Moot they hand in a list of all the authorities they propose to cite. Thus all parties are prepared to attend in a critical spirit. After the argument each judge delivers his judgment or opinion, and the President is expected to hand in a written judgment. In these disputations, whether at the Club or the Moot, the student gains an amount of practical training which he can gain in no other way. Before he goes into Court on his first case, he has already learned readiness of address and nimbleness of mind.

A remarkable development of the Law Club is what is known as the "Law Dispensary": in other words, “a poor man's legal aid society." Such a society was established at Pennsylvania University in 1892 and appears to have enjoyed a most successful career. Once a week the students, under the presidency of a qualified barrister, meet in one of the lecture rooms, where poor people, being applicants for legal advice and assistance, attend. One by one these applicants tell their story, one of the students being assigned to each applicant in order to draw out the real points of his case by interrogatories. A general discussion then takes place, the presiding Barrister summing up and advising what action ought to be taken. Thereupon, if it is decided to take action, one or two students are assigned to take charge of the case, examine witnesses, get up the evidence, and prepare the case for trial. For the trial a graduate of the Law School is assigned to act as counsel, with the student at his elbow, acting in the capacity of solicitor in the action.

The essential conditions for a successful Law School may be summarised as follows:

First, there must be properly qualified Teachers in every branch who must not be expected to teach more than one single subject, or at the most two or more subjects closely related. Secondly, the Teachers must give substantially

"You can

their whole time and strength to their work. not," said Professor Thayer in 1895, “have thorough and first rate training in law any more than in physical science unless you have a body of learned Teachers: and you cannot have a learned faculty of law unless like other faculties they give their lives to their work. The main secret of teaching law, as of all teaching, is what Socrates declared to be the secret of eloquence, understanding your subject and that requires, as regards anyone of the great heads of our law in the present stage of our science, an enormous and absorbing amount of labour."

Thirdly, the students must devote their whole time. "There is more than enough in the careful preliminary study of the law," says Professor Thayer, "to occupy three full years of an able and thoroughly trained young It is a delusion to suppose that this precious seed time can be profitably employed in attendance in the Courts or in apprenticeship in an office. The time for this comes later."

man.

In some of the American Law Schools, it is true technical instruction is given. At Maryland University, Baltimore, instruction in drafting Deeds and Wills is provided, and in John Hopkins University in the same City law students attend the Law Courts, but this latter practice is not systematic. It is performed not for the purpose of hearing the details of procedure so much as to gain a general idea of the proceedings in an action.

With regard to the qualification of a Teacher it is the general opinion that he should have enjoyed some practice at least. For obvious reasons it is not desirable that a man in active practice should be appointed, either his pupils suffer or his Clients. The ideal Teacher is a man who has enjoyed a large practice for a considerable period

1 Harvard Law Review, IX, 174..

and is at the same time a jurist of repute. Professor Thayer, for instance, had had twenty years' practice at the Bar before he became a teacher. It would not be difficult to find many men in the ranks of the Bar or of the Law Society who would gladly exchange the turmoil and anxiety of practice for the professor's chair, and who are thoroughly qualified as jurists of repute.

Is it not possible that history may repeat itself and that at no distant period of time all law students, whether they intend to practice as barristers or solicitors, may again receive their professional training at one and the same School of Law-at any rate, Lord Selborne, so long ago as 1872, recognised and advocated the establishment of such a school? It is interesting to note in this connection that attorneys, although officially excluded from the Inns of Court and relegated to the Inns of Chancery in 1555, continued to be members of the former until the end of the 18th century.

The Law Society, at any rate, is alive to the importance of Legal education. In 1905, when Sir Robert Finlay's scheme for the creation of a great school of law failed, that Society at once took steps and established a school of their own, and as recently as September, 1909, the President of that Society (Mr. W. H. Winterbotham), in his Presidential address, expressed a hope that it might be found possible to establish a Practice Class, to include a Moot Court, in connection with the teaching given by the Society.

It is interesting to see how speedily the Society gave the recommendation a trial. The first Moot was held at their Hall in Chancery Lane, with the Right Honourable Arthur Cohen, K.C., presiding, on the 20th October, 1909.

With the evidence of the practical value of such a system from our own history of legal education and from that of the United States, the institution of a scientific legal education is merely a question of time. A few years hence law

students who have been trained under such a system will be in as great a demand in the profession in this country as the students of the Harvard Law School have been for some time past in their own country.

HUGH H. L. BELLOT.

66

VI.--OBSCENE LITERATURE AND CONSTITUTIONAL LAW IN AMERICA.1

IN

N a pamphlet which is issued with this book the Author describes the work as "the most extraordinary lawbook of a century." This description seems correct enough, since the ordinary law-book is a book mainly about law. This book, however, is mainly about the absurdity of modesty" and of any law designed to prevent or restrain outrages upon it. The examples given in the book show clearly enough that the notion of what constitutes such an outrage is sometimes so extended in America as to interfere with the serious discussion of important questions; but nothing that the Author says inclines us to consider that real outrages should not be prohibited.

The book seems to be a compilation of essays which have mostly already appeared in American magazines. As it stands, the bulk of it consists of a series of rather hysterical arguments in favour of an unrestricted right to discuss sexual questions in the press, and against the power which the Postmaster in America exercises of refusing transmission through the post of what he considers obscene or otherwise objectionable matter. The latter seems to us to exercise his powers somewhat arbitrarily, but legal ways in America are

1 "Obscene" Literature and Constitutional Law, a Forensic Defence of Freedom of the Press. By Theodore Schroeder, Legal Counsellor of the Medico-Legal Society of New York, Compiler of Free Press Anthology. Privately printed for Forensic Uses: New York. 1911.

inclined to be arbitrary, which is no doubt the opinon of the unfortunate Englishman who was recently arrested for neglecting to appear for examination before the attorney of the party against whom he had gone to America to give evidence. Sometimes, however, when we look over our correspondence of a morning, and find it consists principally of touting letters from money-lenders, adververtisements of patent medicines, and glorifications of scrofulous novels, we half regret that our own Postmaster does not exercise a similar jurisdiction over it.

So far as English lawyers are concerned, the only part of the Author's argument that touches them is his repeated statement, that no such thing as obscene libel was known to the ancient Common law of England. Very possibly he is right. For that matter no such thing as simple contract was known to it either. It all depends upon the time you start at. If you go far enough back you can find a period when the ancient Common law restricted its operations to the laudable but limited object of preventing the King's subjects from cutting one another's throats; and, truth to tell, it seemed to have its hands pretty full with that alone. And nearly the whole law of crime, of tort, and even of contract as they now stand, developed out of that jurisdiction. The one thing the King's Courts looked after was the King's Peace. Breaking that peace was the one thing they would not tolerate, and next to breaking it they objected to anything which was likely to lead to someone breaking it. And that was the ground on which, among others, they came in later times to declare the publication of obscene matter an offence. It was a good ground too. More than once when we found a letter on our breakfast table which, on opening, contained information which could be tendered to us only on the supposition that we were suffering from some vile disorder, if the sender had only been handy