Course of Study.

The faculty of the St. Louis Law School do not hesitate to express their deliberate conviction that a great change in the methods commonly employed by American Law Schools, and an elevation of their standard, are imperatively required in the interest of the profession at large, and especially that of the students who are now looking forward to practice.

They believe that the loose and easy methods of admission, which have so long prevailed in many parts of the country, have shaken the confidence of the people generally in the administration of justice, and have had much to do with the decline of legal business that has been observed for a few years almost everywhere. This decline has not been due to the condition of business, since a period of commercial prosperity is usually marked by an increase, not merely of litigation, but of all the transactions in which the services of counsel are required. Neither has it been due to any loss of confidence in the integrity of the courts. Taking into account the very large number of courts and judges in the United States, and the frequency with which the occupants of even the highest courts are changed, the very rare occurrence of judicial scandals is a fact of page 93 which we may justly be proud. The only remaining cause to which the decline of litigation may be attributed is the lack of general confidence in the results attained by it, owing to the vagueness and uncertainty of our present law; and this is due to intellectual rather than moral defects. It may be plainly said, that for want of better professional education, almost any side of any disputed question can find arguments and decisions to rest upon, and it has become difficult for well-read lawyers to advise their clients safely. The cure for this evil can only be found in a higher standard of legal education, and especially in renewed attention to those elementary principles of law which control the decisions of courts and are not controlled by them. It is of these that a law-school course should chiefly consist. We believe also that a more thorough study is imperatively needed in the interest of students themselves. The number of lawyers in the country has increased, of late years, so rapidly, that the slightest decline of business is felt at once by the younger members of the profession, as almost barring them from a living practice. The tendency of this, as of all other business, to concentrate in large towns, adds another reason why the mere struggle for existence is so much more severe than it was a generation ago. Of the many who fail in this struggle every year, a large proportion owe this result to the fact that they have attempted a very difficult task with insufficient preparation. No young man can prudently enter the bar,—especially in a large town,—now, unless he can rely upon one of two things: a remarkable and an- page 94 usual ability, or a more thorough training than the average of his fellows. The Law School cannot provide the former, but it should, as a sacred duty, offer the latter to all who seek the profession under its guidance.

These things are said here, not as an advertisment of any special advantages,—still less as a criticism upon other schools,—but as a plain and earnest warning to any students who think of coming to the St. Louis Law School. We do not wish to open an easy road to the bar, or to attract a large attendance. We wish to maintain the highest standard of admission to the bar now possible, and to raise it, as rapidly as possible, still higher. We desire only such students as have the patience and the ability to qualify themselves for the bar by the very best legal education which we can give them within the time now allowed for the course. So soon as it is possible to add another year to the course and to make that year as effective as the two now given, that will also be done.

The course of study, therefore, is designed to prepare young men, to a degree above the ordinary standard of admission to the bar, for the practice of the profession in any part of the United States. Beside the doctrines and principles of law, applicable alike in all the States and Territories, it will embrace pleading and procedure in the Federal as well as State courts, and under both the common law system and that of the new codes, in all their general features.

Students who have already determined the State in which they expect to practice will receive private assistance, if desired, in studying the procedure page 95 and statutes of that State, in connection with the general course of study. It is believed that such attention to positive law, in any form in which it is actually administered, not only will not interfere with the study of principles, but will be a great assistance to that end, and for that reason we recommend students to pursue it whenever possible.

The course of study in the Junior Year is intended for students who are beginning the study of law; and its principal objects are to ground them thoroughly in Elementary Law, and to familiarize them with the methods and habits of thought, with which legal questions are resolved in actual practice. It assumes that the law is a complete and harmonious system, with the outlines of which every student should be familiar, before he spends much time upon the application of principles to the more difficult and complicated questions. Its main purpose will be, not merely to fill his memory, but to train him to habits of legal judgment, and to teach him how to interpret the facts of daily life into the general conceptions in which the rules of law are expressed. For this purpose, the two topics of Pleading (in the simpler or code form) and Evidence will be taken up as early as posssble in the year, and the former carried on pari passu with legal doctrines, so that the study of every branch of law, in the form of rules, may be accompanied with practical exercises in the statement of the same rules, in the form of grounds of action or defences. Evidence will be treated, not merely as the set of rules by which testimony is to be admitted or rejected when the case is on trial, but as the scientific development of the page 96 process by which the infinite variety of human actions forming; the subject-matter of law are reduced to general terms, and thus made capable of arrangement under rules. No student ought to feel that he knows a rule of law, until he has a fair notion of the evidential facts which may be brought within its terms. This knowledge, usually left to the chances of actual experience, may and should be taught in the school, by constant reference to cases that have actually been before the courts.

The theory of criminal law is not only much simpler than that of civil, having less detail to deal with, but also realizes much more perfectly the modern scientific conception of law as a rule imposed by the State, to be obeyed (or disobeyed) by the citizen under a definite sanction. It therefore should precede the more complicated form, in which the command of the State only determines the consequence of the citizen's actions, leaving those actions free: in other words, dealing with reciprocal rights and not with acts.

2. Because criminal law has an interest for the beginning student, which it lacks after he has become familiar with the more complicated relations of property, and other branches of civil law.

