PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECTION OF LEGAL EDUCATION AND The Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar met in the Central Library, St. Louis, Mo., on the afternoon of August 24, 1920, and again on the evening of Thursday, August 26, 1920. The Chairman of the Section, Charles M. Hepburn, of Indiana, presided. The Secretary, John B. Sanborn, of Wisconsin, presented a draft of by-laws which, after examination and amendment, were adopted. Formal addresses delivered before the section by Charles M. Hepburn, Andrew A. Bruce and Hollis R. Bailey follow this memorandum. (See pages 467, 480, and 498, respectively.) The Nominating Committee consisting of William R. Vance, Hollis R. Bailey and Samuel Williston, presented the following nominees who were unanimously elected to their respective offices: Chairman, Elihu Root, of New York; Vice Chairman, Charles A. Boston, of New York; Secretary-Treasurer, John B. Sanborn, of Wisconsin. Council: Julian W. Mack, Illinois, one year; Edward Letchworth, New York, one year; Charles M. Hepburn, Indiana, two years; James P. McBain, Missouri, two years; Harlan F. Stone, New York, three years; Oscar Hallam, Minnesota, three years; Robert M. Hughes, Virginia, four years; Frederic C. Woodward, Illinois, four years. The following resolution proposed by William Draper Lewis, and thereafter amended in certain particulars, was adopted by the Section, viz.: "The Chairman for the ensuing year and six other members of the Section appointed by him shall be a special committee, which committee shall report to the next annual meeting of the Section their recommendations in respect to what, if any, action shall be taken by this Section and by the American Bar Association to create conditions which will tend to strengthen the character and improve the efficiency of persons to be admitted to the practice of law." The meeting of the Section thereupon adjourned sine die. JOHN B. SANBORN, Secretary. ORGANIZED CO-OPERATION FOR THE IDEALS OF LEGAL EDUCATION. BY CHARLES M. HEPBURN, OF INDIANA. The twenty-five annual addresses which have been delivered by as many different chairmen of this Section since the beginning of its activities in 1894, have dealt, for the most part, with the methods and the scope of legal education, and the chief ends which should be sought in training for the profession of the law. The Education of the Lawyer in Relation to the Public, Legal Education and the Failure of the Bar to Perform its Public Duties, The Importance of a Broad Pre-Legal Education, The Necessity of Idealism in Teaching Law, Education in Law as a Science as Well as a Profession, Educating for the Elimination of Legal Technicalities which Defeat Substantial Justice, The Need of a Sociological Jurisprudence, The Importance of the Study of Comparative Jurisprudence, The Historical Study of English Legal Literature-these themes, and such as these, running through a quarter of a century, are significant of the high ideals in legal education which appear in these valuable addresses. But today I wish to turn from this inviting field. I present a subject of ancillary importance—and yet, in the existing conditions of legal education in America, it appears to me to be a subject of vital importance if we are to realize the ideals of this Section. I suppose that there has never been a time in the history of legal education in America when the problem of legal education raised more important questions for American lawyers, whether on the bench, in active practice, or in our law schools, than it raises now, in the wide sweep of democratic development in this New World. It has become a trite remark that we are standing on the threshold of great developments in the social, the economic, and the political life of America, developments of profound significance to the welfare of American citizens. Bar associations here and there are beginning to consider the duty of service which in these matters every lawyer owes the state. Today, for instance, in an adjoining hall, the Conference of Bar Association Delegates is considering this question: "What are the state and local bar associations doing to promote knowledge and understanding on the part of the people of their states and communities of the fundamental principles of American institutions? But the significance of these signs of the time as respects legal education in America has not been often noticed or much regarded. Yet, in this respect, both the present and the immediate future demand a wide outlook, a broad constructive policy, and active co-operation on the part of law teachers and members of the active profession, in a sustained effort to meet the needs of the state in legal education. Service to the state considered, legal education in America may well have three rather distinct objectives. Primarily, and chiefly, we have the problem of the adequate pre-legal and legal training of candidates for admission to the Bar. Very rarely, in the 42 years which have passed since the American Bar Association organized a committee on legal education and admissions to the Bar, have we looked any further afield. But historically the profession has recognized two other chief ends in legal education. When William Blackstone, in 1758, delivered at the University of Oxford the opening lecture in the course of lectures which ultimately took the form of Blackstone's Commentaries, he lamented the fact that, as he declares, "it has been the peculiar lot of our admirable system of laws to be neglected, and even unknown, by all but one practical profession." His design in these lectures on the nature and extent of the laws of England, a course which was made possible by the profits of a professional law book, Viner's Abridgement of Law and Equity, was professedly merely "academical." The immediate purpose was to reach, not lawyers as such, nor students pursuing their professional studies for admission to the Bar, but rather, gentlemen of estate and fortune, the nobility, the clergy, and possibly "gentlemen of the faculty of physic," the educated laymen of Blackstone's day, the only persons who, besides the lawyers, might then be expected to be of influence in shaping the policy of the state. Notwithstanding the lapse of one hundred and sixty years, Blackstone's vision, although inspiring one or two professorships of law in the colleges of Colonial America, remains unfulfilled. Our millions of laymen and now, since the action of the Tennessee legislature, our millions of laywomen, although masters of the state, are still without a knowledge of the law of the fundamentals of American citizenship. The need which Blackstone saw in such limited measure has grown with the growth of Democracy. Under the conditions which now exist with us, with our enormous electorate of both men and women voters, fifty millions of them, the education of multitudes of American citizens in some of the fundamentals of American law becomes steadily of more and more importance to the welfare of our citizens, to the safety of the state. The need is beginning to be recognized in bar associations, and with it the corresponding duty of service which rests upon American lawyers. But we have hardly yet reached the beginning of a definite movement towards this end. The field is open to us, the harvest is ready for the sickle, but the co-operation necessary to enter and possess has not yet been organized. The legal education of laymen is, however, not the only unoccupied field worthy of the attention of American legal educators. "The doctors," said a member of the North Carolina Bar Association in its annual meeting a year ago, "who want to be somebody, go on after getting their licenses and study something new every year or so; we lawyers don't have anything like that in our law schools or our bar association, except prepared papers." It is a far cry from a session of the North Carolina Bar Association, at the O. Henry Hotel in Greensboro, North Carolina, in the year 1919, to Sir John Fortescue and his supposed dialogue on the continent between the banished English prince, that unfortunate son of Henry the Sixth, and the "grave knight, his father's chancellor, then in banishment with him." But the course of law studies in the Inns of Court, as described by For |