Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/234

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Michigan University Law School.
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treatises of the best law-writers. The Law School in 1866 was presented by the Hon. Richard Fletcher, one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, with his valuable law library. Again, in 1885, Mr. C. H. Buhl, a wealthy and public-spirited citizen of Detroit, presented the Law School with the "Buhl Law Library," which was valued at $15,000. These two gifts, with such acquisitions as have been made by the University authorities, make the Law Library an excellent one, and it occupies a large and handsome room on the first floor of the Law Building,—the room formerly occupied by the General Library of the University. But capacious as is the room, the visitor to it on every afternoon will find it full of young men diligently at work examining authorities, and evidently as much in earnest as though they were preparing for the argument of some important case in the courts. Joseph H. Vance, a graduate of the Law School of the Class of 1861, is the Librarian in charge.

As an account of the Michigan Law School would be incomplete without an account of the personnel of the Faculty, we shall sketch the career of those who have been engaged in its work of instruction. Professor Langdell, at the Harvard celebration in 1886, declared that what qualified a person to teach law was "not experience in the work of a lawyer's office, nor experience in dealing with men, nor experience in the trial or argument of causes, nor experience

LEVI T. GRIFFIN.

in using law, but experience in learning law." To be a successful teacher of law surely requires distinctive gifts; and a man is not qualified for such a career simply because he may have been successful as an advocate or trier of causes, or may have had an extended experience at the bar or on the bench. In the Michigan Law School the men who have been engaged in the work of instruction have been for the most part men of extended experience, either on the bench or at the bar; and while it is true that such experience does not of itself qualify for the teaching of law, it is equally true that it does not necessarily disqualify, and they have been, hardly without exception, men specially adapted for that work. We understand that at Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell Law Schools the professors are, as a rule, withdrawn from practice, devoting themselves wholly to the teaching of the law. In the Michigan Law School, while a portion of the Faculty are withdrawn from practice, the rest continue in the active work of their profession.

The Law Faculty originally, and for many years, consisted of three men,—James V. Campbell, Thomas M. Cooley, and Charles I. Walker.

James V. Campbell, of the Supreme Court of Michigan, was born Feb. 25, 1823, in Buffalo, N. Y. Three years later his parents removed to Michigan and settled in Detroit, where he has since resided. He attended school at Flushing, L. I., and