Harvard Law Review. Published monthly, during the Academic Year, by Harvard Law Students. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, $2.50 PER ANNUM 35 CENTS PER NUMBER. Editorial Board. Oliver Prescott, Jr., .... Editor-in-Chief. Philip S. Abbot, Treasurer, Richmond O. Aulick, Albkrt S. Bard, Albert E. Hadlock, Evan H. Hopkins, 1 Carleton Hunneman, Frederick B. Jacobs, M. Day Kimball, James G. King, James M. Newell, William F. Pillsbury. The Increasing Influence of the Langdell Case System of In- -Struction. — In the annual report of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College for 1889-90, Professor Langdell presents a statement of the growth of the Harvard Law School within twenty years. It is instructive to notice in this connection that there has been at the same time a great advance in the amount of appreciation accorded the method of instruction established about 1870 in this school, the essence of which was to substitute the discussion of the actual authorities of the law for the taking of results from text-books and lecture-notes. " The object of the case system is to compel the mind to work out the principles from the cases." This idea met with disfavor in many quarters at its introduction. A review of "Langdell's Selected Cases on Contracts" was published in the "Southern Law Review" 1 in 1879, containing these expressions of opinion : " We never could clearly appreciate why this collection (now for the first time issued in two volumes), and Professor Langdell's correspond- ing collection of "Cases on Sales," were published. . . . We suppose we must accept a reappearance of the second edition of this work without much change as an evidence that Professor Langdell's original views are still persisted in. There is just as much sense in endeavoring to instruct students in the principles of law by the exclusive reading of cases as there would be in endeavoring to instruct the students of the West Point Mili- tary Academy in the art of war by compelling them to read the official reports of all the leading battles which have been fought in the world's history. In our judgment, the chief value of the present work consists in the Summary which Professor Langdell has appended to the second volume. We cannot doubt that it is a valuable review of the matter pre- sented in the cases. At a glance we can see that it performs one important office : it points out which of them are overruled ! " But already an effort had begun in England towards a scheme of edu- cation for law students which should be more helpful and more systematic 1 5 So. Law Rev. n. s. 872.
