doubtless in the best situation to make a leisurely, careful, exhaustive study of legal questions.

With the enormous growth in bulk of our law, with the increasing output of reports, with the constantly increasing number of new questions caused by the wonderful changes in our social and economic conditions, there is a constant and increasing demand that some competent persons shall sift and analyze and re-state the principles of law which are being applied. Nowhere else can this be so intelligently and thoroughly done as by the law teachers of the country. Into the law schools, as into great laboratories, all these new ideas in law should come to be tested, compared, analyzed and reported From these laboratories there should be constantly coming forth the reports of the tests and experiments which have been made upon them. Nothing can be more valuable than critical and exhaustive articles, monographs and the like, upon such special questions in the law, giving the result of intelligent research and competent analysis.

upon.

The day of the great treatises upon the larger branches of the law is passing by. The amount of time and labor required for their adequate production has become so great that few competent persons can be induced to undertake them. A thoroughly trained worker, moreover, toiling single-handed cannot compete with the machine-made books which now so much abound. Occasionally there will be a great work, the magnum opus of a lifetime, like Professor Wigmore's recent treatise upon evidence, but the best work of the future is likely to be found in the articles and monographs of the experts. Already a good beginning has been made in this direction. The better law journals of the country, and especially those connected with the great law schools, are presenting an increasing number of thoughtful, exhaustive studies of important questions.

A great deal remains to be done in the way of the development of legal history. Much very noteworthy work has already been done in American law schools, but much more

remains to be done. Nowhere is there likely to be found either the temper, the time or the facilities for this important work, and the law schools of the country, in my judgment, will fail of their high duty if they do not undertake it.

From the law schools, too, must come the development of the scientific side of our law. Nothing in my judgment can be of greater interest and importance than the careful study into the nature of law, the analysis of legal ideas and the correlation and comparison of legal rules. If our law is ever to be more than an endless series of isolated instances, a chaos tempered by a digest, this work of analysis and synthesis must be forever going on. In this field the English teachers of law have thus far held almost undisputed possession, and their books are among the treasures of our legal literature. The field, however, is a great one, and from our law schools must come the American Austin, Holland and Salmond.

Opportunities to serve the state ought also to come to the law teacher in the way of suggesting needed changes or new enactments in legislation, drafting bills, serving upon commissions to revise the laws and the like. If our law is ever to be successfully codified, either in whole or in part, the work cannot fall into more competent or more willing hands than those of our law teachers. Already signal illustrations of this are found in the work of Professor Williston, and more is fortunately in sight.

Opportunity to serve as occasional legal adviser to state officers or public bodies should also come to the law teacher, especially in state universities. What could be more useful or more fitting than that in our law schools should be found a body of men, competent, trained, impartial and honorable, ready and willing to give their aid and counsel in the formation and settlement of public questions having a legal aspect? Instances are numerous in recent years where other faculties of the universities have rendered very distinguished and valuable service to the state-a conspicuous one has just occurred in Michigan. Why should not our law faculties do the same?

But in addition to the purely legal side of the question, there is another aspect of great significance and importance upon which I wish to touch. I mean the opportunity and responsibility of our law schools in developing the ethical side. of the law and the profession.

It has been said that a lawyer has no more need to concern himself with moral questions than any other man; and sharp distinctions are insisted upon in many quarters between morality and law. I do not admit the first proposition, though it is entirely unnecessary to discuss it now. There are, of course,

a great many rules of law which involve no moral question. Whether a seal shall be of wax or paper or a mere scrawl of the pen; whether one shall turn to the right, as with us, or to the left, as in England, upon meeting on the highway; whether the time for giving notice of dishonor of negotiable paper shall be twenty-four hours or forty-eight, all these and countless others involve no moral issue. We need some rule in order to get on, and any one of several will often do so long as we all know what it is and abide by it.

But on the other hand there are many questions, and they are the questions which most directly and vitally concern our lives and welfare, which do involve a moral element. All the questions of fraud, of good faith, of bona fide holder, of fiduciary relationship, of trusts, of "unfair competition," a large portion of the ordinary jurisdiction of courts of equity, many questions of torts and negligence and contracts, have a moral foundation and play a very important part not only in determining actual controversies, but also in forming the general moral standards of the community. Law is the official moral code of the community. It is the organized and manifest expression of the public sense of justice. It endeavors to establish and enforce what is believed to be the highest practical, workable, livable, ethical code.

If it be true, as I believe, that the present is seeing and that the future will witness in a still more marked degree the disappearance of many of the old sanctions, the breaking up

of many of the old codes of belief, the shifting of much of the old emphasis; if it be true, as is often asserted, that the church is losing its hold upon men and that new forces are not arising to take its place, then the ethical code embodied in the law is likely to become more and more important. Here is something having authority. Here are definite and ascertainable sanctions. Here is a code which men must recognize and obey. Other standards may decay; this is living, active and potent. As others lose their influence and importance, this is certain to grow in significance and interest. Here is the standard to which men must not only conform their conduct, but by which they may shape their ideals. It is of supreme importance that it be made as perfect as is possible.

Moreover, as society gets more and more complex, as population gets denser, as the competitions of life become fiercer, as the schemes, of which the air is full, for the improvement of social and economic conditions are urged for legal enforcement, new questions and new problems will constantly present themselves, and the imperative necessity for the formation and maintenance of sound and sane views by the Bench and Bar upon all of these moral and economic questions is certain to become more and more obvious. Where are these views to be developed and worked out? Nowhere else than in the American law schools.

I, of course, do not mean to say that the law school shall be turned into a Sunday school, but I do mean to say that in the law school class rooms these lego-ethical problems must be discussed and worked out, and the plastic minds of the youth. who frequent these schools must be moulded to just and equitable convictions, and through them, as they join the active ranks of the Bench and Bar, must flow a constant stream of inspiration and enlightenment to keep pure and fresh the fountains of our law.

If it be objected that this is matter for a college course in ethics and not for a law school class room, I reply, first, that, even were the subject matter the same, all students do not get

such work in college and that the college teacher has other ends in view; but, secondly and chiefly, that the objection shows an entire misapprehension of the point I seek to make. I do not mean that we shall merely teach ethics, but I do insist that ethical considerations are so involved in many of our most important and most pressing legal problems that we cannot separate them if we would, and that our duty is so to frame our teaching as not only to make our actual law conform as nearly as possible to right ethical standards, but also to enable it to guide the people by its precepts as well as to deter them by its penalties.

The ethics of the profession must also look to the law school for their inspiration and support. Surely no duty of the law school can be greater than this. It has within its halls the Bench and Bar of the future. They are there at their most plastic and impressionable age. At no period in their lives can right standards and right ideals be more certainly created. During this period must be sown the seeds which shall bear a harvest in after life. The reputation of the school may also be made to serve a useful purpose in this particular. To a pride in their profession and its requirements there may be added a pride in their law school connection which shall be an anchor when temptation overtakes them.

Never was there greater need of right standards in this matter than at the present moment. The whole character of the lawyer's relations and functions seems in danger of undergoing change. The influence, if not the taint, of commercialism is over the profession. To the time-worn popular complaints of the ethics of the legal profession, that a lawyer will espouse either side of any cause for money and sell his talent to the highest bidder, there is added in these days the criticism by men in high places that the best effort and ability of the profession are constantly retained by the greatest enemies of our people, the huge, soulless, monopolistic combinations of capital and labor, standing to exact toll at every gateway of