The Columbia Law School of To-day. tion is but earnest of what will be. The policy of the school — to be realized, it is hoped, at no distant day — was prefigured in the report of President Low to the Trustees of the University in 1895 when he said : " I conceive it to be the duty of an endowed university to contribute to the professions as large a body as may be of men as broadly and as highly trained as possible. There will always be schools in which the men without a preliminary liberal training can get as good professional instruction as they can profit by; but unless the endowed uni versities base their professional work upon this preliminary liberal training, professional education in the United States will never reach the level to which it ought to attain. I conceive, therefore, that it should be Columbia's policy, slowly, if you please, but steadily, to raise the requirements for admis sion to all her professional schools until a liberal training, equivalent to the old-time college course, is demanded as a condition for admission to every one of them. I hope such a declaration of policy may shortly be made. I think it would give consistency to our own development, and be of service to the cause of higher education throughout the United States." It is not proposed in this article to enter into the wearisome controversy over methods of legal education. Perhaps the Columbia Law School has contributed her share to that controversy. At any rate she is inclined to believe that there has been enough of it, and that the propagation of the faith that she holds calls for other and more persuasive methods than that of controversy. It is in this spirit that, when questioned as to her secret, she says, " Come and see," and points, as in this article, to the work that she is doing. Do men gather grapes from thorns? Perhaps it is only fair to add that she boasts no secret save the open one of unfettered thought; that she knows of no " method" but that of free inquiry. " But she uses cases?" Surely. But be not deceived. She
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does not use them to conjure with. As the sources of the law, she finds the reports the most fruitful and stimulating as well as the most authoritative collection of material for study and discussion, but she does not make a fetish of them. Cases, text-books, lectures, briefs, statutes, the wisdom of the wise, the folly of the foolish — all is grist for her mill. The first of the articles of her faith runs thus : "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." Her most ardent apostles have been among the first to recognize the truth that there is a diversity of gifts even in the household of faith; that the strong man forges his own weapon, and that the method of the true teacher is as native to his own genius, as much a part of himself, as incapable of com munication or of transmission to another as is the method by which his brain secretes thought. The one point of agreement among the teachers of law in Columbia is upon the condition of free inquiry, tempered by rational discussion and criticism — and upon this point there is no difference of opinion among true teachers anywhere. It is a grateful task to bear witness to the appreciation which the revivifying influence of the school has received. Its material prosperity has kept pace with its internal development, the membership having grown steadily in numbers and in character. The following table will show the increase in numbers in the four years from 1893 to the current year, the proportion of college graduates in the school having in that time increased from 42 to 6 1 per cent. 1893-4 247
Enrollment of Students. 1894-5 1895-6 1896-7 265
323
357
1897-8 366
It would be vain in a paper like the pres ent to attempt to do more than indicate in the most general way the forces of which the present Columbia Law School is the product. It would be an interesting and not unfruitful task to estimate the influence of
