturers themselves could not answer the jeers of the practitioner at theoretic instruction. Now, however, a great change and awakening is to be seen. He mentions the formation in various universities of faculties of law, and notes the fact that the Law Society has given liberal assistance to different schools. Teachers and students are numerous, and interest has become genuine and intelligent.

The editor calls attention to the class of students referred to above, namely, those who daily give much of their time to work in the offices of barristers or solicitors or even to employment wholly divorced from law. He points out that the disadvantages of these are more than offset by the advantages; that the more intelligent instruction shows that the law is not a mere professional matter, but that its threads run through all human affairs. "A people's life is made up of many strands, and not the least or weakest are those which the lawyer's eye best detects. The founding of such a society as that which we have described" (i. e., referring to the meeting of the 17th) "is symbolic of the new position which law takes in the national education."

It is urged that the society should "put down the crammer," though he will undoubtedly die hard; that it should "form

a strong trade union, improve the re

muneration and tenure of legal instructors in such manner as to shut out the casual"; should "learn of the bricklayer or the carpenter how to improve the teacher's position; should meet to discuss all matters of common interest"; and, lastly (and this is most interesting to the American reader), that the society should "transplant here those methods which have proved so successful at Harvard and other American Law Schools."

The editor closes, commending the large views of the objects of legal education, and expressing the hope that the new Society "will strive to maintain the value of law degrees, that it will not encourage the production of the smart pettifogger, and that it will seek to make legal instruction not the least prized element in a liberal education."

A member of the Drafting Committee of the new Society has put himself in communication with the Association of American Law Schools and has procured copies of its constitution. Legal education is one of the few branches in which the old world has for a generation and more deferred in some measure to our country. The new Society and the comments of the "Thunderer" seem of a character and importance to excite the friendly interest of all American lawyers and of many scholars of other branches.

The writer is especially indebted for the above facts to Mr. Hazeltine of Cambridge University, the Treasurer of the Society.

Notes and Personals.

The American Bar Association will hold its annual meeting this year on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, August 24th, 25th, 26th, and 27th, at Detroit, Michigan. The Association of American Law Schools will convene at the same time and place. Charles Noble Gregory, Dean of the University of Iowa Law School, is the President of the Law School Association this year.

On February 2, 1908, the Board of Trus tees of Pennsylvania University made announcement of a $100,000 gift to the University Law School by Mrs. Esther Gowen Hood. The gift is in memory of her father, the late Franklin B. Gowen, of Philadelphia. Its purpose is the establishing of a number of graduate fellowships in law, the holders of which shall "pursue such a course of legal research and analysis as shall be best fitted to increase and develop their knowledge of legal principles and consequently better adapt them in the practice of the legal profession." This work is, of course, to be prescribed and carried on under the direct supervision of the law faculty. The holders of the fellowships are expected to give their exclusive attention to their law school work during their period of tenure, which may be one or two years. The desire of the donor is that the fellowship shall be awarded to members of the graduating class in the law department, the appointees to be chosen immediately on graduation; but the gift leaves the trustees free to award in any one year such fellowships as are available in that year to any graduates of the law department, provided that the trustees think that such appointments will better subserve the purposes of the endowment. With the single provision that at least three shall be maintained at all times, both the number of fellowships and the amount of the stipends of the holders are left entirely at the discretion of the trustees. Both may vary from year to year, and one fellowship may carry a larger salary than another. The terms of the gift also leave the trustees free to use a part of the income of the endowment to publish any legal treatise written or compiled by any holder of a Gowen fellowship.

Franklin B. Gowen, in memory of whom these fellowships were given, was born in Philadelphia on February 9, 1836. He was educated in Emmettsburgh, Md., and in Lititz, Pa., and after a short business experience took up the legal profession. Admitted to the bar in Schuylkill county in 1860, he soon became one of the leaders of that bar, then one of the strongest in the state. Elected

District Attorney in 1862, he held that office until, in 1864, he was appointed General Counsel for the Philadelphia & Reading Railway Company and moved to Philadelphia. The same year he was also appointed counsel for the Girard estates. In 1869, when 33 years old, he was requested to act temporarily as President of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company in place of Mr. Smith, whose health was impaired. Mr. Smith was not able again to reassume the duties of President, and Mr. Gowen continued to hold that position, excepting for an interval of two years, until 1888. This did not, however, prevent his having at all times a strong interest in and attachment to the legal profession, or his participating, to some extent, in the trial of important cases, both those involving the interests of his road and those of a public nature. It was Mr. Gowen who in 1876 undertook and became the leading spirit in the successful prosecution of the "Molly Maguires," the secret order composed of several thousand anthracite miners which for some years maintained a veritable reign of terror in the coal regions. He also took an active and prominent part in the debates of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention which met at Harrisburg in November. 1872, and sat there and in Philadelphia until well into the following year. In 1888 Mr. Gowen resigned from the Presidency of the Philadelphia & Reading, and once more gave his attention chiefly to the law, continuing in the practice of his profession until his death on December 14, 1889. In an address before the American Philosophical Society Mr. Richard Vaux said of Mr. Gowen:

"In his early profession he was behind none of the leaders of the bar, for Mr. Gowen ranked among the great lawyers of the country."

