Case Method of Teaching Law

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British Institute of International and Comparative Law

The Case-Method of Teaching Law


Author(s): Courtney Kenny
Source: Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation, Vol. 16, No. 2 (1916), pp. 182-
194
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British Institute of
International and Comparative Law
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/752420
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THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW.

[Contributed by PROFESSOR COURTNEY KENNY.]

IN every nation the advance of civilisation is depende


-on the increasing wisdom with which the laws are fra
increasing efficiency with which they are enforced.
factors, again, depend largely upon the merits of the tra
those men have received who are concerned with the
with the development, of law. Hence during the nineteen
the subject of legal education has assumed an unprecedent
ance in all the leading nations of the world. The fact
illustrated by the statistics of the American Republic
186o there were only twenty-three schools of law
thousand students in them, there now are more than
and fifty such schools instructing more than twenty
students.
The Carnegie Foundation's Inquiry.--The importanc
vast assembly of such institutions attracted the atten
great "Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of
which expends much of its income in the study of educat
tions. In 1913 its trustees adopted a scheme for invest
condition of legal education-the training of young lawyer
and out of law-schools), and the examinations by wh
admitted to practise-in all the forty-nine jurisdict
United States. The task was carried out with such e
success that a mass of materials was accumulated too enormous and
complex for it to be possible to present a full report upon them
with any promptitude. But even a casual view of these materials
disclosed the fact that at the outset a primary question would
demand consideration. It was the fundamental controversy which
divides the lawyers and law-schools of America into two groups-
those who admire, and those who depreciate, that " case-method "
i82

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THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW. 183

of instruction which it is the glory of Harvard University to hav


created and developed.
Practical Training.--Without waiting, then, for the publication
of their General Report, the Carnegie Trustees determined to hav
this great controversy reported upon. And, in view of the difficulty
of finding any prominent American lawyer who was not already
committed to the one view of it or to the other, they entrusted the
task to a European jurist-the well-known Professor Josef Redlich
of Vienna.' He proceeded to America in October 1913, spent two
months in visiting law-schools in various parts of the States, and
conferred with many leading lawyers and judges. He soon found
that there are three methods of instruction by which a young
American can qualify himself to pass the bar examination of hi
particular State, and so enter upon legal practice within its territory
The simplest and cheapest of the three is the old one of eighteenth-
century England-to seek apprenticeship instead of education
ignore schools of law and professors of law, and go directly to par-
ticipation in the actual business of some counsel or attorney who
will admit the pupil to his chambers or his office. And with this
merely empirical training " a great number of lawyers in the United
States " (so Herr Redlich ascertained) still content themselves
Indeed even in England no less an authority than Lord Cozens-
Hardy-if I remember accurately a recent address of his-is
similarly content with it ; and insists that " law cannot be taught,"
but can be mastered only by actually dealing with it, just as swim
ming can be learned only in the water.
Academic Instruction.-But the great majority of those who,
whether in Europe or in America, have considered the subject, ar
agreed that, though a period of this practical apprenticeship is
indispensable to the making of a successful lawyer, its length ma
be abridged, and its utility greatly increased, by a previous cours
of systematic academical instruction. Without this preparation,
the work in chambers, as Herr Redlich vividly puts it-
takes away from legal education . . . every characteristic of scientifi
teaching, since from the outset it leaves to chance the amount of lega
knowledge which the student can actually acquire. Every possibility
1'His report entitled The Common Law and the Case-Method in American
University Law Schools was published by the Carnegie Foundation as " Bulleti
No. 8."

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184 THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW.

of methodically covering the entire field of the law as a great whole,


ally and historically co-ordinated in all its parts, is lacking here. F
the outset everything is based upon the intellectual power an
independent character of the individual student; upon that depend
extent to which, through study of the law cases, he can master com
law and equity. In this apprenticeship each young lawyer m
conquer the legal world and the legal way of thinking, each time
for himself; must create for himself, ... so far as he can, princip
and system (p. 38).

