by the proposition that the capital stock of a corporation is a trust fund for the payment of creditors, as it is that he should know the points of distinction between a contingent remainder and an executory devise. It is as likely that the young lawyer's first client will be anxious to have his rights ascertained and defined as a stockholder in or the creditor of a corporation, as that he will be a landed proprietor with a trust to settle or a will to make. | The old-fashioned idea that no lawyer need familiarize himself with corporation law until he has been twenty-five years at the bar, is inapplicable to a commercial condition, where corporations of all sizes, great and petty, carry on an increasing proportion of the business of everyday life. This means that in solving our problem of selection, we must select for the student the field of corporation law as a field in which at least some of his time must be spent. A similar observation applies to other special subjects, which twenty-five or fifty years ago were justly thought unnecessary to the student's education. All that I plead for is a recognition of the fact that American jurisprudence is developing; that almost every year brings a change in the relative importance of the various subjects of legal study; and I assert that it is as unintelligent

to assume that the student's curriculum of half a

century ago is the curriculum best adapted to mod

ern conditions, as it would be to assume that a

medical student could gain an adequate knowledge of medical science by following a course of study prescribed before the recent advances of knowledge in respect of the propagation of germ diseases and the possibilities of antiseptic surgery.

I think, therefore, that it may be said with confidence, as the result of the foregoing considerations, that the conditions of legal study have changed and that they have changed because of the decline of the office system of instruction; and I think we can say further that the office system of instruction has become and is becoming less and less effective for two reasons: first, because the introduction of modern business methods into legal practice makes it impossible to give the student the place in the

office which he once occupied; and, second, because the multiplication of subjects of study makes it impossible for the preceptor to spare the time and attention necessary for the direction of the student's work. This leads me to speak of the efforts that are being made throughout the country and in this Commonwealth to accommodate legal instruction to the changed conditions.

II. It is to the operation of the causes to which I have referred above that we must attribute the great increase in the number and importance of law schools throughout the country. In the reports of the American Bar Association for 1891 (Vol. xiv) a

tabular statement is inserted at page 353 which shows that between the years 1878 and 1890 no less than seventy-four distinct schools of law were at different times in existence and in operation in the United States. It is in my judgment most unphilosophical to attribute the decline of the office system of instruction to the growth of the law schools. It seems far more natural to suppose that instruction in these institutions is being supplied to meet a demand which is felt throughout the length and . breadth of the country. These schools differ greatly among themselves. In some the course is for one year only; in some the course is two years, and in others three. In some instances entrance examinations are required before the student can matriculate, but in the great majority of cases these entrance examinations are so elementary in their character that almost any school boy could pass theu; and President Eliot, of Harvard, was substantially right when he said that into most American law shools a man can walk from the street." They have sprung up here and there in response to a local demand for help and guidance in the prosecution of legal study. For a long time there was no organized effort to bring about co-operation among them in the direction of solving our Problem of Selection-in agreeing, that is, upon a course of study; and even today there is but little effort to bring about cooperation in the solution of our problem of method in agreeing, that is, upon the way in which instruction can best be given. Within the last six years, however, the American Bar Association has been doing noble work in these fields. Its committee on legal education has devoted much time and thought to the task of gathering statistics from all over the world and of drawing from them such conclusions as form the basis for suggestion and recommendation. The establishment of a section on legal education by the American Bar Association is another sign of the times in this connection.

Another great advantage of the method of instruction by original research is to emphasize the importance of principle in the solution of a legal problem

presented to the mind, as distinguished from an undue deference to decided cases. This point was made admirably clear by Sir Frederick Pollock, the distinguished professor of jurisprudence at Oxford university, in the address delivered by him a few days ago before the Harvard Law School. The

The occasion was the celebration of the twentyfifth year of Professor Langdell's connection with the Harvard Law School. This distinguished teacher has consistently advocated the method of instruction in question during this period and the credit for its final triumph is in large measure due to him.

great disadvantage of a system of instruction by lectures or text books is that the student comes to believe that no statement of law can be correct unless a direct decision among the adjudicated cases can be found which supports the statement in the precise form in which it comes up for discussion.| The effect of such a habit of thought is to produce a generation of case lawyers whose first thought when a question is propounded to them is to ransack first their memories and then the digest for particular decisions which bear a resemblance to the case in hand. These men are never sound lawyers. They are utterly unable to appreciate the fact that the law, in a given field, may be in effect, the result of a progressive development which is still going forward so that no statement of present law is accurate unless it is, so to speak, a step in advance of the last decided case. They are, except in the case of men of rare intellectual ability, incapable of bringing to bear upon the solution of the problem the accumulated result of their own generalizations from experimental study, entirely apart from the similarity or dissimilarity, upon the facts stated, between the case in hand and any case or cases reported in the books. Considerations of this kind have led to this solution of the problem of method to the more or less complete exclusion of all other methods at institutions scattered all over the country-as, for example, at the Harvard Law School in Cambridge, at the Columbia Law School in New York, at the Law School of our own University in Philadelphia, at the Northwestern University in Chicago, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, and at the Leland Stanford, Jr. University in California as well as at many other institutions of recognized standing. A careful consideration of the relative merits of different systems, with a preponderance of authority in favor of this, the inductive method of teaching law, is to be found in the papers read during the last few years before the American Bar Association and published in their annual reports.

