Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1908-01-22
GREAT FLOOD OF LAW.
New Decisions and Statutes Make
Hard Work for the Student.


Hard Work for the Student.
The mass of printed legal decisions
gathered into volumes III the United
States every year is so great-1O0,0OO
pages-that a lawyer, to keep up with
them all, would have to read nearly
eleven and a half large closely written
pages an hour for q 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 in
human rate, he would find at the end
of the year that he had not had time
to glance at a 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 literature of the lay But with
courts in 90 Jurisdictions Counting the
four branches of Federal cOurts) con-
stantly grinding out new decisions the
total can be easily appreciated
One would think that, under the
growing burden of legal tones, the task
Of the law student would become year
~ more difficult and complex. TO the
layman, the student would seem to
have an almost insuperable task Of op-
teal digestion. And the contention that
the task of learning the law is becom-
ing harder would seem to be borne out
by the fact that the New York Univer-
sity Law School, which has the largest
number Of students Of any university
law school in the country lover eight
hundred students this year, has just
announced that beginning with the fall
of 1909, its morning, afternoon and
evening courses in law will be in
creased from two to three years. The
university authorities have found it in
creasingly difficult to train a young
man for the law in two years of study
According to excellent authorities,
however, the law is not necessarily get
ting more complex from mere volume.
It's increasing compleXity comes rather
from new laws covering subjects new
to civilization. Chemistry has brought
to the industrial field many things that
have made necessary new laws. An in
creasing number of laws cluster about
the telephone and it's use. The sky
scrapers, underground railways, wire
less telegraphy, patent fOods-things
like these all bring into being an at
tendant host Of new laws, which are
really only the application of old legal
principles to new conditions. Twenty
five years ago there was practically 10
law on the subject Of electricity. To
day there are volumes. Ten years ago
automobile law was unknown. To-day
there are 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.
Though the law is no harder to learn
in New York than in other States, adj
mission to the bar in New York now
rests upon a comprehensive knowledge
of the law. A lawyer must follow the
progress of the law in his own State
and the United States law, too, and it
is apparent from this that the con
scientious New York lawyer has a rea-
sonably hard time. Two thick volumes
Of statutes show that New York, with
It's population Of 100000, got 1850
pages of new laws in 1906. Englands
with a population Of 100000, had
new statutes amounting to only 438
pages in this period. In New York
there were about 10000 pages Of re-
ported decisions, while all England
showed only 1920 pages. In the big
library of the University Law School,
with its $1,000 volumes, eight little
shelf sections in a corner gallery serve
to contain a double set Of all the vol
umes of decisions handed down in En-
glish courts since 1865.