The State University Law School necessary that a knowledge of the prin ciples of law and of jurisprudence shall be diffused among the people generally. Without such a knowledge, indeed, an intelligent democracy is quite impossible. Without it no one properly understands and realizes his duties and liabilities as a citizen and as an owner of property, or his true status in the community of which he is but a unit and a part. With out it no one can be capable of intelli gent citizenship. Even if the dream of the socialists were to be fulfilled, and an age of paternalism in government were to come upon us, there would still be a demand for a widespread knowl edge of the law. There would still be a demand for the legal arbiter and the interpreter — the lawyer and the judge. Socialism, indeed, is a system under which human conduct and activity is everywhere controlled and regulated by law. It is all law. We will never, per haps, come to socialism. We are daily becoming more socialistic and our governments are becoming every day more and more paternalistic. There can be no doubt that as a community becomes older, lawsuits become less dramatic and jury trials less frequent; but there is also no doubt that individual conduct and freedom comes to be more and more regulated by law, and that it becomes more and more necessary that a knowledge of basic legal principles shall be spread over the community. One isolated in the wilderness may do largely as he pleases, as his conduct affects no one else. He who lives in crowded com munities, among his fellows, must so use his own as not to injure the rights of others and of the community as a whole, and in fairness there should be given to him the opportunity to some where learn what these rights and these limitations are. As the problem of existence grows more and more complex,
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and the industrial struggle grows keener and keener, men will begin to look more and more upon the government as a partner or as a protector, and will more and more frequently rush to the legis latures for help. We have well established in our legal system the principle that ignorance of the law excuses no one. Although ig norance or mistake of fact may be pleaded as a defense or as an excuse in a civil or criminal action, every one is absolutely presumed to know the law. It seems to follow as an inevitable con clusion that the state should furnish, somewhere in its educational system, some means or some place where this fundamental knowledge, so necessary to good and effective citizenship, and which all are absolutely presumed to possess, may be acquired, and that a state system of education which should be lacking in such opportunities would be markedly defective. Though the question may sometimes arise as to whether or not we have too many prac tising lawyers, no one will for a moment contend that legal knowledge can be too widely diffused among the rank and file of the community; or that the law yers we do have should not be properly and thoroughly trained, not only in the law itself, but in the duties which the lawyer and the citizen owe to society and to the state. No one would con tend that the furnishing of these oppor tunities and of this training is not a legitimate function of the parent state. The province of the state university law school indeed is, and should always be, not merely to educate practising lawyers, but to furnish a knowledge of legal principles to any citizen who may desire to learn them. It should furnish a center where jurisprudence can be studied as a science, and from which sooner or later suggestions may come