It seems, therefore, that the law school necessarily represents the modern method of imparting legal instruction, and I have given in outline the solution of the problem of selection and the problem of method reached by the law school of our own University as being the typical modern American law school. It must not be supposed for a moment, however, that the attendance upon the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania represents the total number of Pennsylvania law students who are receiving law school instruction. You will find that many Pennsylvania men are registered as students in the Harvard Law School, in the Yale Law School, in the Cornell Law School, in the Columbia Law School and elsewhere. Indeed, I understand that

there is a carefully planned movement on foot to establish a law school in the City of Pittsburg, so great is the demand for law school instruction in the western part of this commonwealth. As an instructor in the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania, I may say that it has given us pleasure to welcome within our gates the many students from western Pennsylvania who have come to our school to pursue their studies; and I may say that we are prepared to receive them in the future, no matter in what numbers they may come. I feel certain, however, that if the men of western Pennsylvania establish a law school of their own, we shall find it a difficult task to afford better means of instruction than that which will be obtained there; for I am confident that it will receive the support of a bar which in my judgment has no superior; if indeed it has an equal, within the confines of this great commonwealth.

The result of my review of the efforts that are being made throughout the country and in this commonwealth to accomodate legal instruction to existing conditions is to establish the fact that legal instruction is generally given by means of law schools, and that wherever it is possible to do so, office instruction is in this way either supplemented or superseded. The far seeing committee on legal education of the American Bar Association had recommended as long ago as 1879 that a law school be established in every State in the Union. This recommendation has indeed not been literally carried out, yet (in the words of the report of that committee for 1890, Vol. XIII, page 328) so decided has been the public and professional verdict in favor of that method of studying law that there are now about fifty law schools in the country, or more than one to each State, even with all the recent additions to the number of the latter." That there is vast room for improvement in our American law schools is a proposition which no one will seriously dispute. The evils that exist and the possibilities of redressing them are forcibly brought out in a paper in the Forum for May, 1895, in which President David Starr Jordan, of the Leland Stanford, Jr., University, writes with vigor under the caption "Pettifogging Law Schools and an Untrained Bar." It is the conclusion of the learned committee of the American Bar Association, from whose reports I find it necessary to quote so often, that no American can examine the data relating to legal education in Russia, Sweden, Portugal, Denmark, France, South Australia and certain other countries referred to in the report "without a feeling of mortification and of serious distress at the thought that our own country, claiming to stand in the forefront of the world, so far at least as

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to the State court of last resort the appointment of a commission such as has been described for the purpose of examining candidates for the bar. The evils of the present system were admitted by all those with whom the committee entered into correspondence. Not only are the evils resulting from lack of uniformity obvious to one who gives his attention to the matter, but the evils which proceed from impromptu examinations conducted by busy practicing lawyers are so serious that they cannot escape notice. The committee of the American Bar Association thus sums up the situation: 'Every lawyer knows how very lightly the subjects of elementary law, and all such as require a systematic and accurate knowledge of it are passed, almost invariably, by a committee of lawyers taken on brief notice from the busy bar, usually in the busiest days of the beginning term, to examine a class of applicants. There is no time to refresh their remembrance of early studies, or to form a careful and just plan of examination. After a very few 'calls for the definition of this or that term, so put as to involve merely verbal memory, their inquiries are mostly prompted by cases in their recent experience, or by the latest text-books they have read. Too often they are asked almost at random, and deal with a list of scattered points rather than any important and comprehensive doctrine of the law. Almost inevitably they deal with the points contained in recent cases as most familiar to the questioner; and such law can rarely be elementary or of wide application. The very fact that it has been recently in question shows that the point was not long ago a doubtful one. To examine a class of students searchingly and yet justly so as to learn something more of them than their mere recollection of a few book phrases and a certain aptitude for guessing is not a light task, and requires careful preparation. The United States is about the only nation in the world, we believe, where it is usually permitted to be done extempore, and much of the decline in professional learning and professional character, so commonly lamented, may be traced to this lack of well-trained and vigilant watchmen at the entrance gates." Again, it is a hardship for the student to be examined on three years' work at a single sitting. He should be permitted to come up at the end of each year of preparation, and pass off the subjects already studied. Many other suggestions occur to us when we give the subject attention. Largely through the influence of one who is the honored guest of this bar association to-night, J. Newton Fiero, Esq., the New York Legislature has within a year actively recognized the need for reform in the matter of admission to the bar by providing that the examinations shall be conducted by a commission of three

members appointed by the Court of Appeals, the expenses of the commission and the compensation of the commissioners being met out of the proceeds of an examination fee charged to each student.1