An incident, striking for the broad-mindedness which it showed, occurred in the fight over the passage of a bill before the Legislature of the state of Minnesota this winter, which bill provided that all applicants for admission to the bar in that state should be required to take bar examinations. It would have affected the St. Paul College of Law, a night law school founded in St. Paul in 1900, which has attained to a rare degree the confidence of its particular community in the quality of the instruction furnished there. The graduates of that school have been admitted to practice on their diplomas. The striking incident was that the St. Paul College of Law refused to fight the passage of this bill. They took the position that an enactment which required a test to be imposed

upon the leading law schools of the country, outside the state of Minnesota, and which did not apply to the law schools in the state of Minnesota, was based upon insular pride and sectional partiality, which should be strongly condemned. The St. Paul College of Law has been noted, from its inception, for the large number of capable lawyers connected with its teaching force, and this illustration shows the disinterestedness in their instruction; for it would have been to their distinct advantage to retain the rights which accrued to them under the old system. The instructors have differed strongly with many of the leading law schools, in that they have condemned the time wasted by such law schools in unnecessary reading of cases. They have disagreed with the same law schools on the necessity of requiring a college or portions of a college education as a requisite for the study of the law, believing that it was not for the best interests of the country and tended to establish a caste; but they demonstrated here that they strongly agreed with those same law schools in one of their important contentions. Although not believing in the requirement of a college education in the way of preliminary education, the St. Paul College of Law is an urgent believer in the necessity of a high school education and has been very strict in insisting upon this requirement. As a result, a number of students who have lacked one or more subjects of a high school course and could not, therefore, receive the degree from the St. Paul College of Law, have dropped out before the completion of their course and taken the state bar examinations. In connection with their contention that all students should be required to take bar examinations, the records of the Secretary of the State Board of Law Examiners for Minnesota were produced to prove that probably as large a per cent. of the applicants failed in the bar examinations in that state as in any state in the union. This record for the last five years showed that some 23 per cent. of the candidates taking these examinations failed to pass. It also showed a remarkable degree of efficiency on the part of special students from the St. Paul College of Law, who could not receive the degree of that institution because they were deficient in some portions of a high school education, when in competition in bar examinations with students from the other law schools in the United States. This record for the last five years showed as follows:

Year 1905.

January-Eleven men took Minnesota bar examinations; six passed. First and third men were undergraduates in St. Paul College of Law.

May-Eight men took the examination; four passed. First man was an undergraduate in St. Paul College of Law.

September-Four men took the examination; two passed. First man was undergraduate in St. Paul College of Law.

Year 1906.

January-Twelve men took the examinations; ten passed. Second and third men were undergraduates in St. Paul College of Law.

May-Nineteen took the examinations; sixteen passed. Third and fourth men were undergraduates in St. Paul College of Law.

September-Eight took the examinations; six passed. First, second, and third men were undergraduates in St. Paul College of Law. Year 1907.

January-Fifteen took the examinations; fourteen passed. Third man was undergraduate in St. Paul College of Law.

May-Twenty-two took the examinations; sixteen passed. Second and fourth men were undergraduates in St. Paul College of Law.

September-Thirteen took the examinations; eight passed.

Year 1908.

January-Eleven took the examinations; ten passed. Fourth man was undergraduate in St. Paul College of Law.

May-Seventeen took the examination; twelve passed. First and third men were undergraduates in St. Paul College of Law.

September-Ten took the examinations; nine

passed.

Year 1909.

January-Eleven took the examinations; ten passed. Third man was undergraduate in St. Paul College of Law.

The inauguration of a movement for the establishment at the national capital as a part of the George Washington University of a school for the training of young men for positions in the consular service again directs attention to the fact that this government has heretofore made no effort to provide such training for the men it sends to represent it abroad.

The nation at large recognizes the necessity for the maintenance of great schools at West Point and Annapolis for the training of officers for the army and navy; but it is only in the last few years that any thought has been given to the desirability of similar special training for positions in the consular service, although that service is of equal importance with the national defense.

Up to a very short time ago positions in the consular service were regarded as "the spoil of the victors," and were bestowed, without regard to the fitness of the appointees, upon the political faithful.

The necessities of our commerce have rendered a different class of men necessary in the foreign consular service, the importance and usefulness of which has increased wonderfully in the past decade. The foreign consular agent of this nation at the present time has become a sort of pioneer of commerce-a national advance agent of business. To properly perform the functions expected of him. he needs special training; for he must be ever on the alert to discover markets for our products, and avenues of trade for our merchants and manufacturers. He must be able to see latent opportunities for trade abroad and keep his country informed through the consular reports of the possibilities for busi

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