feeling on the subject. Without venturing to give any opinion ourselves, we desire merely to point out the importance of this question; for it is safe to predict that, sooner or later, the relation between college and professional courses of study must be put upon a more satisfactory basis.
Apropos of Professor Ames’ article in our last number, we find the doctrine of prior equities concisely stated more than a hundred years ago, in Germany, by the illustrious critic whom Goethe called the Achilles, and Heine the Arminius, of German literature:—
| “Nathan: | Who has no greater right to her than I | |
| Must prove at least an earlier.” | ||
| Nathan the Wise, II.7. |
Mr. J. W. Mack, a member of the present graduating class, has been recommended by the Academic Council for appointment to a fellowship, and will spend several years abroad in the study of the civil law. It is the first time, we believe, that a representative of the law school has asserted its right to share in the advantages furnished for the pursuit abroad of the higher branches of learning. The prompt recognition of that right is certainly gratifying. The fact that a student of the common law proposes to devote a number of years to the study of the civil law is a significant one in its bearing on legal education. It may be that the civil law has been too long neglected.
The students of the Harvard Law School claim domiciles in twenty-eight different jurisdictions. If they practise in the same jurisdictions from which they come, the Massachusetts bar, already so largely made up of Law School bred men, will receive 82 additions. Ohio courts stand next, with a list of 15. New York will be satisfied with 13 out of the 180 now in the school, while Illinois will take 9. Five each will go to California, Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.
The Harvard Law School Association has issued a pamphlet of about a hundred pages, containing a report of the organization and of the first general meeting of the Association on Nov. 5, 1886. In addition to the list of officers and members, a full account is given of the exercises in Sanders Theatre, and of the after-dinner speeches, which were delivered in the Hemenway Gymnasium, on the occasion of the first public dinner of the Association. The frontispiece is an excellent heliotype of Austin Hall.
The well-known authority on railroads, Prof. Arthur T. Hadley of Yale, in his recent lecture in Cambridge on the Interstate Commerce bill, expressed himself strongly in favor of leaving the problems of railroad charges and management to work themselves out in the courts as questions arise from time to time. The result of a railroad law thus gradually evolved and perfected to meet the needs of the country would be less injurious to business, and would cause less derangement of economic machinery than any statute or series of statutes, however good. He said, however, now that the bill is passed, it should be given a fair trial and not thrown over too soon, simply because it causes losses in some quarters.
