it does not necessarily follow that they are, alone, the best means of instruction. The supporters of that method say that "no man ever learned chemistry, except by retort and crucible." (American Law Review, vol. xxii. p. 673.) This expression of a learned author is a fair touchstone of the question. All admit that the results of retort and crucible, properly used, are higher evidences of chemical laws than the statement of any text-book. Yet have the teachers of chemistry cast away the text-books, and confronted their beginners with retorts and crucibles? When the writer studied chemistry, they had not, nor have they yet, so far as he knows. True, along with the text-books pupils are taught to make experiments to test and elucidate the statements of the author.
It is submitted that if the analogy above quoted is a proper one,—and it probably is,—it argues in favor of the use of text-books as a basis in legal education, with sufficient attention to cases to explain the text and teach students the science or theory of the system of precedent to such an extent that they may be able to analyze accurately a decision and judge of its authority according to Common Law criteria.
The writer, however, prefers to support the same conclusion by the universal experience of the practising bar. When the practitioner desires to investigate the law upon a subject with the general principles of which he is not familiar, he goes first, not to the cases, but to an approved author to learn what reasonings and principles have been suggested as applicable. Then he searches digests and reports. Why should not other students do likewise? Or is the bar in the wrong, and a few instructors right?
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MARSHALL D. EWELL.
Upon all these differences as to methods of instruction, it is believed that the Union College of Law has occupied wisely conservative ground. It makes daily recitation from approved text-books the basis, supplemented by lectures from time to time as the students become sufficiently acquainted with the elementary principles to profit by an exposition of their relations and interdependence. All the while the students are accustomed to the exposition of particular cases, and are taught how to study, analyze, and judge them, also how to draught the papers used in the practice of law. No doubt, if the school could be sustained by the bar and the public in its desire to extend its course of instruction to three years, the third year would, to a very largely increasing extent, be taken up with lectures and original work in decided cases.
The author of the article upon the Boston University Law School in the February number of this publication is decidedly in error in his statement that that Law School was the leader in establishing the systems, in 1872 and 1877 respectively, of examinations for promotion and graduation, and of recitations from text-books. The catalogues of the Union College of Law and the news-