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

The Influence of Blackstone.-Hence in the United States, w


lawyers have always played so prominent a part, the generation
saw the nation's birth as an independent Republic saw als
institution of law-lectures in various parts of its territory
innovation was stimulated, it would seem, by the publicatio
Blackstone's Commentaries. They had obtained an immed
vogue in America. "N early as many sold in America as in Englan
says Burke in the great speech of 1775; hundreds of copies b
imported from England, and others being printed in the St
themselves. When Blackstone died, he probably had more rea
across the Atlantic than in Europe. James Otis, the famous a
cate-general of Massachusetts, recommended the book, sayi
" Had these volumes been written when I began to study law,
of my life would have been saved to me." '
The Lecture Method.-This institution of law-lectures, after
Oxford example, was an important step. No one has liste
1 Dr. Redlich's note on Blackstone (pp. 62-3) is somewhat confused. A
telling us truly how, by Viner's endowment, Blackstone in 1758 " became the
professor of the common law at an English university," he states in the very
paragraph that " Chairs of common law in Oxford and Cambridge were esta
only in the second half of the nineteenth century." Yet the Cambridge chair, th
younger than the Vinerian, was established-by, as tradition says, the instigat
Pitt himself-at the close of the eighteenth century.

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THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW. 185

to Sohm or Wach at Leipsic, to Zitelmann at Bonn, to Liszt a


Berlin, or to Mr. J. D. Mayne in our own Inns of Court, without
realising the vast power which an eloquent and animated lecturer
may exercise, both in imbuing his hearers with the information he
is endeavouring to impart, and also in inspiring them with an eager-
ness to press on to fuller knowledge. But many lecturers are neither
animated nor eloquent; and many hearers have neither memory t
retain, nor acuteness to grasp, ideas which have been but onc
presented to their minds, and this only in the rapidity of an ora
address. Hence the law-teachers of America soon found it necessary
to carry their work into a second and more complex stage. They
came to require the student not merely to listen to their lectures, but
also to peruse specified portions of text-books; and, moreover, to
submit to having his knowledge of these portions tested by being
catechised along with his class-fellows. Five hours of private
reading to an hour of lecture and an hour of " recitation " (i.e.
catechisation) were, I was told in Boston by a prominent teacher,
reckoned as the desirable proportions. Hence, unlike German
professors, who almost ignore text-books, the American teachers of
the first half of the nineteenth century came-like Greenleaf, th
greatest of them all-to throw their lectures very largely into th
form of a preliminary commentary on the chapters that were thus
about to be studied.
The Columbia Law-School.-By no one, probably, was this
second method of instruction practised with greater success than by
Dr. Theodore Dwight of New York, in the great University which
then was only" Columbia College." Nowhere in Germany or France
or England have I listened to any lessons in law so telling as those
which, nearly thirty years ago, I heard in his class-room. He had
raised the Columbia law-school from insignificance and made it the
largest in all America; with much more than double the number
of law-students that any of its rivals possessed. His class-room held
two hundred hearers; but as he had twice that number of students,
each lecture had to be delivered twice. In a lecture he would sum-
marise and criticise some thirty pages of Blackstone; and then, on
the next lecture day, after the men had worked through these pages
at home, an hour would be devoted to questions. The students were
questioned in the alphabetical order of their names, starting on each
day from the name last reached at the last questioning; so that

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186 THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW.

no one could escape being tested. Dwight would comm


on their answers, and sometimes spend several minutes in
correct answer to a question that had proved difficult
was attempted: he never raised his voice, he used no g
sat still in his chai'r. But there was no desk or table to
hearers' full view of him; his voice was peculiarly cle
sentence was lucid; and every point was driven ho
all this, there was in the old man that rare gift of person
which is the secret of successful oratory. No wonder
the best-paid teacher of law-or, indeed, as I was told, of a
whatever-in America; although, as he complained t
College trustees had long ago reduced his emolument
me down to the salary of a judge of the Supreme Court "
?3,500 per annum! Under such financial conditions it was n
to foresee that law-schools might soon acquire in America
importance than they had as yet done in England.
Case-Books.--But an innovation, pregnant with gre
was meanwhile working its way. A third and unpreced
of instruction, devised by one man's bold originality,
been initiated by Christopher Columbus Langdell as f
1871, on his becoming a professor of law at Harvard. Y
when commencing his own legal studies, he had made
existing law-schools; and had found that they did not
the help he desired. He had consequently invented for
novel scheme of study. Its characteristic was that
library take the place of the lecture-room. Its theore
was, in his own words, the fact that-
to have such a mastery of the principles of law as to be a
them with facility and certainty to the ever-tangled skei
affairs is what constitutes a true lawyer; and hence to
mastery should be the business of every earnest stude
Moreover, the number of fundamental legal doctrines is much
commonly supposed; the many different guises in whi
doctrine is constantly making its appearance, and the gre
which legal treatises are a repetition of each other, being
much misapprehension.x

