Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-12-28
OF LEGAL CASES
DEMANDS CHANGE.
Constant Filing of New Statutes Is
Overwhelming the Law
$50, Students. -...'

The mass of printed legal decisions
gathered into volumes in the United
States every year is so great-lOoOoo
pages-that lawyer, to keep up with
them all. would havo 10 read nearly eleven
ana a half large. close-written pages an
hour for twenty four hours of all the 365
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 a sim
gle one of the $500 pages of Ameri.
can statute law that had been added to
our libraries during that time. Few lay
men realize the great volume OF these
constant additions to the literature of
the law. But with courts in fifty juris-
dictions Counting the four branches OF
federal courts) constantly grinding out
new statutes the total can be easily sp-
preciated.
One would think that under the grow
ing burden of legal tones. the task OF
the law student would become yearly
more difficult and complex. To the lay.
man, the student would seem TO have
an almost insuperable task OF optical di.
gestion. And the contention that tho
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 tower 800 students this
year,. has just announced that. beginning
with the fall of 1909, it's morning. after
noon and evening courses in law Will Do
increased from two to three years ne
university authorities have found II IN
creasingly difficult to train young
man for the law in two years OF study.
All Sorts of New Laws.
According to excellent authorities. how
ever, the law is not necessarily getting
more complex from mere volume. Its
increasing complexity comes rather from
new laws covering subjects new to civili-
zatien Chemistry has brought to the
industrial field many things that have ne"
cessitated new laws. An increasing num-
Der of laws clusters about the telephone
and its use. The skyscrapers. UNDER
ground railways wireless telegraphy. pat
ent foods-things like these all bring into
being an attendant host of new laws.
which are really but the application OF OLD
legal principles to new conditions. twenty
five years ago there was practically no
law on the subject of electricity To-
day there are volumes. Ten years ago
automobile law was unknown. loday
there are many cases, 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
requires greater time today, declared
Prof Leslie J. Tomphins OF. the FACULTY
of the New York University Law Schooi.
lis similar to the reason why the term Of
study for the degree of doctor OF medl"
cine has grown from two to four years.
The principles of medicine have come To
apply to so many newly discovered physi-
cal conditions, such as the application
of electricity. radium. et1.. that the stu.
dent naturally takes longer. The same II
true of the law.
Demands Made Of Students.
There are now twenty-four different
subjects 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 mentaI
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 now rests upon q
comprehensive knowledge of the law. A.
lawyer must follow the. progress of the
law in his. own state and the United
States law, toe, and it IS apparent from
this that the conscientious New York law
YER HAS a Reasonably hard time. Two
thick volumes of statutes show that New
York, with its population of S0OO,OO0 got
1850 pages of new laws in 1906 England.
with population of 10000. coo, had new
amounting. to but 43S pages dur
ing this period, In New York there were
about IA, 800 pages of reported decisions,
willis all England showed only 400
pages. in the big library of the univer-
sity law school. with its 81 LOGO volumes,
eight little shelf sections in corner gall
lcry serve to contain a double set of all
the volumes of decisions handed down
in English courts since 1865 -.-