Dean Scott H. Bice - USC Gould School of Law - University of ...

“A glance at the USC Law School catalogues before Burby arrived indicates onlyscattered courses utilizing case books. Coinciding with Burby’s 1926 arrival, casematerials became part of the way law was taught and learned to the present.““Soon after Bill Burby made the case method the lingua franca ofthe Law School, John Bradway expanded its vocabulary; Bradwaymoved the teaching of law from the case book to the streets.“how. On the first topic, Smith had plenty of company;after 1890, growing numbers of legal mavens — such asJames Brown Scott — argued to make legal educationthe province of law schools and universities rather thanthe uncertain ways of legal apprenticeship. In 1890there were 60 law schools in America; a decade laterthere were 102; Smith, who learned law in Virginia viathe apprentice system and wrote disparagingly thereafterabout the experience, recognized in this movementand the foundling USC Law School confirmation of histhinking.On the second issue, however, Professor Smith andhis dean James Brown Scott, were formidable opponents.Scott, with two degrees from Harvard and a lawdegree from Heidelberg University, possessed the mostformally educated legal mind in the city. His years atHarvard persuaded him that the correct way to teachlaw was by the case system. The case method, thereflected teaching style advanced by ChristopherColumbus Langdell, founding dean of the Harvard LawSchool in 1870. In the Los Angeles Law School’s 1898catalogue, Scott advised prospective students that theprevailing form of “instruction will be conductedaccording to what is known as the ‘case system.’ ” Tounderscore the message, Scott recommended that students“wishing a clear understanding of the case system”would be rewarded by reading Harvard law professorEugene Wambaugh’s “admirable work,” The Studyof Cases (1892).An apostle of Langdell, Scott understood that the casesystem was about both case and system; cases were theprimary material of legal study while system suggestedthe method by which cases were to be studied by students;and, through the process of eduction – theSocratic method – professors would determine what studentswere thinking about a case. For Langdell, writtenappellate cases were the primary source material forlegal study and research; judicial opinions made law.The law library, then, was the laboratory for legal education;the library was to law what the laboratory was tothe study of chemistry and physics; in clear language,Langdell asserted the study of law through cases was science.To abet this scientific inquiry into law, Langdellpublished the first of many casebook collections in1871. Langdell’s years as dean of Harvard Law Schoolreshaped the way Harvard taught law and the Americanlegal academy as well; when Harvard law schoolsneezed, American law schools caught cold.With the verve of the Confederate cavalryofficer that he once was, Smith charged intoLangdell’s arguments. His chief salientassaulted the case system on moral grounds but he alsoquestioned the case method in the name of pedagogicalefficiency. In the classroom the Socratic method wasslow going; at best, it was suitable for degree-wieldingstudents — Harvard students. When Smith commencedhis teaching life in 1898, the Los Angeles Law Schoolaccepted students who were at least 18 years old andwho could demonstrate that their previous educationprepared them to study law; by comparison, Harvardwas only admitting students with college degrees. Thetypical law student in Smith’s classes had not attendedcollege. So, for practical pedagogical reasons, the casesystem was unsuitable for his students. But in “TheTrue Method of Legal Education” (1890), Smith rejectedLangdell’s case system because of its pretensions to be ascience. Langdell’s claim for law as science, as the applicationof inductive thought in search of general principleswithout regard to moral principles was for Smithuntenable. For Smith, law emanated from fundamentalissues of morality and reason, neither of which he discernedin the thinking of his Harvard-trained contemporaries.For reasons of pedagogical efficiency and morality,Smith chose not to teach law at USC using the strictassumptions of Langdell and his followers. An eclecticapproach using the works of legal philosophers, lectures,illustrated with cases from law as well as from literatureand the classics informed Smith’s legal pedagogy;glimpses of early USC Law School catalogues suggestthat most of his faculty colleagues followed his example.Despite his convictions, intellectual courage, and the6 USC LAW • SPRING 2000USC LAW • SPRING 20007