familiar with his case brings out forcibly and prominently the questions of fact and law, and enables the appellate court to arrive at conclusions with less liability to error than where cases are submitted on

printed papers. The most satisfactory appellate judges are those who are most willing to hear argument, and who assume that intelligent and conscientious counsel, who have devoted weeks or perhaps months to the study of the cause, are presumptively able to throw light upon the case that will aid the Court in its decision.

We cannot too often remind the bar and the bench of those often-quoted but never trite words of Lord Bacon, as true to-day as they were three hundred years ago :

"Patience and gravity of hearing is an essential part of justice, and an over-speaking judge is no well-tuned cymbal. It is no grace to a judge first to find that which he might have heard in due time from the bar, or to show quickness of conceit in cutting off evidence or counsel too short, or to prevent information by questions, though pertinent. . . . Let not the judge meet the cause half way, nor give occasion to the party to say his counsel or proofs were not heard."

ESSAY ON JUDICATURE.

Third In conclusion, a few practical hints as to the presentation of a cause in an appellate court.

The first and most important qualification for a successful advocate before an appellate tribunal is the ability to concisely, accurately, clearly, and forcibly state the facts of the case, so far as they are material, to enable the Court to pass upon the questions of law. Counsel who can accomplish this without unnecessary repetition, and without reading to the Court

tedious extracts from the record, has accomplished more than half the battle. If the Court is made to understand the facts accurately, then in a large proportion of cases the conclusions of law follow almost necessarily therefrom.

A second qualification for the counsel in an appellate court is to be able to state his law points clearly and incisively, referring briefly to the general principles on which he depends, and avoiding as far as possible all tedious references to authorities, which should be set forth fully in his printed. brief.

Thirdly, the arts of rhetoric are of little avail nowadays before our appellate courts. A few suggestive illustrations are not out of place, nor should the advocate disregard such care as may be necessary to choose apt language, and to avoid a slovenly or shiftless mode of utterance of his thoughts. Any attempt, however, at declamation, or what is commonly known as oratory, before an appellate court is wholly out of place, and tends to bring the lawyer who uses it into disrepute with the Court. Appellate judges are very sensitive to any apparent attempt to appeal to their emotions by such elocutionary efforts as might be appropriate before a jury, or upon the stump, or even in a legislative debate.

Finally, it is the duty of the advocate to be truthful and candid with the Court. The duties of Court and counsel are reciprocal. The Court owes you the duty of a careful, patient, and respectful hearing; you owe the Court the duty of a candid, truthful statement of facts, and an equally candid and truthful presentation of authorities. The lawyer who acquires a reputation in an appellate court of misstating the evidence, or of misrepresenting the authorities, soon loses the respect of the Court, and is hampered by a presumption against

On

him in the presentation of his cause. the other hand, a lawyer who is known to the judges as habitually truthful and straightforward in the presentation of a case, starts with a presumption in his favor, which, from the mere standpoint of expediency, aside from the standpoint of professional ethics, is of the highest value. I do not mean, however, by calling attention to the question of expediency, to slight the importance of professional ethics. Nothing is farther from the truth than the common impression among laymen that the lawyer regards everything as justifiable that aids him in winning his cause. On the contrary, no honorable lawyer will in

tentionally misstate the evidence, or misquote an authority, or pervert or distort a principle of law for the purpose of temporary success in the case at bar. I believe no higher standard of ethics exists anywhere than the standard in our profession. The great jurists who have laid down from the bench the doctrines of justice and equity and right conduct which are the just pride of the common law, were men who were trained in the contests of the bar.. You have high standards to live up to and high examples to follow, and I believe that the coming generation of lawyers will do their part towards upholding these standards and imitating these examples.

The true aim of the advocate, he who aspires to a high place in the profession, should be to master the law as a science, and to leave no door of her temple unopened beyond, from or through which knowledge in any department or branch could be derived.

That student of the law whose aim is highest must needs study from the foundations upward, rather than from precedents or recorded decisions, inward or downward.

The fault of modern legal education is most conspicuous where it ignores the fundamental principles of a science conceded to be exact, but whose study must needs be complete, exhaustive, organic, and profound to him who would absorb it, because the neophite has neither time, inclination, nor opportunity, in the present schools of law, to do more than classify its outlines, much less to master its principles; and so the graduates of these schools can rarely have learned at graduation anything more than a superficial view of those elementary principles that form, make up, and underlie what the concentrated learning of the great jurists of all the world have defined to be the law as a science.

The old school of the bar, the men who were profoundly learned in principles, whose study of cases was frequently to see whether, and how far, the judges had sustained or departed from the underlying and controlling principles of a case-these men taught the law to their students and devotees much as Justinian framed his institutes, or Blackstone wrote his celebrated commentaries. To the modern student of

the law school these works are undecipherable without a thorough reading and knowledge of the civilization of the age and the environment of the men who produced each.

I never place Blackstone's commentaries in the hands of one of my students without first asking him to read, with care, the introductory chapter of Robertson's History of Charles the Fifth, so that he may understand what feudal tenures were, and know of what Blackstone speaks regarding the social fabric of the times in which he wrote. The tendency, the whole trend, of legal study in our day seems, however, rather to have avoided considerations which controlled the abler jurists of the first part of this century, and our young men, varnished, furbished, and brightened in certain departments of the science, come into the profession from the schools with crude ideas of what a mastery of the law means, and so drift, almost of necessity, into specialties, except a rare few, who are ambitious to attain higher excellence and cultivate more profound research, and who delve at the foundations for superior knowledge.