Hence he considered that " the shortest and best way of


these doctrines must be by studying the judicial decisio
1 Quoted by Professor Redlich at p. ii.

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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

is the intellectual drill through which its students are made to


pass; which imbues them-or, at any rate, the bulk of them-wit
a legal tone of mind and forensic habits of reasoning. For it rightly
treats the communication of legal knowledge as less important than
the development of legal acumen. As Dr. Redlich puts it, its grea
success lies in the fact that-

it prepares the student in precisely the way which, in a country of


case-law, leads to full powers of legal understanding and legal acume
that is to say, by making the law pupil familiar with the law throug
incessant practice in the analysis of law cases, where the concep
principles and rules of Anglo-American law are recorded .... It
really teaches him to think in the way that any practical lawy
whether dealing with written or with unwritten law-ought to a
has to think (p. 39).

So far as it succeeds in doing this, it undoubtedly achieves t


highest result that a school of law can aim at. No one can hav
much experience of either mercantile or municipal affairs with
discovering that the most useful legal adviser is-'-not he who c
quote many cases, all cognate yet none of them quite in point-
he who can truthfully say, " I don't know whether this question h
ever come into court ; but, if it did come, I know quite well the w
in which the judges would be sure to look at it." And only the latte
type of man is able to keep his footing, in forensic struggle, by ra
insight into the real drift of cases which his opponent sudden
cites against him. For, as Lord Abinger's long forensic experien
had taught him, "The lawyers least to be depended on are tho
who are in constant pursuit of 'cases in point' to govern th
opinion; and who therefore seldom have sufficient knowledge
principles to be able to judge for themselves " (Life, p. 45). Inde
as shrewd Counsellor Pleydell told Colonel Mannering when they sa
to deal with the prosecution against Dirk Hatteraick, " Law is l
laudanum. It's much more easy to use it as a quack does, than
learn to apply it like a physician." Every provincial county-cou
every rural petty-session, affords daily illustrations of the truth
the Counsellor's words.
If, then, the case-method, in the hands of skilled teachers like
Langdell and Ames, has the supreme merit of being able to imbue
an apt student with these invaluable powers of analysis and dis-

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190 THE CASE-METHOD OF TEACHING LAW.

crimination, is not the controversy closed ? Can opponents have any


ground of attack remaining ?
The wide acceptance which, within a single generation, Langdell's
method did obtain-whether in an unqualified or only a qualified
form, and whether exclusively or only in combination with other
methods--in the principal American law-schools is a conclusive
proof that it possesses salient advantages. But there still remains
the question whether it therefore deserves that universal and exclu-
sive adoption which is claimed for it by its extreme supporters
Dr. Redlich's " many contemporary law-teachers in America wh
would preserve the exclusiveness of the case-method as a unique
hermetically sealed system of teaching," and would reject al
lectures as an obsolete mediaeval means of instruction (p. 43).
Disadvantages of the Method.-It is obvious that the case-method
involves an unusual strain on the instructor, and cannot effectively
be adopted in law-schools that are too poor to attract teachers of
calibre at all approaching that of the great men who have rendere
Harvard famous. It is almost equally obvious that its best result
cannot be obtained in a law-school whose staff of teachers is so small
in proportion to the number of students that the classes are extremely
large. If case-teaching is given to a hundred hearers at once, then
-says Dr. Redlich (p. 51)-" inevitably only a very small fraction
of those present can participate actively in the analysis of the cases."
In the seminars of Continental universities, it is held essential tha
the participants shall be few in number. It is of course otherwise
in ordinary lecturing ; the seven hundred hearers of Harnack, or the
thousand hearers of Cousin, arouse the teacher and render his words
the more impressive. But these difficulties, though real, are merely
local; and do not affect the inherent value of Langdell's method
A third objection which again though valid is similarly only of
limited application, lies in the slowness with which, under the case-
method, the pupil acquires his legal knowledge. True, this slownes
is due to the very thoroughness of the command he acquires over
that knowledge, and to the invaluable mental drill whereby he
acquires it. But in all countries a large (if not a preponderant
number of students prefer information to intelligence; and seek
out the teachers who will fill them with the greatest mass of facts
in the smallest time, reckless whether this process of repletion
strengthen the mental powers or weaken them. For any 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:

I am positive that, if all first attempts are difficult, this is especially


true of legal education according to the case-method. Eminent professors
of law have repeatedly explained to me that it takes a long time before
the excellent effects of instruction by law cases are evident. The
beginners are, as a rule, rather confused by what is demanded of them
in class, and usually for a considerable period only the particularly
quick and talented students take part in the debate; but after some
weeks or months, things become clearer to the others also (p. 29).

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-

Confusion and obscurity-as is admitted by even the most zealous


advocates of the exclusive case-method-trouble most of the young men,
. .. during a large part of their first year, in their attempts to
analyse the cases (p. 44).

An illustration of this difficulty is afforded by the fact that of


the students who attended Langdell's first class, only seven perse-
vered to the last lecture of the course (p. I3). A very similar
experience was that of his first English imitator-an experienced
lawyer of marked intellectual powers, the late Mr. Gerard Finch.
A visit to Harvard, after the case-method had become well estab-
lished there, impressed him so deeply with its merits that he resolved
to introduce it into England. For this purpose he compiled a
stately volume of cases in the law of contract-known still to many
readers by the revised edition of it which we owe to Mr. R. T. Wright
and Professor Buckland. In 1885 he made part of this volume the
basis of a course of lectures at Cambridge, on the method of Langdell.
But the unpreparedness of his pupils, and probably also their English
shyness, frustrated his hopes. According to tradition, the course
commenced with forty hearers, but ended with about one-tenth of

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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.

of a case, without knowing the principle that tune judge applied to


them; as when I once read in an answer in an honours examination
" an owner was held liable. for damage done by a bay horse; but
there is a case about a black mare, in which the owner won." Nor
is it a great thing to study as did a reader to whom I once offered
help, on his telling me that he was pursuing the case-method. He
replied, " I need no help. All that I do is to copy out the reporter's
headnote." If so, he was not really studying the case itself at all,
but only reading a diffuse form of text-book law.
Summing up his review of the case-method, Dr. Redlich says:
" Not Induction, as Langdell and his successors would have us
believe, but Empiricism, is in my opinion the characteristic feature
of this method of instruction " (p. 57). The remark recalls the
sarcasm of the late Lord Collins, who (in a speech which I heard him
deliver) somewhat brusquely identified this plan of learning law by
studying individual cases with Mr. Squeers' thoroughly empirical
method of instruction; which impressed the word " window " on a
boy's mind by making him rub a particular one. His lordship held,
like his American colleague Judge Baldwin, that " no science can be
learned purely from "particulars. The universals must be studied
to discover what the particulars mean " (cited by Redlich, p. 41).
Indeed Dr. Redlich inclines to regard Langdell's " actual real
discovery " in legal education, his chief step forward, as consisting
simply in the invention of the modern case-book, which has given
America a new and valuable form of legal literature. But here
again there may be imitators of Langdell who do not really imitate
him. Case-books are not Langdellian if they save the student's
exercise of thought; whether by cutting down the statement of
facts to those essential to the decision, or by omitting the arguments
of the unsuccessful litigant and the judgment of any dissentient
minority of judges. The reader is thus led to mistake the very
nature of case-law; to treat the decision as a foregone conclusion, and
to forget that if there had not been a doubt there would not have
been a litigation.

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