In view of these considerations, the suggestion that I have to make to the Pennsylvania Bar Association is this: That this bar association delegate to its committee on legal education and admission to the bar, which, by the terms of its existence, must be composed of representative men from the | different parts of the Commonwealth, the duty of formulating a curriculum or course of study to be recommended to the courts of the different counties throughout the State, and of preparing each year a standard series of examination papers upon that course, which papers can be put into the hands of such local boards of examiners as may see fit to use them. It will be observed that my suggestion does not contemplate any such radical change in our system as the delegation of the power to examine for the bar to our Supreme Court, nor does it contemplate the appointment of such a commission as has been recommended by the committee of the American Bar Association and actually created in New York. The suggestion contains no feature which threatens the right of the several counties to decide for themselves to what extent they will recognize local traditions in matters of practice and procedure. It is nothing more nor less than a suggestion that this bar association would do well to turn its attention to the problems of legal education and admission to the bar, and begin a campaign of education in this Commonwealth by supplying our local examining boards with the results of all that is latest and best in legal educational science. In this way the local boards would be enabled (without an expenditure of time and labor which it is impossible for them to make) to lay before their students a comprehensive and graded course of studies and finally to subject their students to a fair but searching examination of such a character as will test, not memory merely, but their understanding and their reasoning powers.

Personally, I am inclined to think that, certainly at this stage of the solution of the problem of legal education, it would be a grave mistake to advocate the erection of a central power which would control the local bars against their will. I think that there is, under the conditions which now exist in this State, a balance of advantages in favor of the deposit of the power to admit to the bar with the local judiciary and the delegation of that power to local boards of examiners. I am firmly convinced, however, that these separate boards should not be expected to add to their already onerous duties the

1 See chap. 760, Laws of 1894,

task of solving knotty educational problems and of keeping abreast with all that is latest and best in educational science, while at the same time they are immersed in the active practice of their profession. This bar association, with representatives from every county in the State, many of whom have served, and are serving, and will continue to serve upon the local boards of examiners, is in a position to do a work of incalculable benefit to the cause of

legal education by entering into correspondence with these boards, and by making common cause with them in the way that I have suggested for the attainment of the great end for which they are all striving. If a representative committee of this ssociation were to agree upon a course of study in the essentials of the law and in the principles of jurisprudence which are of universal application, I feel sure that a large majority of our State judiciary and of the local boards would adopt that curriculum as the course of study required of candidates for admission. Such a committee would clearly distinguish between the study of branches of substantive law in regard to which the east and west and north and south of our Commonwealth are at one, and the study of matters of practice and procedure with respect to which a difference of opinion or custom may well prevail in different portions of the State. Our central committee could suggest courses in contracts, torts, real property, equity, corporations, crimes, partnership, evidence, constitutional law, wills and administration, Pennsylvania statute law, etc., etc., coupled with a recommendation of the best text-books and case-books that from time to time make their appearance in these fields, together with references to such current periodical literature as will throw light upon the student's work. Such a work done by a representative body and not put forth with any assumption of the power to command, or with any show of superior learning or intelligence, but solely upon the basis of that community of interest which subsists between those who are engaged in a common work, would undoubtedly command respect, and would, in my judgment, receive on every hand the most careful consideration. It is my earnest hope that the Pennsylvania Bar Association will enter upon the field to which I have endeavored to direct attention, for I feel sure that no department of activity is open to us in which there is more good work to be done, and that there is none in which our efforts can be put forth with greater hope of success than in the field of legal education and admission to the bar.

MARRIED WOMAN

POWER OF DISPOSITION.

Where land is deeded to one on the express trust that he hold it for a married woman as a feme sole, free from any debts of her husband, she cannot, in the absence of express power in the deed, convey it without the joinder of the trustee; at least, where it was deeded to the trustee prior to the adoption of Const. 1868, art. 10, providing that the separate property of a married woman may, with the assent of her husband, be conveyed by her as if she were unmarried, as, even if that presents the imposition of restrictions, in a deed of trust for a married woman, on her power of alienation, it does not affect a prior trust. (Kirby v. Boyette [N. Car.], 21 S. E. Rep. 697.

REVOCABLE LICENSE.

MUNICIPAL CORPORATION - Permission granted by a municipality to private parties to construct drains on highways amounts only to a revocable license. (Eddy v. Granger [R. I.], 31 Atl. Rep. 831.)

NEGOTIABLE INSTRUMENT.-- Where one invests

the payee of a note with the apparent title to it, and a trust deed securing it, an indorsee of the note and deed will take them unaffected by any private agreement between the payee and the maker. (Travelers' Ins. Co. v. Redfield [Colo.], 40 Pac. Rep. 195.)

Correspondence.

UNIFORMITY IN STATE LAWS. Editor of the Albany Law Journal:

If you and your able correspondents succeed in the very laudable effort which has engaged your attention for the last six months, and induce the Congress of the United States to pass a well considered act, establishing a bureau or commission charged with the duty of persuading the various States to enact something like a uniform system of laws governing such general subjects as are liable to affect alike the common interests of all the people in all the States of the Union, you will be justly entitled to go down the ages not only as patriots, but as public benefactors.

No one acquainted with our Constitution, and the limited powers of the Federal government, will