We rarely meet with the young lawyer now who rightly regards the law school as a mere vestibule or passage-way that leads up to the profounder study of the law; and it is only to such that we may look for that solid learning, great legal acquirements, and profound study which characterize and mark, as the rich rewards of application and high endeavor, the paths trod by those great names, who are, by general consent and acclaim, named as the

uncrowned kings of the legal profession. It is, perhaps, natural that in a scramble, or hurry-and-scurry race, over the heads or departments of the science, that many students feel compelled to make, such only should be selected as seemed most prominent, and thus apparently the more valuable; and such ignored or excluded as were considered least desirable in practical results, like men in a burning dwelling seizing those articles easiest to reach and safest to remove.

MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE.

This may have been the controlling reason, or one of the most important ones, why Forensic Medicine has not received that attention in the curriculum of legal study that its importance demanded, or that higher order of scientific research which its acquisition required.

It is a rare thing now, in the American schools of law, to find a chair of Medical Jurisprudence in fact, or frequently even in name, and it is a scandal upon our law schools that they frequently graduate young men, and receive them into the profession, who have not studied this branch at all, or who have merely skimmed the surface of a few text-books, if they have ever entered even the head lines of leading subjects upon their note-books.

This is a great stain upon our law-school system, and lowers our standard of legal education, and it should be at once rectified.

If we are to regard the profession of the law as one of the learned professions, we should not be willing to consent that an institution should graduate a man, ignorant of the simplest principles of Medical Jurisprudence, any more than one who knew nothing of the laws of practice, or of the principles of commercial law. See what is

in the immediate field of labor of the graduate who commences to practise the profession of the law in almost any sphere into which he may be thrown even at the outset.

1. The law regarding undue influence in respect to wills. The law of testamentary capacity. The law relating to insanity as affecting civil responsibility in wills, deeds, or contracts, and the whole domain of commercial law.

2. The wide field of law regarding the insane; their care, treatment, and their civil rights as such. The question of responsibility of the insane in criminal cases and the questions involved, extending into all the ramifications of our national life.

3. The domain of State medicine, of life insurance, of malpractice, and the whole work, scope, and duty of the coroner's office.

4. The administration of justice, with the work of the public prosecutor in a large line of criminal cases, requiring the same knowledge of forensic medicine in him who prosecutes as he who defends.

5. The whole field of toxicological inquiry, with its close relation to the bench, the bar, and the administration of justice.

It has often seemed to me that the general ignorance of the profession, upon questions such as these, is something deplorable, and yet what a splendid field of study for the thoughtful and ambitious student is here opened, and how can any member of the bar deem himself worthy to enter the lists in forensic contests without preparation in that department of the law known as Medical Jurisprudence?

It has been a refuge of necessity for the lawyer called suddenly into a case demanding knowledge upon this intricate branch of the law to read up for the case at hand when the case presents itself. But where

will he read? I remember when a boy, in my student life, standing by to see two country physicians conduct a surgical operation, where one held the book and read from it the instructions while the other cut. The blood flowed from the suffering patient while they discussed the true route of the knife, and our case lawyers, in Medical Jurisprudence, present much such a spectacle, and the client bleeds in much the same manner.

THE BAR.

Twenty years ago, when I was first called to the chair of the Medico-Legal Society of New York (an organization formed and carried on to interest men of the two professions thrown in contact by questions of Forensic Medicine, to incite each to its more careful study, and to bring them into nearer and more intimate relations, socially and professionally, with each other), there was no place where any collection of works upon Medical Jurisprudence could be found worthy to be called even the nucleus of a library in that great city, the metropolis of

the nation.

There has been some progress made in those twenty years, not only in the city of New York, but in the State and the nation, and the importance and claims of the science upon the bar has advanced pari passu with the useful and persistent work of that body.

The library of the Surgeon-General's office at Washington-thanks to the splendid energy of Dr. Billings-has grown within that period to be the best and most complete collection of works upon Medical Jurisprudence, not only upon our continent, but probably in the whole world.

Almost the first step taken by me when I came to that chair was to found a library of Medical Juisprudence in New York,

which is now second only to the one in Washington, while all the law libraries have been inspired with greater zeal in increasing the value and importance of works in this department of legal science, and the lawyer of to-day suddenly called without preparation into this class of cases, all over the nation, can make easier answers to inquiries than he could ten, or even five, years ago.

It is not a good thing for the active lawyer to defer his study of the elementary principles of Medical Jurisprudence until his case arises, even if his office was in an alcove of the best library of Medical Jurisprudence in the land.

It is a branch of the science requiring thoughtful, careful, and closer study than many others, and, much as the fate of him who is forced by his training, environment, and education to be merely a "case lawyer," is to be deplored even in general practice; nowhere are his failures more likely to be fatal and more mortifying than in those cases, which, for the purposes of this address, I may designate as "Medico-Legal Cases."

Take for example, the lawyer who acts. as district attorney, or his assistant, in the prosecution of criminal cases, in cases of homicide and lesser grades of offences, where these questions arise. How illy fitted is any member of the bar for the discharge of the duties of such an office who has not studied Medical Jurisprudence thoroughly, as well upon its legal as on its medical side?

The advocate who is called to the defence of criminals in cases of homicide where the defence of insanity is interposed, in cases of poisoning, and in all that multitude of cases involving a knowledge of Medical Jurisprudence, is but ill equipped where the liberty, or even the life, of his