WM. R. VANCE, Yale University Law School, General Editor Administrative Law-By Ernst Freund, Professor of Law, Chicago University. Admiralty-By George DeForest Lord, Lecturer on Admiralty, Columbia University, and George C. Sprague, Assistant Professor of Law, New York University. Agency, 2d Ed.-By Edwin C. Goddard, Professor of Law, University of Michigan. Bills and Notes, 2d Ed.-By Howard L. Smith, Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin, and Underhill Moore, Professor of Law, Columbia University. Carriers, 2d Ed.-By Frederick Green, Professor of Law, University of Illinois. Conflict of Laws, 2d Ed.-By Ernest G. Lorenzen, Professor of Law, Yale University. Constitutional Law, with Supplement-By James Parker Hall, Dean of Chicago University Law School. Contracts By Arthur L. Corbin, Professor of Law, Yale University. Corporations, 2d Ed.-By Harry S. Richards, Dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School. Criminal Law, 2d Ed.-By William E. Mikell, Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Criminal Procedure-By William E. Mikell, Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Damages-By Floyd R. Mechem, Professor of Law, Chicago University, and Barry Equity-By Walter W. Cook, Professor of Law, Yale University, 3 volumes. Federal Jurisdiction and Procedure-By Harold R. Medina, Associate Professor of Future Interests-By Richard R. Powell, Professor of Law, Columbia University, assisted by Lewis M. Simes, Professor of Law, Ohio State University. Insurance-By William R. Vance, Professor of Law, Yale University. International Law-By James Brown Scott, Lecturer on International Law at the fornia. Mortgages-By James L. Parks, Professor of Law, University of Missouri. Oil and Gas-By Victor H. Kulp, Professor of Law, University of Oklahoma. Partnership-By Eugene A. Gilmore, Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin, with Supplement by William E. Britton, Professor of Law, University of Illinois. Persons-By Albert M. Kales, late of the Chicago Bar, and Chester G. Vernier, Professor of Law, Stanford University. Pleading (Code)-By Archibald H. Throckmorton, Professor of Law, Western Reserve University. Pleading (Common Law)-By Clarke B. Whittier, Professor of Law, Stanford University, and Edmund M. Morgan, Professor of Law, Harvard University. Practice (Trial)-By James P. McBaine, Dean of the University of Missouri Law School. Procedure (Civil)-By Roswell Magill, Professor of Law, Columbia University. Property (Future Interests)-By Albert M. Kales, late of the Chicago Bar. University. Property (Rights In Land)-By Harry A. Bigelow, Professor of Law, Chicago University. Property (Titles to Real Property)-By Ralph W. Aigler, Professor of Law, University of Michigan. Property (Wills, Descent and Administration)-By George P. Costigan, Jr., Professor of Law, University of California. Public Utilities-By Young B. Smith, Professor of Law, Columbia University, and WEST PUBLISHING CO. ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA C17717-1b ON THE CONFLICT OF LAWS SELECTED FROM DECISIONS OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN COURTS BY ERNEST G. LORENZEN PROFESSOR OF LAW, YALE UNIVERSITY AMERICAN CASEBOOK SERIES WILLIAM REYNOLDS VANCE GENERAL EDITOR SECOND EDITION ST. PAUL WEST PUBLISHING COMPANY 1924 THE first of the American Casebook Series, Mikell's Cases on Criminal Law, issued in December, 1908, contained in its preface an able argument by Mr. James Brown Scott, the General Editor of the Series, in favor of the case method of law teaching. Until 1915 this preface appeared in each of the volumes .published in the series. But the teachers of law have moved onward, and the argument, that was necessary in 1908 has now become needless. That such is the case becomes strikingly manifest to one examining three important documents that fittingly mark the progress of legal education in America. In 1893 the United States Bureau of Education published a report on Legal Education prepared by the American Bar Association's Committee on Legal Education, and manifestly the work of that Committee's accomplished chairman, William G. Hammond, in which the three methods of teaching law then in vogue—that is, by lectures, by text-book, and by selected cases—were described and commented upon, but without indication of preference. The next report of the Bureau of Education dealing with legal education, published in 1914, contains these unequivocal statements: * * "To-day the case method forms the principal, if not the exclusive, method of teaching in nearly all of the stronger law schools of the country. Lectures on special subjects are of course still delivered in all law schools, and this doubtless always will be the case. But for staple instruction in the important branches of common law the case has proved itself as the best available material for use practically everywhere. * The case method is to-day the principal method of instruction in the great majority of the schools of this country." But the most striking evidence of the present stage of development of legal instruction in American Law Schools is to be found in the special report; made by Professor Redlich to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, on "The Case Method in American Law Schools." Professor Redlich, of the Faculty of Law in the University of Vienna, was brought to this country to make a special study of methods of legal instruction in the United States from the standpoint of one free from those prejudices necessarily engendered in American teachers through their relation to the struggle for supremacy so long, and at one time so vehemently, waged among the rival systems. From this masterly report, so replete with brilliant analysis and discriminating comment, the following brief extracts are taken. Speaking of the text-book method Professor Redlich says: "The principles are laid down in the text-book and in the professor's lectures, ready made and neatly rounded, the predigested essence (iii) of many judicial decisions. The pupil has simply to accept them and to inscribe them so far as possible in his memory. In this way the scientific element of instruction is apparently excluded from the very first. Even though the representatives of this instruction certainly do regard law as a science-that is to say, as a system of thought, a grouping of concepts to be satisfactorily explained by historical research and logical deduction-they are not willing to teach this science, but only its results. The inevitable danger which appears to accompany this method of teaching is that of developing a mechanical, superficial instruction in abstract maxims, instead of a genuine intellectual probing of the subject-matter of the law, fulfilling the requirements of a science." Turning to the case method Professor Redlich comments as follows: "It emphasizes the scientific character of legal thought; it goes now a step further, however, and demands that law, just because it is a science, must also be taught scientifically. From this point of view it very properly rejects the elementary school type of existing legal education as inadequate to develop the specific legal mode of thinking, as inadequate to make the basis, the logical foundation, of the separate legal principles really intelligible to the students. Consequently, as the method was developed, it laid the main emphasis upon precisely that aspect of the training which the older text-book school entirely neglected the training of the student in intellectual independence, in individual thinking, in digging out the principles through penetrating analysis of the material found within separate cases; material which contains, all mixed in with one another, both the facts, as life creates them, which generate the law, and at the same time rules of the law itself, component parts of the general system. In the fact that, as has been said before, it has actually accomplished this purpose, lies the great success of the case method. For it really teaches the pupil to think in the way that any practical lawyer-whether dealing with written or with unwritten law-ought to and has to think. It prepares the student in precisely the way which, in a country of case law, leads to full powers of legal understanding and legal acumen; that is to say, by making the law pupil familiar with the law through incessant practice in the analysis of law cases, where the concepts, principles, and rules of Anglo-American law are recorded, not as dry abstractions, but as cardinal realities in the inexhaustibly rich, ceaselessly fluctuating, social and economic life of man. Thus in the modern American law school professional practice is preceded by a genuine course of study, the methods of which are perfectly adapted to the nature of the common law." The general purpose and scope of this series were clearly stated in the original announcement: "The General Editor takes pleasure in announcing a series of scholarly casebooks, prepared with special reference to the needs and limi |