Case Method of Teaching Law
Case Method of Teaching Law
Case Method of Teaching Law
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THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW.
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THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW. 183
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184 THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW.
And again-
Practice, the routine of the law office, . . .is not real instruct
Imnpcrtant though it is, it can. . . supply only empiricism--that
say, habitual use and practical familiarity joined to irregular acqui
of knowledge. No matter how indispensable is this stage in
training of the legal practitioner, it presupposes the existence o
is made vastly more effective by. a preliminary course of systematic
theoretical instruction in the principles of law in its entire compa
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THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW. 185
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186 THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW.
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THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW. 187
they have been laid down. " The objection at once arose, that th
mass of Anglo-American case-law is so prodigiously vast that th
disheartened student would soon lose himself in the labyrinth o
precedents, the wilderness of single instances. " No," answered
Langdell, " the vast majority of reported cases are useless--worse
than useless-for the systematic law-student." Consequently h
proceeded to make, for the particular subject which he was first
going to teach--the law of contracts--a selection of such cases a
were really important; and then to arrange these in a systemati
sequence. This selection, published in 1871, was the starting-poin
of a new and invaluable form of legal literature. So many imitators
of Langdell have contributed to it, that their various case-book
(upwards of a hundred in number) now cover-in Dr. Redlich
words-" pretty nearly the whole domain of private, criminal, an
constitutional law, and of procedure." Following the example of
Langdell, these books give nothing but the actual report of eac
case; they omit the headnotes. Langdell aimed at compellin
every student to perform for himself the task of eliciting from th
report the precise ratio decidendi of the decision-in other words, of
making his own headnote. In Dr. Redlich's language, each student
must attempt " the analytical decomposition of the case and th
distillation of the legal principle contained in it "-watched and
criticised, of course, by his teacher.
Opposition to the Case-Method.-This radical innovation aroused
opposition and satire. Some years elapsed before even Langdell's
own colleagues at Harvard were unanimous in adopting it. Sixteen
years after its commencement I was assured, on one of my visits to
America, that not a single other law-school had adopted it or had
even accepted as a teacher any lawyer trained by it. And though
it had admittedly enabled all Harvard graduates in law to obtain
employment readily, yet critics alleged that this was only because
these graduates were not yet too numerous to find places in the
comparatively few firms so busy as to need a special clerk for the
business of hunting-up cases and noting briefs. The far more exten-
sive demand for young lawyers competent to help in an office by
interviewing clients and conducting minor cases without supervision,
the Harvard school (so the critics alleged) would not be able to supply.
As one of the men then (1887) best known in the legal circles of
Boston said to me, " Langdell's men at the best are solid and
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188 THE CASE-METHOD OF .ACHING LAW.
scholarly; at the worst, they are bookworms. Brilliancy they will
never show, either in political or even in legal life." This general
opposition to the method lasted perhaps longer than it otherwise
would have done, on account of Langdell's personal manner as a
teacher being (as at least it seemed to me) weak and unimpressive,
delightful though he was in private conversation. His physical
health had been undermined in his early years by over-study and
excessive frugality of living. The legal practitioners of Boston
viewed Langdell's method as so little likely to train their sons success-
fully that they founded in the University of Boston, close at hand to
Harvard, a rival law-school; and this, at first, drew away more than
half of Langdell's students.
Present Position of " Case-Method." - But the tide turned.
Forty years' experience has now attested the solid value of the ca
method. Since its introduction at Harvard that law-school has
quintupled the number of its students; and has come to be ranked
even by European observers like Sir Frederick Pollock, as giving
a more systematic training in Anglo-American law than can be
obtained in any other place in the world. Dr. Redlich goes so fa
as to declare the practical utility of the case-method to be no longer
seriously disputed by any one in the United States (p. 35) :
the fight for and against it has been just as much settled in favour
of the method, among practitioners as it was long ago among uni
versity law-teachers.
At the same time he admits (pp. 59, 69) that many of the less im
portant law-schools still decline to adopt it, and prefer the older
methods of instruction. And it must be remembered that of the
hundred and fifty American law-schools, Dr. Redlich visited only ten;
and four of these ten did not employ the case-system at all, whilst
some of the remaining six did not employ it wholly (p. vi). Accord-
ingly his opinion of its complete victory is evidently somewhat
exaggerated; and we may more safely trust the view which the
wider experience of the President of the Carnegie Foundation has
led him to take (p. v), viz. that teachers of law in the United States
are still divided on the subject.
If, then, the controversy be still undecided, what is to.be said on
both sides ?
