40
THE GREEN BAG
"The errors which these fictions have introduced have had one important practical effect in that they have caused the Supreme Court of the United States, in the decisions to which we have before alluded, in effect to neglect the decisions of the state courts on the ground that they wrongly interpreted the law, in cases where, as a court of the United States, it was bound by the Judiciary Act of 1789 to respect the laws of those states. The tremendous mistake which the court has thereby made and its results are clearly pointed out by Mr. Justice Field in his dissent ing opinion in Baltimore & Ohio R. R. Co. v. Baugh. The ordinary practice, however, of courts which follow the common law is other wise, since in cases where the law of a certain jurisdiction becomes material, the decisions of its courts are held to be conclusive as an authority or source of law.
"And the work of the third stage is in still larger concentric circle. Except in some non-technical subjects, the work is now mainly carried on by means of cases, and the inductive system is applied in all its rigor. "The supposed merits of this system of instruction, which, in the minds of its advo cates, give it superiority over the case system, are that the interest of the student is aroused sooner and he finds himself more promptly in receipt of dividends from his investment. The method of study is far less intensive and in some of its phases the work is more evenly divided between the student and the instruc tor. This not only allows the addition of technical subjects to the curriculum, permit ting a broader field to be covered, but leaves the time and the strength for advanced courses in comparative jurisprudence, Roman law, international law, diplomacy, and econo mics, with all their mellowing and harmonizing effects. What the student has lost in acuteness of mental vision, which the case system would have given him, he has gained in the actual amount of law that he knows and breadth of view."
"Instead, then, of being a complete and unchangeable body or entity law is something incomplete and imperfect, but containing a wonderful power for adaptability and growth. It is true that law in the abstract can be applied to every case, since every case must be decided. The conclusion is not, however, LEGAL EDUCATION. (Suggested Change in that law is already complete, but that law is Case Books.) " The Next Step in the Evolu made in order to decide the case. The system is complete because of the fact that judges tion of the Case-Book," by Albert M. Kales, can and do make law, and so the system can Harvard Law Review (V. xxi, p. 92). " This be applied to all possible new circumstances. article assumes that the comparative merits Judges do not enact laws as a legislature does, of the case-book and the text-book methods nor do they act arbitrarily, but they do make of teaching law are no longer an issue in legal laws indirectly in the course of giving their decisions, and since they must decide a case education. It assumes, also, that the case in one way or the other, they cannot avoid books, as represented by those in use at the so doing." Harvard Law School, have driven the text LEGAL EDUCATION. " Systems in Legal book pretty much out of existence as a means Education," by John Wurts, Yale Law Journal of instruction. . . . What, then, is to be the (V. xvii, p. 86). This address by one of the next radical step in their evolution? It is Yale Law School professors, expresses the the purpose of this article to maintain that in speaker's preference for the text-books schools' the older and more important jurisdictions of the United States there is a legitimate and increas modern " concentric system." ing demand for instruction in first-class law "In the first stage, under this system, the schools by case-books arranged, so far as law student is put through a course of elemen topics are concerned, upon the lines of the tary law which covers practically the whole range of municipal law, both substantive and present Harvard Law School case-books, but adjective. . . . The second stage is a repeti composed as far as practicable of cases from tion of the first, but in a circle of much greater the particular jurisdiction, with the end to radius. The student takes up the application present an accurate exposition of the law in of the rules of law in all but the most difficult force at the present day in that jurisdiction. branches. Text-books are the basis of the work done and these are supplemented by Such a demand will, it is believed, dictate the discussion in the class-room and by the study next radical step in the evolution of the case of leading cases which have been carefully book itself." Professor Kales vigorously is selected, not with a view to inductive study, but for the purpose of illustrating the prop advancing his idea, which is essentially an ositions of the text with authoritative decisions advocacy of the desirability of law schools devoted chiefly to the law of particular states. of what the law now is.
