fair, and wise, and there is no judge on earth in whom the members of the Detroit and Michigan bar have greater confidence and for whom they have greater respect. Our judge is, besides being a fine lawyer and an able judge, an experienced traveller, and fond of books about travellers; an ardent lover of children, a courtly host, a connoisseur of bric-a-brac and curios, an expert in domestic architecture, a lover of pictures, and a good judge of them."
We may add that, on the death of Mr. Justice Stanley Matthews, the name of Judge Brown has been very favorably mentioned in connection with a nomination to the place on the bench thus made vacant, and his friends are earnestly hoping that he will be elevated to that high station.
In addition to the regular Faculty of the school are some special lecturers of whom mention may be made. Melville M. Bigelow of Boston, the well-known law writer, is a lecturer in this Law School on the subject of Insurance. William G. Hammond, Dean of the St. Louis Law School, lectures here on the History of the Common Law. Special lectures have also been delivered on Medical Jurisprudence by Victor C. Vaughn, Ph.D., M.D., and by Charles H. Stowell, M.D. The Hon. Otto Kirchner, ex-Attorney-General of Michigan, lectured in the school for a time. He is a thorough student, and one of the most prominent members of the bar of Michigan. Prof. Harry B. Hutchins, now of the Cornell Law School, held a professorship here for two or three years. He was a graduate of the Literary Department of the Class of 1871, with the degree of Ph.B., and rendered the University good service as an efficient lecturer and thorough teacher of the law.
The spacious building occupied by the Law School was dedicated to its use in 1863, Judge Cooley delivering the dedicatory address. On the first floor are located the offices of the professors, and the library. The lecture-room, with a capacity for five hundred students, is located on the second floor, as is also a large recitation-room, used for the text-book work of the school. The third floor contains ample debating and society rooms. There are two Literary Societies connected with the school, the Webster and the Jeffersonian. These societies hold their meetings on Wednesday evening of each week during the college year. The Webster Society was organized when the Law School was first established, and it has a membership of more than sixteen hundred.
There are two Greek-letter secret societies existing in the Law School. One of these, the Phi Delta Phi, was founded here in 1869 by John M. Howard of the Class of 1871. Its membership, we understand, is confined to students in law schools and to active practitioners. Since its organization in this Law School it has been established in fifteen of the leading law schools of the country, and numbers among its members some of the most distinguished lawyers and judges, including the late Chief-Justice Waite and Mr. Justice Miller of the Supreme Court of the United States. A chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity, which in other institutions exists as a literary college secret society, was established here in 1877, and is here composed almost exclusively of students in the Law Department. Both of these societies have been very careful as to their membership.
