University of Michigan Law School - Quad Yearbook (Ann Arbor, MI)

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, 1 W A li Aa ,, ,5 ,, I 1 ,I 5 1 4 J x , i 5 n 3 l i iw K 1 4 V F I L 1 I I w I . yi W I Z! lx If 1 JEROME C. KNOWLTQN

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introduction to thc methods of actual practice. W'ith the addition of practical work in conveyancing and in the preparation of legal papers generally, which the Faculty hope soon to make, it is thought that the Department will oifer advantages that must commend them- selves both to the student and the practitioner. The primary object of the law school should, of course, be the training of young men for active work at the bar, but the school that has simply the practical in view fails in an important particular. The law school of to-day should teach and should encourage the study of law in its larger sense. lt has been said that Ha danger to the standing of the profession lies in a tendency of our law schools to frame their courses of study with a View to the mechanism rather than the science ofthe law. It is possible that there is a basis for the claim as against those schools that are conducted largely as business ventures. But I am persuaded that the law faculties of our great universities, while providing each year better facilities forinstruction along purely practical lines, are thoroughly alive to the fact that the historical and the scientifictshould not be sacrificed to the practical. The extending of the course of study, which is becoming general in the best schools, furnishes the oppor- tunity which earnest teachers of the law have long desired, for instruction in the development of our jurisprudence. The best thought of the past must always contribute to the best thought of the present. This is as true in the law as inother departments of learning. Theoretic and historical knowledge alone would never it the student for the demands that the profession of the law is sure to bring, but couple it with the practical, and we have the best possible basis for professional success. The thorough and scientiiic work that our best schools are now attempting, must certainly result in higher professional standards among practitioners and in awakening and maintaining an interest in the philosophic study of jurisprudence. H' B- HUTCHINS'

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C Q YQSIQYCIGV Gf llwtgal CIIICGUOII .l.. T HE STUDY of the Hhas been generally I Nw. ' fails to decoy the student mind. New paths .i lx and the charm of native verdure are more ' 'S' attractive To the young and the old the 4 1 aroma Of a living flower is more exhilara- P 14 1 ting than the ashes of roses. We are ab- W , sorbed in the present, All respect, but few W love, the past. Occasionally curiosity in- duces us to stare at some castle ruin or moss covered cathedral. lVe may go so far as to sniff our nose at an Egyptian mummy, or carry an obelisk over several thousand miles of sea. What of it? It is well to honor the past, but much better to study it.' 'These relics are something more than the solemn monumentsof mistaken ambition. They represent not the failures, but thersuccesses of our ancestors in social development. We may properly. ask, not simply what they did so long ago, but how they did it, in order that we may befable to do as well. There is a quite 'prevalent silent consciousness that the past is a mistake, that the present is almost perfect, and that the future is dubiously uncertain., This conceited and at the same time pessimistic view oflife is not healthful. Mistakes have been made and are being made daily. A mistake is an educator both to the man who makes it and to the man who learns of it. On the other hand there is no certainty that a method of work is wrong because it is old. We are justly proud of the achievements 'of the present generation in every Held of science, but no generation is a qualified judge of its own. Many of our new ideas areitoo much loved to live long. Our present will soon be past and an impartial eye will review us. In a few cycles the idols of our civilization may become petrified and IO