does it will be an avocation, and he is likely to choose his avocations as far away as possible from his office-in art or music or biology rather than jurisprudence. With a teacher of law the situation is just the opposite, and the difference is one likely to bewilder a teacher who comes fresh to teaching after years of practice. He finds himself at cross-purposes with his students, each failing quite to understand the language of the other, and each seeming to the other to have his emphasis distorted and to waste time on "fine points." What the student brands as a "fine point" is the lawyer's thorough analysis of the facts. These do not much interest him. He looks on facts in a rather superficial and uninterested way, and this is natural enough, for the school of practice alone can teach him how to handle facts, or reveal the magic and fascination of their unfolding. And so getting to the heart of a case in a workmanlike way may merely bore a good student. But his handling of a principle of law is a very different thing. Here he is instantly alive, and his zeal and the uncompromising quality of his logic breed the “fine points" which the teacher would fain temper with judgment—that characteristic product of maturity. What the student wants is to know all about the subject in hand. He wishes to trace each principle to its logical result, and he is merciless to inconsistency. He delights in long reaches of thought, and he is bent upon symmetry, whether it is historically or practically attainable or not. To the teacher is denied the refuge, so grateful to his brethren on the Bench and at the Bar, of confining himself to the facts in hand and eschewing dicta. The dicta, and all the paths into which they lead, are just what the students are seeking, and rightly. As a result the teacher is constantly driven to think of his subject as a whole, to consider the relations of its parts with one another, and to determine questions of structure and proportion. These, together with proper methods of investigation and reasoning, are the very things which he aims most to give his students, in order that, when the time comes in after years for them to forget all the detail, they may still have such a grasp on fundamental prin ciples, and right habits of thought may be so fixed in them, that they will be able to find the landmarks, and will never be straying in an uncharted country. It is such considerations as this which justify the belief that a Bar examiner needs an understanding of modern scientific legal instruction in order to do his work aright. It is a work, too, that makes a sharp demand upon his conscience, and that conscience should be a sensitive one. In discussions such as this we sometimes hear assertions that the young man is not treated properly by our system. Now if the young man is examined by a Bar examiner whose legal understanding is inferior to his own, if "the light shineth upon the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not," then he certainly is not treated properly. How far such injustice has been committed in the past is largely a matter of conjecture. The Bar examiner's misdeeds are generally as securely buried as the doctor's. But disquieting glimpses have sometimes been given by examiners who have had the intrepidity to publish their questions together with the officially correct answers. Herein the reader may see wonderful things, suggesting a sum total of possible injustice not agreeable to contemplate. It is a satisfaction, on the other hand, to reflect that in some states the work is excellently done. This is certainly true in Massachusetts, where the board has shown how much may be accomplished by conscientious and painstaking co-operation. The members consult together at each step, and thus supplement and balance one another. Their work has been systematized in so interesting a way that I hope the Chairman, if he is present, will give some detailed account of their methods to this meeting. Do not understand me as asking any favors for the law schools. They ask no favors, and, if they are good schools, they need not ask them. A proper law school should keep the standard for its degree so much higher than it is possible, as a practical matter, for the Bar examiners to keep the standard for admission to the Bar, that its graduates should find themselves in no difficulty. Do not understand me as suggesting that teachers in law schools should serve as Bar examiners. They have troubles enough of their own in the way of marking examination papers without taking on any more. And do not understand me as approving a system by which graduates of law schools are given. a preference over other candidates. In our school we disbelieve in the notion that the state should show favor to the graduates of any particular law school or of law schools in general. Much has lately been said in other branches of education about the value of independent examinations by outside examiners. The Bar examinations provide just such an opportunity, and the law schools should welcome the test. What I do say is that the courts and the Bar can no more get the best results in testing the intellectual qualifications of candidates for admission without intelligent and sympathetic co-operation with the law schools than a court could get proper results from the disbarment work of the Bar Association without such co-operation with the Grievance Committee. In closing I cannot refrain from mentioning two aspects of the subject which justify satisfaction and encouragement. In the first place, this Association of American Law Schools contains great possibilities of good. An organization of the best law schools, working together intelligently and harmoniously throughout the country, is in a position to do much to establish what is fundamental, structural, and national, in our law, and to prevent local variations or eccentricities of particular schools from receiving undue emphasis. We shall all of us gladly do our part to strengthen the hands of this Association in every way we can. Nothing can do more to raise and to maintain proper standards for admission to the Bar. Finally, we may clearly see that we are in a transition period, and are moving rapidly. While we muse the fire burns, and some things are becoming extinct while we are talking about them. When I came to the Bar, scarcely twenty years ago, the product of modern legal education was so recent as hardly to be seen on the Bench, and only in the younger members of the Bar. And as there is a natural tendency to think that a system which pro duced us must be a pretty good system after all, doubts as to the value and the permanence of the new order of things in legal education were widespread. But the modern law school is now a perfectly accepted thing, and the opposition is a constantly dwindling minority. A little while and "time, like an ever rolling stream," will bear away much of what remains. To a new generation of lawyers, educated in law schools, all that I have said today may well appear only the elucidation of the obvious. PROCEEDINGS OF THE TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF Commissioners on Uniform State Laws HELD AT MONTREAL, P. Q., CANADA, August 26, 27, 28, 29 and 30, 1913. OFFICERS OF THE CONFERENCE 1913-1914. CHARLES THADDEUS TERRY, President, ROME G. BROWN, Vice-President, 1006 Metropolitan Life Bldg., Minneapolis, Minn. TALCOTT H. RUSSELL, Treasurer, 42 Church Street, New Haven, Connecticut. CLARENCE N. WOOLLEY, Secretary, 308 Main Street, Pawtucket, Rhode Island. MEMORANDUM. The Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws is made up of Commissioners appointed by the Governors of the different states, meeting in conference and organizing themselves into a national body for the better accomplishment of the work for which its members were appointed by the states. The Commissioners, usually three from each state, are appointed under laws of the respective states creating them, usually for five years, with authority to confer with the Commissioners of the other states and recommend forms of bills or measures to bring about uniformity of laws in the execution and proofs of deeds and wills, |