158 LAW 



the curriculum and in the mode of teaching and study. 

 In two main respects the curriculum differs from the 

 accepted American plan, it includes more of political 

 and legal science, i. e., non-private law subjects, and it 

 makes fewer subdivisions of the private law. For example, 

 the three-year curriculum for the Licence degree at Paris 

 covers, respectively, six, six, and eleven courses; of these 

 twenty-three courses, three are in political economy, two 

 in Roman law, two in international law, three in public 

 and administrative law, one in history, and one in colonial 

 legislation; leaving three for commercial law, one for 

 criminal law, two for civil procedure, and five for civil or 

 private law. The last group would with us be so sub- 

 divided as to form at least two thirds of the curriculum. 

 In the curriculum for the Doctorate, all of the above 

 subjects are pursued in advanced topics, with fewer 

 lecture hours and with opportunity for specialization. 

 In some of the provincial universities (but not in Paris), 

 there is a separate Institut Pratique de droit, and (in 

 Paris also) an Ecole du Notariat, where the technical 

 niceties of pleading, practice, and conveyancing, are 

 specially studied. Thus the foreign student is less 

 likely, under the regular University curriculum, to find 

 the local practitioner's point of view as prominently 

 emphasized as it is in most American schools. 



Methods of Instruction. The American law student, 

 trained in the case-system of study and the Socratic meth- 

 od of instruction, finds himself in the French law school 

 an attendant at formal lectures, where he is a mere 

 "auditeur." The size of classes (especially at Paris), 

 and the traditions of French teaching, have not encourag- 

 ed the close contact of faculty and student that obtains 

 in the best American schools today. This may be at 

 first a cause of disappointment, and even of discourage- 



