New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1907-10-20
GREAT FLOOD OF LAW
Decisions and Ne7U Statutes an L. s.
amount to 125 900 Pages annually.

The mass of printed legal decisions gathered
into volumes in the United States every year is
so great-1O0 900 pages-that a lawyer. to keep
up with them all, would have to read nearly
eleven and half large, closely written pages
an hour for tWenty-fOur hours OF all the 800
days in the year. He would not have time TO
eat or sleep, much less attend TO his practice.
And even if he were physically able TO keep
driving through the legal literature at this
inhuman rate. he would find at the end of the
year that he had not had time to glance at
single one of the $4,000 pages of American
statute law that had been added TO the libraries
in that time. Few laymen realize the great
volume of these constant additions to the lit
erature of the law But with courts in fifty
Jurisdictions Counting the four branches of
federal courts) constantly grinding out new
decisions the total can be easily appreciated.
one would think that. under the growing bur
den of legal tones. the task of the law student
would become yearly more difficult and complex
To the layman, the student would seem to have
an almost insUperable task of optical digestion.
And the contention that the task of learning the
law Is becoming harder would seem TO be borne
out by the fact that the New York University
Law School, which has the largest number or
students OF any university law school in the
country lover eight hundred students this year,,
has just announced that. beginning with the
fall or 1909, its morning. afternoon and evening
courses In law will be increased from two to
three years. The university authorities have
man for the law in two years of study.
According 10 excellent authorities, however,
the law is not necessarily getting more complex
from mere volume. Its increasing comPlexity
comes rather from new laws covering subjects
new to civilization. Chemistry has brought 10
the industrial field many things that have made
necessary new laws. An increasing number of
laws cluster about the telephone and its use.
The s<yscrapers underground railways wire
less telegraphy. patent foods-things like these
all bring into being an attendant host of lew
laws. which are really only the application Of
old legal principles 10 new conditions Twenty
five years ago there was practically no law on
the subject Of electricity. To-day there
volumes. Ten years ago automobile law was
unknown. To-day there many cases. a
book or two and any number of statutes. Ten
years from now the law of the airship may be
an established factor in our legal literature
The real reason why the study of law
quires greater time to-day" declared Professor
Leslie J. TOmpkins OF the faculty OF the New
York Law School. "is similar to the reason why
the term of study for the degree of Doctor of
Medicine has grown from two to four years.
The principles of medicine have come to apply
10 so many newly discovered physical condi-
lions, such the application of electricity
radium, etc, that the student naturally takes
longer. The same is true of the law.
There are now twenty-four different sub
jeCts which the young student seeking to cover
a complete knowledge of the law in general
ought to take. To cover these adequately in
three years he will find himself devoting eight
hours of mental effort day during the terms"
Though the law is no harder to learn In New
YORK than IN other states. admission to the
bar in New York rests upon a COmprehens-
I've knowledge or the law. lawyer must fol-
low the progress Of the law in his own state
and the United States law. too. and It is ap-
parent from this that the conscientious New
York lawyer has reasonably hard time. Two
thick volumes of statutes show that New York
with its population of S.OOO.O0O. got $50 pages
Of laws in 1906. England, with a popuIa-
ton Of 4OOOOOO, had new statutes amount
ing to only 43S pages in this period. In New
York there about 1O.5tN pages of re-
ported decisions, while all England showed only
1900 pages In the big library of the Uni
versity Law School. with its 1000 volumes,
eight little shelf sections in a corner gallery
serve TO contain a double set Of all the volumes
of decisions handed down in English courts
since 1865.