He will not have to determine what is good, bad, and uncertain in the jurisdiction in which he practices. He will not have to relearn all the propositions which he recognizes as law in the terms of the decisions of a given jurisdiction and tabulate the topics and points that still remain untouched. Instead of the prospect of many years of labor in doing a small part only of such work, upon graduation he knows one system at least as well as he now knows the law of that ideal jurisdiction where the only reports are the Harvard Law School case-books, and the only court is the body of men who instruct the class from them. He has the benefit of the labor of others which he could not possibly duplicate in a lifetime. The scholar who has mastered the common law and the men who have become specialists in certain branches of the law of a given jurisdiction contribute the selected materials for his education. He will come before the courts of his state with somewhat the same grasp of his subjects that one of the late Professor Thayer's pupils might have had who appeared before the United States Supreme Court in a case involving the Commerce Clause. Who would not exchange such an equipment for practice in New York, obtained under the guidance of such men as now constitute the faculty of any first-class law school using the Harvard Law School casebooks, for that which is now offered by these same faculties? What recent case-book graduate would not exchange his present incapacity in the courts of the jurisdiction where he begins practicing, for an efficiency approximating that which he would have if upon graduation he began to practice before a court, the divisions of which were presided over by his teachers, and where the reports of authority were the case-books he had studied?

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It is true that such a change as that proposed once taken openly will alienate from a school all men who expect to practice in any other jurisdiction than the one where the school is situated. But if I am correct in saying that the change suggested will produce greater efficiency, which will be not merely temporary, but permanent if it will furnish a training which the present Harvard Law School case-book graduate cannot duplicate—such a school will at once attract every man studying for practice at the bar in that state. In the older and more important jurisdictions this holds out an opportunity for an enrolment of students which ought to satisfy any school. In New York, for instance, during the last four years an average of 986 new candidates for admission to the bar have presented themselves each year. In Pennsylvania the average

number of new applications in the same period has been 124; in Illinois, 253; in Massachusetts, 288; in Ohio, 195.1 Furthermore, in all these jurisdictions there are law schools in excellent standing where already a very large percentage of students expect to practice in the state where the school is situated. In Columbia I am informed that about 60 per cent of the graduating classes expect to practice in New York; 2 at Cornell, out of a graduating class of 47, 40 or 87 per cent expect to practice in New York; at the University of Pennsylvania, with a graduating class of 61 in 1906, only 3, or 5 per cent, are now practicing outside of the State of Pennsylvania, the rest are members of the Pennsylvania bar, and this, I am informed, represents a fair average in recent years; at the law school of the University of Illinois 80 per cent expect to practice in Illinois; at Northwestern University Law School 75 per cent; at the Boston University Law School 85 per cent of those graduating in June, 1907, expect to practice in Massachusetts; at the Cincinnati Law School 90 per cent of the students expect to practice in Ohio; at the law department of the University of Missouri 95 per cent of the whole enrolment expect to practice in Missouri. I would confidently predict that a school in New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio, or Missouri, taking the stand which I describe and carrying it out, would lose in no instance more than 20 per cent of its present number of students, and in some instances as few as 5 per cent, and would attract a very considerably larger number than it lost. I should confidently expect

1 The State Board of Bar Examiners for New York wrote me on October 10, 1907, that: "Since April, 1902, to date, there have been 5425 new applications filed for admission to the bar to the State Board of Bar Examiners in this state. That does not take into consideration those admitted on motion." I was able to obtain from the Board of Bar Examiners in the several states of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Ohio, the average total number of candidates applying each year for the last four years. These figures are as follows: Pennsylvania, 206; Illinois, 422; Massachusetts, 480; Ohio, 325. In only one instance did I receive even an estimate of what proportion of these totals represented new candidates, excluding those who had taken the bar examination before and failed. The Chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Bar Examiners estimated that three-fifths of the total number of applicants each year were new candidates. Using that as a basis for calculation, I have in each of the states mentioned taken three-fifths of the total average number of candidates each year as representing an approximate number of new candidates. Considering the reputed high standard of the Massachusetts Bar examinations, I believe that the allowance of three-fifths of the total number of candidates applying as representing the new candidates is probably considerably below the actual facts.

2 This is Professor Kirchwey's figure. He says that 20 per cent more acquire a temporary residence for the purpose of taking the New York bar examinations.

it ultimately to obtain a very large percentage of the total average number of persons applying for admission to the bar in the particular jurisdiction where it was situated.

In drawing this paper to a close let me briefly call attention to two general considerations in support of the proposals which I have made.

In the first place, the very reasoning which originally supported the Harvard Law School case-book against the text-book now requires the change in that case-book which I advocate. One of the two essential ideas of Professor Langdell seems to have been that the law was to be studied by going to the original sources. President Eliot, in speaking of Professor Langdell, said:

"He told me that law was a science. I was quite prepared to believe it. He told me that the way to study a science was to go to the original sources. I knew that was true.

