LEGAL EDUCATION IN GERMANY his profession as an American student. For while the latter by means of the colleges has the chance perhaps to learn a little about the subject of law in a general way and is thus enabled to follow his inclinations some what, the German student is irrevocably embarked on his high sea of law from the beginning. It will be easily understood that in most cases he does not write the watch word "Jurisprudence" on his flag himself. The decision is mostly left to the parents, and as tradition is of great influence in the old German country, the young student becomes in many cases a law student merely because his father and grandfather have been judges or counsellors at law. It appears that this tradition alone is seldom sufficient to produce in the young man an enthusiasm for the study of such a dry science as theoretical Jurisprudence. So it has happened rather often and some time ago, had become merely a custom that the law student in the first year of his university course is not very anxious to listen to the wisdom of the professors. Many prefer to live a real happy and lazy student's life, — drinking, singing, fencing and amusing themselves, careless and free as only a German student can be. He is enabled to do this because of the almost entire want of control, due to recogni tion of the principle of students' freedom in Germany. We have no dormitories, no obligations to attend lectures, no roll-calls, no records of attendance, no general and no special control. Nobody watches the diligence of the young people. They may stay at home in their flats or sit in their club-houses or leave the University for days and weeks; nobody cares. They are left to their own responsibility — they are free to study and at liberty not to study in the happy, sometimes too happy university life. There is no doubt that a great percentage always have availed themselves of the latter opportunity. This has been true to such an extent that the professors have lately introduced a more severe control over their
517
pupils' industry. This new control consists first, in the provision that every student must deliver every half year a certain num ber of written discussions of legal questions given by the professors. The control con sists, secondly, in the institution of so-called seminars, which are lectures for a limited number of more advanced students with whom the professor discusses single cases, using them as paths to the explanation of general legal principals and rules. You see here an application of the Harvard Case System, while generally the lectures are delivered after the manner of simply reading a paper without the question and answer system. The student is obliged to hear a number of lectures on certain subjects which are deemed to be necessary for his systematic training. The decision as to which these lectures shall be is made by the Government and the Board of the University. The student has to "hear" these lectures — that means, in the light of what has been said, not that he has to attend them but merely that he has to announce his 'intended participa tion and to pay the fee. These facts are proved by the entry of the same in a registry book, which the student has to keep care fully and to enclose later with his application for admission to the final examination. The student is on principle free to hear these lectures offered by the University in whichever order he wishes. But of course, he is advised by printed study plans pub lished by the Government or the Board of the University to proceed in a reasonable course from the simplest and most general subjects to the more difficult and special matters, and he follows these plans almost without exception. He generally hears, in his first half year, lectures called "introduction into the science of law." These lectures deal in a purely scientific way with the origin, the necessity, the importance and the meaning of law, with the definition of the different provinces of Jurisprudence as public and private