The order in which the doctrines of law should be studied, depends on the familar rule of proceeding from the simple to the complex. The subject-matter of all practical prviate law consists of rights, or the acts for the regulation of which that law exists. These rights are best understood and studied in their objects,—i. e., in the Law of Things. All rules of, law clssified by their objects are appli- page 97 cable to all persons alike, and therefore present the general truths of the science, to which the Law of Persons constitutes exceptions. The principal divisions of the Law of Things are real and personal: the personal being again divided into things in possession, and things in action, or in common language, chattels and rights of action, Rights of action again may arise out of a breach of general duties incumbent on all men, or of obligations assumed by the particular individual—i. e., may be in contract or tort. There are cases where we have a choice between these, but there is no third kind of civil actions, except where suits in equity have been brought by code changes to that form.

Thoroughly studied, there is occupation here for a year, and we regard it as much better for the student's progress to dwell fully on these elementary forms than to introduce exceptional cases.

Even if he had to leave the school with only a single year's instruction, and make up the remainder of his professional education by private study, we should regard this course as the best, adapted to serve his purpose.

The Junior Class, before Christmas vacation, will have a daily course of lessons upon Elementary Law, both Civil and Criminal. These lessons will be arranged topically so as to constitute a general introduction to the study of Law. Printed synopses, with references for parallel reading, will be placed in the hands of the class, and daily examinations held upon the results of such reading. The subject of Contracts will also be taken up, and two recitations had each week in Bishop on Contracts, with references to other works. Pleading will be taught in its simpler or code form by recitations from Bliss on Code Pleading, and frequent exercises" in connection with the lessons in legal doctrine.

The Junior Class, after vacation, will commence the study of Real Property Law, and read the first Book, (Vol. I. and part of Vol. II. of the later editions) of Washburn on Real Property. The Law of Personal Property will be taught by lectures with printed synopses, etc., as already described, including the subjects of Sales and Bailments. Instruction will be given in the same method upon Torts, including all the common forms of action for wrongs to the person, health, reputation and property.

Instruction in practice will be devoted to the Law of Actions, by lectures and practical exercises in all the steps of an action from summons to final page 99 judgment. Recitations will be had also in Greenleaf on Evidence, Vol. I.

In the second year of study pleading will be taught in its more elaborate and technical forms of Common Law and Equity Pleading, and practice in the various kinds of Special Proceedings will be added to that in actions of all forms.

The Senior Classbefore the Christmas vacation will finish the study of Washburn on Real Property in daily recitations—(Later half of Vol. II. and all of Vol. III.) They will also study Common Law Pleading (Parsons), and Equity Pleading (Tyler's Mitford) and have a course of lectures on the History of the Common Law.

After the vacation they will go through Bispham on Equity followed by Partnership (Parsons), and Agency, the Law of Corporations, Insurance, etc, in text books to be hereafter determined. Domestic Relations will be taught by lectures, etc., as in Junior year.

Their course will close with lessons from selected portions of Cooley's Constitutional Limitations, Sedgwick on Constitutional and Statutory Law, and Lawson on the Law of Usage and Custom, accompanied by a course of lectures by the Dean upon the Theory of the Common Law.

Courses of lectures will also be delivered during the year, as follows:

By Hon. Samuel Treat (to such extent as his judicial duties will allow), on International and Constitutional Law, and Jurisdiction and Practice of United States Courts; by Professor Todd, on Practical Conveyancing; and upon Successions, Administration of Estates, and Drafting and Construction of Wills, by Professor Hitchcock.

Dr. Hammond will open the course with a series of lectures to the Junior Class upon the method of studying law, followed by a series of lectures to the same class, extending through the first term. These page 101 lectures will be based upon printed synopses in the hands of the class, and accompanied by daily examinations upon the topics of each lecture and the analysis of cases assigned to members of the class. The same method of teaching will be continued through the course, in connection with recitations in approved text-books. He will also deliver, during the year, courses of lectures upon the History of English and American Law, upon the Theory of the Common Law, and (to the Senior Class) upon the Civil Law and its use in American Practice.

The Law Library, for use of which no extra charge is made, consists of upwards of three thousand volumes, selected with great care, and including more than two hundred extra copies of the textbooks in use.

The private library of Dr. Hammond, containing about two thousand volumes upon Civil Law and General Jurisprudence, will also be accessible to members of the Senior Class who wish to pursue those subjects.

Students whose means are limited can complete the course with very little expenditure for books, as the school library is well supplied, is kept open six days of the week from 9 A. M. to 10 P. M., and is strictly regulated to facilitate study in the room at all hours. No persons except the members of the Law School have access to it. Those who have the means to purchase books of reference without inconvenience, or who can bring such works with them, are recommended to provide themselves with a good Law Dictionary, a copy of Blackstone's Commen- page 102 taries, Kent's Commentaries or Bouvier's Institutes, Parsons on Contracts (3 vols,) Cooley, Hillard or Addison on Torts (with Bigelow's Leading Cases on Torts) and Bishop's or Wharton's works on Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure.

They will do well to add also, the Statutes of their own State, and a Digest of its reports, both if possible in the latest editions. But none of the foregoing works are indispensable.