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The common law and the case method in American university law schools
The common law and the case method in American university law schools Author:Josef Redlich Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: RISE OF THE CASE METHOD These two older forms of the American law school show, it may be here remarked, the closest relationship with the methods of legal edu... more »cation that had long been in use on the European continent. Following these appeared that mode of instruction which, historically considered, is the third and most recent in American law, the so-called case method. Whatever judgment may be passed upon the significance and value of this method, one thing is clear at the outset even to the continental observer: it is an entirely original creation of the American mind in the realm of law, and must be comprehended and appraised as such. It is indeed particularly noteworthy that this new creation of instruction in the common law sprang from the thought and individual characteristics of a single man, Christopher C. Langdell, who, as the originator of this method, became the reformer of the Harvard Law School, and in this way of American university law schools in general.1 In trying to explain the essence of Langdell's method, one is involuntarily reminded of the proposition that all great discoveries are, at bottom, extremely simple; that once these innovations have been pushed through, they are regarded as almost self- evident. Great as was the opposition and antagonism which Langdell's method of legal instruction encountered at the outset, it has now for some time been just as warmly defended by many American lawyers, as the only conceivable and successful method of teaching English law. Before I come to pass judgment upon this view, which prominent American lawyers have often expressed to me, I must necessarily first present with the requisite thoroughness the essential features of the method. No better account of what Langdell sought and to a great extent himself accom...« less