Plaintiff

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To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

A recent issue of the CRIMSON carried on the front page this heading: Pound Defends Case System. These expressions therein quoted are hardly strong enough to support the connotations of the term "defense". The case is more serious than that. They imply an unawareness of the need for a defense.

In the minds of those of us who are left to stumble on the law wherever we can find it according to the "system", certain constantly recurring doubts very early crystallize.

As to those subjects, e.g. torts and criminal law; which it is felt are peculiarly unsuited to casebook instruction it is possible to formulate very specific adverse criticisms: 1. that the material is placed before the student in a form at once fragmentary and incoherent. 2. that the books are necessarily choked with irrelevant matter which overwhelms the learner and, so far from stimulating his mental processes, deadens them. 3. that the knowledge imparted is often startling in its superficiality and precarious by reason of its want of foundation.

Finality is not claimed for the above list. Very possibly other equally important defects have been overlooked. But it is confidently believed that those law school men whose mental efforts are not quickened altogether by the voice of authority will recognize the justice of those here set down.

As the case system abhors abstractions so should those seeking its modification. The first year course in Civil Procedure is an outstanding example of an attempt to impose on materials stubbornly renitent a scheme of presentation foreign to the subject. The difficulties enumerated above are encountered with wearisome incessancy throughout the year. In Property I Professor Edward Warren's casebook is an amazing confession of the hopelessness of the task which it essays. The pages are heavily laden with so-called "notes" by the author and extracts from the texts of Littleton, Coke, Black stone. Fearne, Washburn and others calculated to bring to light the shreds of learning which the cases have obscured. To call such a book a casebook is an egregious misnomer, and with it as the basis of instruction the "system" under which the course is conducted might be more aptly termed the "case, note and extract system." The well known ability of the legal scholar who compiled this strange work serves only to accentuate how insuperable are the difficulties in the way of the satisfactory adaptation of the case method to Property 1. As to the course on contracts the casebook aided by an excellent treatise, and when expounded by a master, does its work well. How it would fare if unsupported by either of these props is a dubious question. Of the situation in the second and third year nothing is known but much is heard.

Naturally an arrangement so repugnant to common sense tends to correct itself Though Warren's casebook remains nominally the basis of Property L. actually the cases which it contains on convincing, the very heart of the subject, are used by the students merely as supplements to their reading in the texts of Bigelow, Introduction to the Law of Real Property, and Holdsworth. An Historical Introduction to the Land Law. Tiffany's pretties is extensively used in connection with other parts of the course. In Civil Procedure various texts on common law pleading. Clark on Code Pleading, Professor Scott's little book, and Professor Morgan's Introduction together with various law review articles constitute the materials with which the men counteract by self-help defective instruction. Already the case system as applied to these courses is in large measure a legal education.

The drift here adverted to will continue. Newer, more comprehensive and convenient texts will appear from the pens of professors of other law schools and will be worked in within the limits of the abuse of the existing method. It is inconceivable that present conditions will continue to be accepted as ultimate in the perfectibility of legal education.

In this re-attainment of perspective, a movement looking toward the sane use of a good thing, the faculty of the Harvard Law School should take the lead. The students should not be left to cut through the fog alone. To ignore or belittle the problem or discourage its discussion cannot in any event suppress its open agitation much longer. The experience of the men who have to use the casebooks demands a fair and candid re-examination of the rational basis of the case system and its re-evaluation with reference to the separate subjects to which it is applied. Very truly yours,   K. M. White '26.