cause of the naturally slow spread of a truth beyond national borders in an applied science.

But its career is not to be bounded by the realms of Anglo-American law. In its emphasis on the inductive process in legal pedagogy, it has yet a solid service to perform in Continental law. Some of us are fond enough to believe that it will still play its part in all of Western Europe, the countries now fettered in method by their codes and by other traditions. The exclusively dogmatic method has inherent shortcomings. There is both room and need, in their system of education, for inductive training. The Langdell system would supply that need. Therefore I believe that it will be adopted and adapted, in due course of destiny.

Signs have appeared there, for some time, of a readiness to appreciate this. In the history of Law, some have long ago begun to use it, in such works as Girard's "Textes du droit romain" and Lörsch and Schröder's "Urkunden zur Geschichte des deutschen Privatrechts." They use it in practice manuals. And they are ripe to use it in the substantive law. What they now need is merely some demonstration of its possibilities in a class-room. Whether that will come about through the missionary work of some European students who have learned the method here, or through the example of some future American exchange professors, remains to be seen. But one may have faith that the need will be some day duly supplied, and that the Langdell method will complete the circuit of that world-influence which it merits.

This would be no more than the repetition of history. For all the great changes of method have spread only slowly from the country of origin to other countries. The "mos Italicus" took its time in reaching France; the "mos Gallicus" found acceptance only later in Germany and Holland; and Savigny's historical method had to wait before it commanded universal adherence in other countries.

V

HAS THE TIME ARRIVED FOR A NEWER METHOD?

In the country of its origin, time enough has not elapsed for the need of a new system to develop. The other great methods ran their race for two centuries or more. But has not time enough elapsed at least for the development of new applications of it?

We must remember two things, in this matter of time. (1) One is that the Langdell method was belated. It came nearly a hundred years—perhaps more - behind its time. English law had long been based chiefly on judicial judgments. For nearly three centuries the reports of cases had been fairly ample. But since the very early 1800's (when Campbell began his Nisi Prius reporting) they had been copious. The method might have been aptly used at any time since (say) 1820, at least. Of course, there was reason enough for the delay. But, so far as concerns its aptness, a method which assumed that the main and ample sources of law for scientific study were printed reports of judgments would have been fully practicable at that date. The facts of law, in short, which the method fitted, were already facts a century ago.

(2) The second thing is that during that century legal conditions in America have ceased to be static. Of course, they are never absolutely static. But the movements of law are apt to be like those of a large river. It may flow on a broad level bed for many miles; the conditions of its movement are the same, in that stretch. But then the level of the country subsides abruptly; a defile is reached; and the smooth stream breaks into a swift torrent of tumultuous rocky rapids; until finally the volume of water demanding exit arrives at rest once more on the lower level in open country. Theoretically a river may descend peacefully (like the Amazon) through its entire length, from mountain to ocean. Practically, most rivers have these occasional sudden stretches of rapid change to the next level. So with Law. But, not to press the analogy too far, the period from 1800 to 1900, in American law, has been on the whole a period of gradual placid progress, through judicial logic and occasional legislative amendment. The present years, however, see us entering on a period of more or less radical change.

Moreover, social change in these days being more conscious than ever before, legal change is likely to be more rapid. The speed of evolution of humanity has increased enormously in ratio with the lapse of time. Paleontologists tell us, for example, that during the Third Interglacial and the Fourth Glacial periods of the world (represented by the Piltdown and the Neanderthal races of men) the time that elapsed was some 125,000 years; but that the entire human progress in the arts of life, made in that immense period, was represented only by improved methods of chipping the surface

of flints for the making of tools. The enormous increases, in the last twenty-five years, of modes of communication have resulted in almost corresponding growth in capacity for exchange, and therefore change, of social ideas. Hence, a change of conditions which might have required a century of time in the 1400's, or even the 1600's, would not now be an anomaly in a quarter of a century.

For these reasons it would not be anomalous to find that a method of legal education, invented half a century ago, and even then half a century belated, might now already be mature for readaptation to new conditions.

What is there, then, in the method which could be supposed not to fit present conditions? It seems to me that one can put a finger on the precise place. That place is what may be called the minor premise of the Langdell syllogism. "First, Law is a Science," was the major syllogism; and no one can be hardy enough to question this. But "Secondly," he announced, "all the available materials of that science are contained in printed books," 14 i. e. in reports of cases. He did not say "reports of cases," but the spirit and the practice of his method were strictly thus limited.15

It is here that the doubt arises. Can we today concede that the reported judicial judgments are the sole sources for the science of Law? And if they are not, if there are other important sources, must not a sound method of legal education make regular use of them also? And, if so, what shall be those uses?

