The Columbia Law School of To-day.
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THE COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL OF TO-DAY. By George W. Kirchwey. WHETHER new wine can safely be put into old bottles, or, to vary the metaphor, whether new life can be infused into old institutions, depends quite as much on the flexibility and adaptability of the old ingredient as upon the force and vitality with which the new is charged. If the old institution is effete, if it can with difficulty hold its settled contents, it would be best to leave it alone. But if the old vessel has the capacity of renewing itself, like Jonah's gourd, every day, or if it be a living organism, vitally related to the world of men on the one hand and to that of ideas on the other, the new wine will only reinvigorate it, will renew its youth and start it on a new career of achievement. This truth has not had a better application than is afforded by the recent history of the Columbia Law School. The distinguished r6le played by this institution from its foundation in 1858, to the beginning of the present decade, is a brilliant chapter in the history of legal edu cation in this country. For many years the first of American schools of law, in numbers and in reputation, she was the fruitful mother of other similar schools which grew up in her nurture and admonition. The story of this notable educational achievement was told, once for all, in the first volume of this magazine, by the protagonist of the drama, — Prof. Theodore W. Dwight. It would not do to recapitulate that story. This article has a more modest purpose. It aims only to show how eagerly the old school has drunk the new wine of the new education, and how generously it has re sponded to the stimulus thus imparted. The installation of Columbia University in its new and permanent home on the Man hattan Acropolis — an event full of interest and hopeful augury to all men of light and
leading — is justly regarded as marking an era in the history of the law school. It was, perhaps, fitting that the first stage in the evolution of the new ideas, the period of Sturm und Drang, should be felt and spent in the old environment, with the roar of the railroad on one side and the reverberations of the city's traffic on the other. It is surely no less fitting that the successful working of the new forces should be celebrated and the peaceful conquests assured to them be won on the historic heights which the wisdom of the fathers has consecrated to learning. Here, lifted high above the teeming millions of the great city, with the roar of their mighty industrial life transmuted into distant music, with the eternal hills and the mighty waters environing it, will the Columbia Law School fulfil her destiny for ages to come. What more appropriate time could there be for a few words descriptive of the school and its situation! As the body is more than the meat that sustains it, and the soul more than the rai ment that clothes it, so is the student and teaching body of a school more than its material equipment and the spirit that in spires it more than its architecture. But as we meet and know a man's raiment and outward form before we learn the fashion of his soul., so is it seemly that we glance with decent curiosity at the home of the lawschool before evoking the spirit that dwells there. All the world knows that the new library building of the university is the gift of President Low, but few know how far the reality outruns the description of the gift. For this great building, which stands in the centre of the university group, shelters under its capacious roof not only the university library but the libraries, lecture-rooms, and offices of three of the great university schools.
