Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/197

HARVARD LAW REVIEW. VOL. IX. OCTOBER 25, 1895. NO. 3. THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH LAW AT UNIVERSITIES.! IN so great a country as ours, so wide and so diversified, it is pecu- liarly well, now and then, to gather together from far and near, and meet on a common footing as Americans. And so we have come now to this beautiful city, a novel and strange place to many of us, to breathe for a day or two this exhilarating atmosphere of a common nationality, the broad and general air that blows not merely here or there in our country, but everywhere ; to think the thoughts and interchange the sentiments that concern us as American lawyers. For myself, I have been chiefly moved, in coming here from the far-away sea-coast of Maine, by the desire to say a few words towards urging a very thorough and learned study of our English law, and the maintenance of schools of law which conform in all respects to the highest University standards of work. We, in America, have carried legal education much farther than it has gone in England. There the systematic teaching of 1 An address, read at Detroit, August 27, 1895, ^s Chairman of the Section on Lrgil Education of the American Bar Association. The reader is requested to observe that this paper does not deal with mere method of teaching, or with any differences which may be supposed to be appropriate in under graduate instruction as contrasted with that of postgraduate and professional courses. It is directed to the University teaching of English law, by whatever methods carried on, in whatever departments, and for whatever purpose. The author had chiefly in mind the "law schools/' properly so called; that is to say, schools aiming directly at professional education. as