90 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. than the unworthy training then in vogue. In 187 1, Professor Bryce and Professor Dicey came to the United States, and were most favorably im- pressed with the Columbia Law School ; but when Professor Finch and Professor Pollock visited Harvard in 1885, both were greatly influenced by the Langdell method, which they saw in full operation. Professor Pollock writes in a letter addressed to O. W. Holmes, Jr., introductory to "The Law of Torts : " "Of Harvard and its Law School I will say only this, that I have endeavored to turn to practical account the lessons of what I saw and heard there, and that this present book is in some measure the outcome of that endeavor. It contains the substance of between two and three years' lectures in the Inns of Court, and nearly everything in it has been put into shape after or concurrently with free oral exposition and discussion of the leading cases." Professor Finch adopted the Langdell system in his lec- tures at Cambridge, and published " A Selection of Cases on the English Law of Contract," which met with this criticism in the " Law Quarterly Review:" 1 "The lawyer or student who really enters into the results of a line of leading cases learns much more than a few verbal maxims which may be committed to memory. He sees what is the true meaning of legal doctrines when applied to fact ; he ' becomes,' as Mr. Finch well expresses it, ' familiar with the tone of thought, the attitude of mind, which prevail in our courts ; he gets a touch of the genius of English law.' He learns, in short, by the only means by which it can be learned, the notion of justice which the lawyers and judges of England have de- veloped by labors extending over centuries, and have impressed upon the minds of the English people." And in a note upon an article in the "American Law Register" of July, 1888, written by Mr. Sydney G. Fisher, of Philadelphia, to explain and defend the system of teaching practised in the Harvard Law School, the "Law Quarterly Review" 2 remarks again : " The system is a thoroughly sound and practical one. It has been to some extent adopted in other American law schools, and approximations to the method have been tried in this country in the Inns of Court and at Cambridge with very good effect, so far as a judgment can yet be formed. One of the first and greatest fallacies besetting law students is to suppose that law can be learned by reading about the authorities. Professor Langdell's method (for it should justly bear the name of its inventor) strikes at the root of this." In yet another instance the aim to prepare students on narrow lines of work merely for actual law practice is condemned as inadequate, and the departure taken by Professor Langdell is acknowledged to be in the interest of legal scholarship in its highest sense. Although the reading of cases has not been disregarded, the manner of teaching law at Columbia has been mainly by means of lectures and the study of treatises. An enlarged con- ception of what the training of a law student should be has now led to the formation of a plan for a reorganized law school by the trustees of that university. The new methods of the Columbia school for the year 1891-92 are outlined in the formal announcement lately published, but they are not explained in detail. It is believed, however, that the practice which that school has followed ever since Professor D wight became its head is now discarded, and that the Harvard system will serve as its model in the future. 1 Law Quarterly Review, II. 88. 2 Law Quarterly Review, V. 228.