VI

THE SIX-PROCESS METHOD

At this point let me preferably shift the order of thought, and make my proposals after setting forth my own notions of the fundamental processes of Law.

My thesis will be this: Law, as a subject of thought and activity,

14 HARVARD LAW SCHOOL ASSOCIATION, Report OF THE ORGANIZATION AND FIRST GENERAL MEETING (Boston, 1887), 49.

15 On this occasion the speeches all showed that such was the understood implication. Mr. Carter, e. g., referred to "the great and principal cases in which are the real sources of the law" (p. 26). And such was the usage of the School at that time. It was, for instance, not thought necessary in 1887 for the Library to possess a complete set of the statutes of the several states. The main object was to get behind the treatises to the cases.

has several distinct categories or modes of being, and cannot be thought about except in one or another of these processes; hence, any curriculum of legal education must be based on these distinctions, by aiming to develop each process adequately.16

In a former number of this REVIEW 17 I was permitted to set forth a classification of Law into four branches, only two of which are here material. Law was classified according to the different activities of thought which deal with the fact of Law. Law, in the first place, may be conceived of as a thing to be ascertained; i. e. as a mere fact of human conduct; and Law, in the second place, may be conceived of as a thing to be questioned and debated, i. e. as a rule which by some standard ought to be different from what it is. The uncouth names given, for short, to these two general branches of legal science were Nomoscopy and Nomosophy; but the names are immaterial.

Now the first general branch has three subdivisions: (a) We may concern ourselves with ascertaining the actual rule of law of a given moment in a given country, by studying the sources in which that law is expressed; call this, Nomostatics. (b) We may concern ourselves with ascertaining the former condition, history, and development of a rule of law; call this, Nomogenetics. (c) We may concern ourselves with ascertaining the relation between Law and other facts and their sciences; call this, Nomophysics.

The second general branch above has two subdivisions: (1) We may take a standard of logic, analyze the rules of law, and examine their consistency as a system or part of a system; call this, Nomocritics. (2) We may take a standard of ethics, economics, or politics, and examine the rules of law with reference to their conformity to that standard; call this, Nomothetics or Nomopolitics.

But there is also a third general branch (not taken up in the above-cited article). We may take the Law of a given community, or one or more rules of it, and compare it with the law of another community, with reference to one or all of the above features, i. e. Comparative Law, or Supra-national Law.

What is the significance of these distinctions for legal education?

16 My conclusions will coincide in some respects with those of Professor Redlich, in his recent report to the Carnegie Foundation, but are reached by a different path. 17 28 HARV. L. REV. 1 (November, 1914); also in the writer's Cases on Torts, vol. II, Appendix A.

The significance of them is this: All of the above ways of thinking about Law are inherent and unavoidable, and are used in a lawyer's practical activity. Some are used always more than others, and some are used at certain periods of a nation's history more than others. But all are used, and all are necessary and inevitable. Hence, legal education should endeavor to train the student in the use of all of them, and not merely in one or two of them.

For educational purposes, then, how do they group themselves practically? That is, how far are they so distinct, in the mental processes involved, that practically they require separate attention in educational method?

Here, of course, experience as a student and a teacher comes into play. Speaking from such experience, I am convinced that there are substantially six distinct mental processes, which need separate attention and cultivation.

Without adhering formally, therefore, to the above artificial nomenclature, let me briefly set forth these six kinds of mental process which need to be cultivated in the embryo lawyer.

1. Analytic process. The first is the process of analyzing the judicial decisions, to determine the Law as it is, by tracing the logical implications of general principles as revealed in specific cases.

This process is what the case-study method provides for the student. And it is the only process (of the six) that it provides. Whether we are searching for the rule of mutual consent in contracts, or for the rule of liability of individual partners to firm creditors, or the rule of privilege for interested persons in defamation, or for any other actual rule of law, the process is always one of dissection or analysis, in logical detail.

This is indeed the process most used by practitioners in their ascertainment of the existing Law (Nomostatics). And in the past and present phase of our legal sources it is the most usually needed process. Therefore it calls for thorough mastery. And the great service of Langdell's method was and is that it supplies that mastery. But that process is not the only process of thought used and needed by the lawyer or the legal scholar. And in the coming state of our legal sources it will occupy, as a process, a place of less relative importance than hitherto (though still a larger place presumably than any one of the others). This was the shortcoming of the case-study method, a shortcoming which in changed conditions may be termed serious.