468 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



not very encouraging. Let us take those law schools which are of 

 most importance, either by reason of their curriculum or of their 

 attendance. Harvard, witli a three years' course, devotes two 

 hours a week for one year to criminal law (including criminal pro- 

 cedure). Allowing nine months of four weeks each to the scho- 

 lastic year, and a weekly average of eighteen hours, it will be 

 found that the time devoted to the study of criminal law (includ- 

 ing procedure) is a little over iliree 'per cent of the entire course. 

 By a similar computation we find that Columbia devotes to crimi- 

 nal law (and procedure) a little over four per cent of the entire 

 course, which is about the percentage given by Yale and a little 

 lower than that of the Universities of Michigan, Cornell, and New 

 York respectively. 



These computations are based upon figures given in the cata- 

 logues of those universities, or kindly furnished by the deans. 

 Nothing more eloquent of the decline of the study of criminal 

 jurisprudence in our country could be cited. But the catalogues 

 of these law schools add further proof. At none of them is there 

 a professor whose instruction is confined solely to criminal law. 

 Nearly all the instructors in criminal law devote but a small part 

 of their time (and probably of their study) to the teaching of this 

 subject. In Columbia tlie instructor in criminal law is professor 

 of international law and diplomacy; * at Harvard the incumbent of 

 the chair of criminal law teaches the law of carriers ; that of Michi- 

 gan teaches the law of bills and notes and of public corporations; 

 that of the New York University the law of sales and wills. It 

 is, moreover, a significant fact that the faculties of the above- 

 named institutions, while recommending to law students the op- 

 tional study of political economy, constitutional history, taxation, 

 physical science, English literature, and modern languages as con- 

 ducive to a higher standard of legal culture, utterly fail to advise 

 them to pursue courses in criminal anthropology, criminology, or 

 penology. In other words, it is deemed advisable that the future 

 lawyer should bring to the aid of his civil practice the complemen- 

 tary knowledge of French and history, for instance, but it is of 

 no importance that he should be acquainted with the results of 

 modern criminologic and penologic research. Thus the conclu- 

 sion is forced upon us that the study of criminal law, whose 

 importance I have endeavored to set forth, has become a subject 

 at sufferance in our universities, a practically optional course 



* This has since been changed ; but the change malces the case worse, as the new in- 

 structor in criminal law teaches not only two branches of the law (as under last year's 

 course), but five — viz., Criminal Law, V/ills and Administration, Common-Law Practice and 

 Pleading Bankruptcy, and Bailments and Carriers. 



