object is not to make a bouquet of the law for the is eighteen years since it was introduced. public, nor to prune and graft it by legislation, but Those who have had an opportunity of put to plant its roots where they will grow, in minds ting the legal education thus acquired to a devoted henceforth to that one end, there is no way practical test are perhaps best qualified to to be compared to Mr. Langdell's way. Why, speak of its merits, and almost without ex look at it simply in the light of human nature. ception they pronounce in its favor. Mr. Does not a man remember a concrete instance James C. Carter, probably the leader of the more vividly than a general principle? And is not a principle more exactly and intimately grasped as New York Bar, has expressed in the strong the unexpressed major premise of the half-dozen est terms his belief in the new method of examples which mark its extent and its limits than instruction : — it can be in any abstract form of words? Ex "Now, is this method open to the objection pressed or unexpressed, is it not better known that the study of cases is apt to make the student a when you have studied its embryology and the mere ' case ' lawyer? Not at all. The purpose is lines of its growth than when you merely see it to study the great and principal cases in which are lying dead before you on the printed pages? the real sources of the law, and to extract from I have referred to my own experience. During them the rule which, when discovered, is found to the short time that I had the honor of teaching in ' be superior to all cases. And this is the method the school, it fell to me, among other things, to which, as I understand it, is now pursued in this instruct the first-year men in Torts. With some school. And so far as the practical question is misgivings I plunged a class of beginners straight concerned, whether it actually fits those who go into Mr. Ames's collection of cases, and we began out from its walls in the best manner for the actual to discuss them together in Mr. Langdell's method. practice of the law, I may claim to be a competent The result was better than I even hoped it would witness. It has been my fortune for many years be. After a week or two, after the first confusing to have charge of a considerably diversified legal novelty was over, I found that my class examined practice; and the most that I have had to regret the questions proposed with an accuracy of view is that it has overwhelmed me so much with mere which they never could have learned from text business that I have had too little time for the close books, and which often exceeded that to be found study of the law which my cases have involved. in text-books. I at least, if no one else, gained a "It has been necessary for me to have intelligent good deal from our daily encounters." assistants, and I have long since discovered that most valuable aid could be derived from the young We Americans, who have given to modern graduates of this school. I have surrounded my England systematic instruction in the law, self with them, partly for the reason that I have an who enriched its law half a century ago with affection for the place, and also because I have the ideas of Kent, Story, and Greenleaf, may found them in possession of a great amount of feel some pride in the fact that the English actual acquirement, and — what is of more conse now recognize the value also of Professor quence — an accuracy and precision of method far Langdell's contribution to legal pedagogic. superior to anything which the students of my day exhibited." In 1886 Gerard Brown Finch, Esq., Law Lec turer at Queen's College, Cambridge, after That Mr. Carter's experience is shared thoroughly examining the system of instruc quite generally, appears from the following tion prevailing at Harvard, introduced at j statement by President Eliot, contained in Queen's College Professor Langdell's meth his report for the year 1885-1886 to the ods, and for that purpose published a selec Overseers of Harvard College : — tion of cases on the Law of Contracts. But the time has passed when we need "It is good evidence of the value of the full look to the enthusiasm of students or to the three years' course that for several summers past opinions of professors for evidence of the the school has been unable to fill all the places in value of the new method of instruction. It lawyers' offices which have been offered it for its
