WOE UNTO YOU, LAWYERS!

study. Which is that all the legal principles they ever learn amount to no more than
tricks of the trade and that all the courses they ever take are courses in P. and P.
And so the law schools stick to their principles, and to the pretense that the
principles stand for eternal verities which lawyers – after learning how to do it –
graciously apply to the hurly-burly of man’s earthly affairs. The principles, as a
matter of fact, used to be dished at the students without so much as any trimmings
around them. That was when law schools were an innovation, scorned by most
lawyers as an effete and none too efficient preparation for the practice of law, just as
schools of journalism are scorned by most newspapermen today.
In those days, and for some time after, law students learned practically
nothing but naked principles. The principles of each “field” of Law were sorted out
and arranged by sub-principles and counter-principles in a “hornbook” of Torts or
Trusts or whatever. The students studied their hornbooks, listened to lectures
devoted mainly to explaining and “reconciling” the principles so that they appeared
to fit into one neat little ball of abstract knowledge, and religiously memorized the
principles. They might never so much as read the record of a single lawsuit. Why
should they clutter their minds with disconcerting and trivial facts when they were
engaged in learning great and general truths?
But late in the last century, a reputed revolution in the manner of teaching
Law began to take the law schools by storm. The new idea was to feed the students
the opinions written by judges in actual cases and let them fish for principles among
the judges’ words. Obviously, it was not the intention of this new approach to legal
education to minimize the importance of principles as such. The purpose was to let
the students ponder how The Law in action made use of its principles, for judicial
opinions amounted to no more than explanations of actual legal decisions in terms of
the principles that “controlled.” The students still had to learn their principles but
they had to find them first.
Of course, the students did not have to fish in the dark. In each “field” of Law,
a big bunch of opinions was gathered together by some recognized authority in that
branch of legal learning and was then arranged, according to the principles
illustrated by the opinions, in a “casebook.” The students then read the right cases in
the right order and the principles practically popped out at them from the pages. The
facts behind any case did not really matter and were often omitted entirely from the
reprint of the judge’s opinion, as were the parts of the opinion that dealt with other
“fields” of Law. What was important, still, was to learn the deathless principles,
enhanced a bit in impressiveness by the fact that they were now taken right out of the
judges’ mouths.
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