A New Dean

Huger Wilkinson Jervey--to the accompaniment of speeches by Harlan Fiske Stone, Attorney General of the U. S., Benjamin Cardozo, Justice of the New York Court of Appeals, and Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University--was inaugurated last week Dean of the Faculty of the School of Law of Columbia University. Dean Jervey retired a year ago from the Manhattan law firm of Satterlee. Canfield & Stone to become a professor in the Columbia Law School. In charge of the instruction in the courses in Personal Property and Trusts,-- he quickly made his alert personality felt by students and faculty. Born in Charleston, S. C, in 1879, he was educated at the Charleston High School (1896), Charleston College (1896-97), the University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn. (B.A. 1900 and M.A. 1901), Johns Hopkins (1902) and (comparatively late in life--at the age of 34) at the Columbia Law School (LL.B. 1913). From 1903 to 1909, he was Professor of Greek at the University of the South. During the World War, he campaigned in France, first as a lieutenant with the 304th Field Artillery and afterwards as a major of the General Staff Corps. He has always kept up his classical interests. He spent last summer with one Will Percy, Mississippi poet, in Greece and Asia Minor.

Famed Schools. Columbia and Harvard have always been recognized as leaders in U. S. legal education. The history of the former brings to mind the great names of Kent and Dwight; the history of the latter recalls the impressive personalities of Story and Ames.

The Case Book Method. In the 1880's, Harvard, under Langdell, introduced the so-called case book method of legal instruction. Columbia adopted the same system, when, a few years later, Keener was appointed Dean of the Columbia Law School. This change, however, brought about the resignation of practically the whole law faculty. But today, after much warm and widespread opposition, this method of instruction is employed in virtually every large law school in the U. S. and it is beginning to receive a certain approval in England and Canada.

The case book system consists of requiring the students to master the facts and legal principles of the leading cases, as actually adjudicated by the courts, of the subjects under discussion. The so called textbook method consists of studying the works of the recognized legal authorities, such as Blackstone's Commentaries, Minor's Institutes, Kent's Commentaries, Story's Commentaries and Greenleaf's Evidence in their revised editions; and the works of numerous other more modern writers, such as Williston's Contracts, Wigmore's Evidence, Pollock's Torts.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, of the U. S. Supreme Court, formerly a student at Harvard under the textbook system, and a teacher at Harvard under the case book system, is an ardent advocate of the latter method. In an address entitled The Use of Law Schools, he once said: "Under the influence of Germany, science is gradually drawing legal history into its sphere. The facts are being scrutinized by eyes microscopic in intensity and panoramic in scope. . . . I do think that, in the thoroughness of their training, and in the systematic character of their knowledge, the young men of the present day start better equipped when they begin their practical experience than it was possible for their predecessors to be."

Other Deans. Famed law school deans of the present time are Roscoe Pound, of Harvard; John Henry Wigmore, of Northwestern University ; William Minor Lile, of the University of Virginia; James Parker Hall, of the University of Chicago; Thomas W. Swan of Yale.

--Trusts is an important course in a law school curriculum. It must not be confused with the popular designation of industrial combinations. It deals with the legal relations arising from holding property under an obligation to employ it as directed by the person from whom it was received.