EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT Professor Eugene Wambaugh, in a note appended, takes issue with Professor Kales, points out that the lawyers of the country are not really inefficient, and, whether edu cated by case-book or text-book, have been trained on the theory that American law is really one science and that the peculiarities of local decisions are not to be emphasized for students. Further the differences of local courts are declared not to be so great as Pro fessor Kales estimates,— in fact a gap to be bridged for students' purposes, by a very few pages, — and this gap is likely to be narrowed by the desire for uniformity and the grow ing knowledge of outside decisions. More over the student cannot really predict where he will spend his professional life, and he knows if he has appreciable success he will deal with business in all parts of the United States. "There are other practical reasons opposed to Professor Kales' suggestions that local law should be made the basis of the law school's regular work; but by this time it ought to be apparent that the real difficulty is the conflict of Professor Kales' suggestion with the history of law and with its probable future. Nor does Professor Kales' suggestion gain weight from his conception that, as all other persons con cede the necessity of gaining acquaintance with local law, his plan differs in emphasis only.' In his presentation of the educational value of local law he goes to such an extreme that he has no common ground, even by way of compromise, with those who hold the usual belief that, though local law should not be wholly ignored, the ordinary instruction, in the law school should be based upon general law, and that the student's systematic work with local statutes and local decisions should be undertaken merely by way of a supple ment upon completing each subject, or by way of a comprehensive review of the whole law just before or just after admission to the bar." LEGAL EDUCATION. (Law Degrees.) "American Law School Degrees," by James Parker Hall, Michigan Law Review (V. vi, p. "Last August, at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association, the committee on legal education made a report proposing
that the Association should recommend to the various state legislatures the adoption of certain rules suggested by the committee to secure uniformity in law degrees. These rules provided that an L. B. should be con ferred by law schools maintaining a two years course; an LL.B. for three years of legal study; an LL.M. for four years, of which one should be post-graduate; and a D.C.L. or J.D. for five years, of which two should be post graduate. None of these degrees was to be conferred upon other terms than those spec ified. A minority of the committee dissented from the report. Consideration of it was postponed by the Association. The year before, this committee had made a substan tially different report upon the same subject. In the main, this latest report appears to be governed by the principle that substantial distinctions in legal education should be marked by appropriate distinctions in law degrees. Granting the excellence of this principle, it seems to the writer that the committee has departed from it in failing to approve the use of J.D. as a first degree in law by those schools that regularly require a college education for admission. The dis tinctions recognized in the report are all based upon the length of time spent in legal study. Another distinction, based upon the extent of preparation for legal study, is at present even more important than some of those recognized by the committee, and this the majority ignores." "If the committee on legal education renews its suggestions for uniform law degrees next year, it is to be hoped that it will recog nize the useful possibilities of the J.D. degree in indicating a college preparation for legal study, and that it will adopt a more liberal attitude toward a practice that at least may claim toleration as a promising experiment. Only thus are advances made in both the form and substance of educational methods. Fail ing this, the Bar Association should certainly refuse to recommend legislation upon a matter relatively so unimportant and concerning which such disagreement exists among those chiefly interested. It is hardly likely that any state legislature would enact such a prohibition as is suggested, against the vigor ous protest of even a single reputable law school within its borders, and the Association may wisely reserve its influence for measures promising more real benefit as well as greater prospects of success." LEGISLATION. New York State Library Year-book of Legislation, 1906, edited by Robert H. Whitten, Sociology Librarian, State Education Department, Albany, 1907.
