University of Nebraska College of Law - Yearbook (Lincoln, NE)

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'iff CIS DDQ were To tell all the happenings, during our junior year, which might be of interest, would certainly be a task of no small magnitude. I will content myself, therefore, with simply noting a few of those incidents as they come to my mind, which seem to standout more conspicuous than the rest. The junior law student, take him all in all, is an interesting personage to dwell upon. He is an ambitious individual. His mark is high, his aspirations know no bounds. He has perused the lives of a few great men at least, which remind him that he may also make his life sublime, and so he comes to the scene of action, enters the great field of law, begins the arduous task of mastering the broadest and noblest profession known to man, with a conndence of ultimate success that must be amazing to the old practitioner who has served the bar and bench from a quar- ter to a half century, and who knows better even than a Senior theemultitude of intricate problems and principles that necessar- ily must confront every beginner, to test his metal, try his nerve, and prove his knowledge and skill in the law before he can be assured of even a reasonable degree of success. lVell it is that the storm signal, indicating the coming of conflicting opinions, the clashing of authorities, and last but not least the final examin- ations, is to him obscured in the distance, else he might grow weary and faint at heart at the very beginning. Again, well, it is for him that these dangers are plainly visible to the good Dean, who has ever the happy faculty of presenting them to the stu- dents of his class, with profuse illustrations, just in time to avoid disastrous results, to say nothing of fatalities. The class entered upon the study of Blackstone, as soon as school opened, and there some of us found sufficient food for thought to- keep us awake nights, for the diet was so strong, and it was given in such liberal doses, that new patients invariably had to take it witha little mixture of mid-night oil in order to digest well. But as there is an end to all things, so in the course of human events

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'- xl N,' f UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA.

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AS WE WERE 41 we finally laid aside Mr. Justice Blackstone's commentaries, and at the request of the Dean, attempted to write a short treatise on- the common law of England ourselves, from memory, under sixty odd headings, and covering more or less the entire subject. It is needless to say that we furnished the Dean with some very valuable reading matter, touching the questions propounded to us, the perusal of which must have occupied his spare moments- for a considerable time thereafter. I doubt very much if ever again in the career of the law student there comes a time when he thinks he knows so much law as after having passed a creditable final examination in Blackstone. In connection with the study of the common law of England we took up Domestic Relations. I need not emphasize here that this was a very interesting subject, torso much will be presumed. Here we learned the theory of marriage making, the legal effect of marriages that are made, and how unhappy couples may dis- solve the matrimonial ties. In theory there are three general re- quisites to make a marriage: first, that the parties have a will to marry, second, that they can marry, and third, that they actu- ally clo marry. But in practice it seems that any one of the three is abundantly sufficient, for we know that if the parties have a will to get married that settles it, or if they crm marry they are bound to do so, or if they really do marry it matters little in prac- tice whether they cfm or will. Q Contracts were taken up the second term and thelalmost in- finite number and variety of transactions into which the subject enters were fully elucidated by Professor Robbins. It was sometimes rather difficult to see just where there was a meeting of minds, or to understand what constituted the good or valuable consideration in a particular contract, but at those times liberal faith in the author or instructor very often had quite a material tendency to relieve us of all doubts in the premises. Agency, a subject closely allied to contracts, was also covered during the second term, and the doctrine of doing an act by another which a party might do by himself, or being held accountable for the act of another the same as if done by himself, received due consider- ation. It is by the application of this principle of agency that a party may sometimes be said to have acquired knowledge without