Montagues? Capulets

The state of learning in Harvard Law School was gently tut-tutted last week in Chicago, during the annual convention of the Association of American Law Schools. Reported Harvard Professor Zechariah Chafee Jr.: "At present any allusion to science, literature or history is sure to be meaningless to at least half the college graduates in the room. An occasional call for a show of hands has revealed only a scattered few who had read Pickwick Papers. And the use of the relatives of Romeo & Juliet to clarify (supposedly) a complicated pedigree case led to an overheard conversation between two students: 'Who were these Montagues and Capulets, anyhow?' "

Professor Chafee, admitting it is difficult to prescribe a uniform pre-legal curriculum for everyone, declared: "A chief count in the indictment of college education is that it fails to develop a desire for reading books in fields outside of courses."

Other matters of moment to the convened law teachers: discussion of social planning through law, by Dean Albert James Harno of the University of Illinois College of Law, president of the Association; suggestion that legal ethics are best absorbed by a student working in a law office (Lawyer R. Allan Stephens of Springfield, Ill.); the report of the Committee on Co-operation with the American Law Institute, dealing with restatement of U. S. lawr, a monster enterprise of which one volume has already been published.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.