Merits of the Method.--The pre-eminent merit of the case-method
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THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW. 189
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190 THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW.
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THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW. Ig1
schools that seek to meet this demand for celerity the case-method
is assuredly unsuitable.
Inappropriate Method for Beginners.--Let us pass to an objec-
tion that lies deeper than these three. The difficulties which this
method presents to beginners must always render it an inappropriate
method for the actual commencement of the study of law. This
is vividly put by Dr. Redlich:
For then the students begin to grasp what it is all about, and
there soon follows the hearty co-operation of the majority. But,
before this later stage is reached-
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192 THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW.
that number. So far as I can learn, Mr. Finch did not in his later
teaching resume the Harvard method. In a law-school whose
students usually give only a single year to English law, that
method is out of place.
To obviate all such disappointments, instruction by the case-
method should, as Dr. Redlich well says (p. 44), be prefaced by a
Propddeutik-a course of lectures affording a brief scientific survey
of legal institutions, postulates, concepts, and terminology. For
after such a preparation the subsequent accumulations of legal
material, acquired daily through the analytical exercises, would
from the beginning be obtained systematically and with a con-
sciousness of purpose. Yet even this preparation would not enable
every student to reap the full advantages of the case-method. When
the brilliant results it has effected at Harvard are cited for imitation
by other schools of law, it must be remembered that they have been
effected, not only by an exceptional body of teachers, but also upon
an exceptional body of pupils-men of more advanced age, wider
education, and more unremitting zeal than a law-school usually
possesses. Mr. Finch found that " nearly all the students of law at
Harvard have taken a degree in Arts before entering the law-school."
And so intense is their industry, Dr. Redlich finds, that they are
content to spend almost the entire day in study, and (p. 32) " take
little or no part in the athletics which bulk so large in the life " of
the Harvard men who belong to other Faculties. Rare and happy
-on this side, at least, of the Atlantic-are the academical teachers
of law whose pupils come to them with minds already so well trained,
or with such unresting eagerness to carry the training still further.
Omissions Due to Method.---Another obvious criticism is that,
in this age of prolific legislatures, a lawyer who knows case-law
knows only half the law. Dr. Redlich, familiar with the codifications
of continental Europe, is so dazzled by the vast Anglo-American
literature of judicial decisions, that he seems at times to forget that
even in " a country of case-law " such decisions are far from being
the one and only form which law takes. The teacher who should
attempt to teach the law of real property, or criminal law, from
judicial decisions alone, and ignore the long array of statutes which
have gradually re-cast both these fields of learning, would soon find
that his labour had been thrown away. Still more futile would the
effort be in dealing with such modern branches as the law of public
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THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW. 193
health or of municipal organisation, where the whole framework
is a creation of the legislature.
Again, it must be borne in mind that the case-method is designed
only for teaching Anglo-American law-or, rather, for teaching the
judge-made half of that law. Yet even for training American or
English lawyers, a true university has not achieved its task if it
has not carried them into a wider range than that of the legal rules
of their own nation. It must, as Dr. Redlich says, deepen their
understanding of their own law by giving them an insight into the
law of other peoples. It ought to familiarise its students with some
second system of law-by choice, " the Roman, which has shaped
the history of humanity." And it should teach them " the general
theory of law, as one of the great dominating phenomena of human
civilisation and human thought" (p. 45). May we not add,
little as American universities encourage the suggestion, that it
should also bring before them an outline of that law of nations which
fills a daily increasing place in the disputes both of jurists and of
statesmen ? Dr. Redlich himself would propose to postpone all these
less directly lucrative subjects of instruction until after the student
has received his Langdellian drill in the law of the country where he
is going to practise. But a student so well trained for practice has
strong pecuniary temptations to enter upon it at once, without
spending a year upon theoretical instruction that can bring no
immediate grist to the mill. Yet this instruction is so necessary a
part of any legal education which deserves to have 1 he hall-mark of
a university set upon it, that English academical usage seems to act
prudently in making the student go through these subjects at the
outset, before he enters on the branch of learning which leads directly
to his professional career.
Personal Element.-Finally let us remember that, however great
is the value of Langdell's method, it is valuable only when practised
as he practised it. His justly high repute has led some students,
perhaps some teachers, into imitations that do not really imitate
him. To become able to balance the conflicting arguments of con-
tending counsel, and analyse the resulting judgment so as to elicit
its ratio decidendi, is a great thing. But it is a small thing to commit
to memory the name of a case unread (even though, as I recall one
student doing, you memorise the numbers of the volume and page
as well). It is a small thing to know partly, or even wholly, the facts
13
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194 THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW.
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