Professor Wambaugh speaks more fully of this idea: 1

"He [Langdell] knew. - as, indeed, every law student learns in the first week of his studies that the existence and limits of a rule of law must be proved finally, not by a text-book, but by the reported decisions of courts. He knew that when a lawyer has occasion to test a rule of law he searches for those decisions. Professor Langdell determined that the student should be trained to use those original authorities.

I do not really know precisely what ought to have been considered the law when Langdell compiled his first case-book, or what were the original sources of that law, but I do know that today, in the older and more important jurisdictions, the law is the body of rules which are enforced in that jurisdiction, and the original sources of that law are not to be found in the English reports, or in the reports of other states, or even in the mixture which the present Harvard Law School case-book contains. They are to be found in the reports of the given jurisdiction just as truly and just as clearly as the sources of what Professor Langdell in 1871 called the common law were to be found for the most part in the English cases. The reports in each of such jurisdictions have become the principal, and for a very large body of rules the only, original sources of the law of that jurisdiction. Why, then, should not the student who expects to practice in such a jurisdiction be trained to use those original authorities and to derive from them by crit

1 Professor Langdell A View of His Career, 20 HARV. L. REV. 2.

icism and comparison the general propositions of law there in force?

Secondly, the need of a development and perfection of our local law similar to that which the local law of England has enjoyed, furnishes an argument in favor of the change which I have suggested.

There is no necessity in these days of American idolatry of the common law to dwell upon the development and perfection to which the local common law of England has been brought. Rather do we need to observe the means by which this acknowledged superiority was accomplished. It is not too much to say that without the most exaggerated attention to the common law as a local and insular system, apart from, if not actually opposed to, the systems of law developed on the Continent, it would never have reached the development and perfection which has made it the foundation of the law of the English-speaking world. If we may trust Professor Maitland, it was to this attention to the barbarisms of local and insular customs that it owes its existence as a unique and worthy system of law. In the middle of the sixteenth century the life of the ancient common law was by no means lusty. It was menaced by the introduction of the academically taught Roman law of the Continent. Such a reception was prevented, and the common law triumphed at a critical moment of its history, because it had been reduced to writing in the Year Books, because it was mastered, taught, and practiced by the members of the Inns of Court, and because out of the body of those who knew and administered it there sprang such teachers and writers as Littleton, Fortescue, Robert Rede, Thomas More, Edward Coke, and Francis Bacon. The triumph of the common law once assured, its perfection as a system it undoubtedly owed to the fact that through generations it had been slowly wrought out by an unbroken and highly organized body of specialists who continually brought to the solution of legal problems — either in argument at the bar or in judgments from the bench - a very high degree of expertness and learning respecting a local and insular system in actual force and operation. To such a degree has the organization of the bar in England now been carried that not only is the business of the taking care of clients entirely separated from the profession of handling litigation, but each has its subdivisions. The profession of hand

1 English Law and the Renaissance, reprinted in 1 Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, 168–207.

ling litigation is divided into the law and chancery bars, and it is the practice of all but the leaders to devote themselves to the work in a particular court before a particular judge. When the English text-books, ancient and modern, which are revered and applauded as the work of masters of the common law are observed, it is found that they consider with laborious minuteness, sometimes on narrow special topics, only the decisions of the local jurisdiction, criticizing what is bad or doubtful, and bringing to a coherent whole that which is consistent and harmonious with the premises upon which the local system is based. Of course, the Englishman who studied for the bar always devoted himself primarily to the mastery of the local law. Formerly no doubt this was accomplished by the reading of text-books and the consideration of cases to be found in the English reports. Now, however, that the teaching of law by case-books has been accepted to some extent in England we find the case-books in use composed practically wholly of English cases, — cases which purport to give to the student a picture of the presently existing state of the English local law. In short, in England for centuries, students, lawyers, teachers, text-book writers and judges, and even social philosophers have united in the bringing of a single system of law administered by the courts of a single central jurisdiction to perfection. No wonder a great result has been achieved.

Is the local law of our American jurisdictions to be denied the development and perfection which must come from an attention to it similar to that which the English local law has received for centuries? The life of the local law in the various states of the Union is strong and vigorous for the same reasons that the common law triumphed over the Roman law in the sixteenth century. It is to be found in the printed reports of the local supreme and appellate courts. A body of local lawyers and judges adheres to what the courts of the particular jurisdiction declare to be the rule. The local law is pushing out the academically taught common law, even as the common law under its masters, from Littleton to Coke and Bacon, prevented the reception of the academically taught Roman law. It cannot be said, however, that the local law is being brought to perfection. In fact, the signs are ominous of a lack of intelligent and healthy development. We find our supreme courts and lawyers apparently unable to know and follow the decisions of their par

1 A Philadelphia Lawyer in the London Courts, Part I, by Thomas Leaming, 18 Green Bag 444.