general subject is very fully and, I need not say, ably discussed in the report of the Committee on Legal Education of this Association, submitted in 1892. After reviewing the course of instruction in the law schools of this country (and it is substantially the same in all of them) the committee says:

"It is evident that the course of study, with a very few exceptions, is confined to the branches of practical private law which a student finds of use in the first years of his practice. It is a technical or philosophic view of the law which is taught. * * * It may be said of all our law schools that the instruction is too technical. It is not elementary enough. The view of the law presented to the student is technical, rather than scientific or philosophical."

What is meant by the course of instruction being confined to private law which the student will find of use in the earlier years of his practice, may be illustrated by the course of instruction in what is justly regarded as one of the very foremost law schools of this country, that of Harvard University. I select it for illustration because of the deserved eminence of the school and because it covers all of the studies embraced in a three-years' term.

The following synopsis I assume to be correct, being taken from the above-mentioned report of the Committee on Legal Education:

"Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., nine instructors, 363 students, 44 graduates, 36 weeks in school year.

"Course of Study, First year.-Contracts, 108 hours; criminal law and procedure, 72 hours; property, 72 hours; torts, 72 hours; civil procedure at common law, 36 hours. Books used, Langdell's Cases on Contracts, Chapin's Cases on Criminal Law, Gray's Cases on Property, Vols. 1 and 2; Ames' Cases on Torts, Ames' Cases on Pleading.

"Second year.-Agency, 72 hours; bills of exchange and promissory notes, 72 hours; law of carriers, 72 hours; contracts, 72 hours; evidence, 72 hours; jurisdiction and proced

ure in equity, 72 hours; property, 72 hours; sales of personal property, 72 hours; trusts, 72 hours. Books used: Ames' Cases on Bills and Notes, Keener's Cases on Quasi Contracts, Langdell's Cases in Equity Pleading, Gray's Cases in Property, Vols. 3 and 4, Langdell's Cases on Sales, Ames' Cases on Trusts.

"Third year.-Constitutional law, 72 hours; corporations, 72 hours; jurisdiction and procedure in equity, 72 hours; partnership, 72 hours; property, 72 hours; surety and mortgage, 72 hours. Books used: Ames' Cases on Partnership, Gray's Cases on Property, Vols. 5 and 6."

"Extra courses.-Patent law, 10 lectures; peculiarities of Massachusetts law and practice, 2 hours a week.”

"Admission and methods of instruction.-Applicants for admission not graduates of a college are examined in Latin, (Cæsar, Cicero), Blackstone's Commentaries. Every student who has been in the school one year or more has an opportunity each year of arguing in a case before one of the professors in a moot court."

The subjects taught and the books used show more clearly than any general description the intensely technical and practical character of the course of instruction. This may stand, I think, as the general model or even highest type of legal instruction in this country.

I agree in the main with the spirit of the committee's criticisms which I have above quoted, but I would phrase my own views in somewhat different language. I insist, for I believe it to be true, that the stereotyped course of legal instruction in this country is defective, not so much for what it contains as for what it omits. It is defective in that no adequate provision is made for specific instruction in historical and comparative jurisprudence, and in the literature, science and philosophy of the law-in what may, perhaps, be compendiously expressed as general jurisprudence. If this is what the committee means by the expression that the course of instruction is too technical,

I agree to it. But it is to be remembered that it is of the essence of our legal systems that they are in their historical development and nature technical, and so far as they are so, instruction, to be adequate and thorough, must itself be technical, and in an important sense it is not predicable of it that it is too technical. Having in view the circumstances which surround the subject of legal education in this country, I approve the wisdom of the general course of instruction in our law schools, so far as it gives chief attention to the usual and enumerated branches of practical private law. But I still insist that it is defective in the want of adequate provision for instruction in the history and the literature of the law, and in what I call for short "general jurisprudence." Great lawyers like Coke and Blackstone and Eldon, may be made by the current methods; but the growth of greater lawyers like Hale, Bacon and Mansfield, who in their day wisely amended and improved the law, and who represent the higher professional ideals, is not adequately promoted or encouraged by the existing course or methods of instruction in the law schools in this country.

I fully realize that to set up an impracticable standard, defeats the object sought. Nevertheless, I insist that it is entirely practicable for our law schools to enlarge and liberalize the scope of their instruction by requiring at least one hundred hours of the course to be given specifically to the subjects which I have above ventured to indicate as essential to any well-ordered course of instruction that makes any just claim to being adequate or complete.

And this view it is the sole practical point of this paper to urge and enforce, to the end that the generations of lawyers who shall come after us may be adorned more abundantly than else had been with examples of the highest and truest professional ideals.

And to this end, moreover, I should be glad to see the members of the Section of Legal Education take the initiative

by recommending the American Bar Association to adopt resolution, in substance, that in its judgment adequate instruction in historical, comparative and general jurisprudence is an essential part of a thorough course of legal education, and accordingly that it recommends to all of the law schools of the the country that such instruction should be made a distinct and specific branch of the course of required study therein.

PAPER

READ BY

JOHN D. LAWSON, LL. D.,

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI, COLUMBIA, MISSOURI.

[BEFORE THE SECTION OF LEGAL EDUCATION.]

SOME STANDARDS OF LEGAL EDUCATION IN THE WEST.

In the West, in the East probably, too, in the Southwest certainly, for it is there as a lawyer, legal journalist and law teacher I have much observed, there are three tests for admission to the Bar, and in the application of these tests there are three different standards of legal learning.

First. There is the law school standard, which is good. Second-There is the Supreme Court standard, which is fair. Third-There is the Circuit Court standard, which is bad. The statutes of all the western States give, I think, jurisdiction to the Supreme Court or the highest appellate court, by whichever name called, to admit to the bar. In my own State, Missouri-and I may very well select Missouri as a type of all the other southwestern states, because she is the greatest in population, and because on account of her geographical and commercial position she may be said to influence, more than any other one of this group, all the others-in Missouri, not only the Supreme Court, but the Circuit Courts of the State, have this jurisdiction given by statute, and the law also provides that graduates of the two law schools of the State, that of St. Louis and of the University of Missouri at Columbia, shall be admitted to the bar upon presentation of the diploma of such schools without further examination.

Of the three doors, then through one of which the candidate must pass, let me speak first of the law school door. And here