Law Department of the State University of Iowa.

accompanied from day to day with explana tions and more or less formal lectures. This school claims the distinction, how ever, of originating, and still preserving, a plan of instruction not in general use. In 1875, Dr. Hammond, while at the head of the school, prepared and had printed in pam phlets of about a hundred pages each, synop ses of his courses of lectures on Real Property

and Equity, intending that the students should use these in connection with the lectures, to give them more definite state ments of principles and citations of au thorities for consulta tion than they would be likely to get in notes. The plan was found to work well, and was extended by Dr. Hammond to Torts, and perhaps other subjects; and while these topics are not now taught here in this manner, it be ing thought advisable in a more extended course of study to sub stitute text-books on AUSTIN such important subjects, yet the plan has been retained and used to advantage in con nection with lectures on Criminal Law and Procedure, an outline of which subject, cover ing brief statements of the principles and references to cases and portions of text-books which can be profitably read in illustration of them, is put into the hands of the student. Less extended synopses of Elementary Law, and the Law of Corporations, and of Carriers, are used in the same way. The plan in volves an oral exposition of the subject by the instructor, accompanied each day by a quiz on the matter of the previous lecture,

383

for which the student has made preparation by a study of the points relating to that mat ter found in the synopsis, and extended read ing of cases there referred to. These cases are quite numerous and it is not expected that each student shall read them all, but the more important of them are briefly stated in the class by students who have read them and prepared to make such statement. In this way the student gets the vivid first im pressions which the lecture system is so well suited to impart, and has also the ad vantage of printed statements of the im portant rules, reduced to definite and concise form. He reads the cases cited, not merely to verify statements of the lecture or syn opsis, but to give ad ditional information as to details and the ap plication of principles to particular classes of facts. In the exercises of the school quizzing is given systematic at tention. It is fully ADAMS. recognized that ability to answer questions is not a conclusive test of legal knowledge, espe cially if the questions are such that they call largely for an exercise of memory; but by so framing the questions that they demand a use of the reasoning powers and test the ability to apply principles to facts, the exer cise may be made valuable as a means of instruction and not merely a test of the thoroughness of the student's work. For the further cultivation of the student's faculty of explanation and expression, he is required to undergo written examination on each subject of the course, at the time of