By By Matthew G. Bisanz
In the American legal education system the gold standard of teaching is the caselaw method. This method involves the examination of previous court cases in order to extract general principles of law. For example, studying Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer in order to extract one of the limits on presidential power. The caselaw method is so ingrained in the American legal system that one must look far back into the historical record in order to find any other method of studying law. The only other method would be the treatise method of education. In this method, the law student studies various texts explaining all the principles of law and then relates those principles to his professor by way of oral examination or application in a moot court setting.
It is fair to say that the caselaw method is far more strenuous than the treatise method, as it requires more brainpower. In a single semester a student may be required to memorize hundreds of complex legal cases, each turning on different points of fact and law. In many cases, the facts themselves are irrelevant and many of the laws involved are no longer in effect. For instance, Youngstown Sheet dealt with the concept of the president seizing corporate assets in order to ensure production for the Korean War. Today, the U.S. government cannot seize assets at random under treaties like the WTO. There is no war of such scale that it requires the production of all of a certain industry, requiring the government to take it over. Another example is Wabash v. Illinois. This case dealt with regulation of interstate commerce as it relates to railroads. Today the Wabash railroad no longer exists, government regulation of trains is practically non-existent and the idea of a state regulating railroad rates is settled law. Instead of reading the largely technical matter of the case and then studying all the modifying laws and precedent, one could reduce it to a rather thorough one page summary that touches on all the points relevant today.
This exposes the inefficiency of the caselaw method. One must study complex precedents in order to extract rather simple concepts. Further, when using these concepts later in their careers, the vast majority of lawyers will state the simple concept, cite the case and be done with the matter. Only at the state or federal Supreme Court level is there concern with the detailed matter of the law, and in general these issues are decided by judges with decades of experience or lawyers who long ago passed through the doors of law school. For the average real estate lawyer or the average divorce lawyer the idea of knowing the point of law on which Munn v. Illinois is different from Wabash v. Illinois is of very little use.
The treatise method of law is a much more understandable method because only the relevant issues are conveyed. Cases may be used to illustrate points, but by teaching the law itself, students gain an understanding of the law that allows them to generalize concepts far beyond the narrow confines of a specific case. However, as law schools tend to view themselves as keepers of the law, they are unlikely to change to a method that makes them look less austere or mysterious. Future lawyers will not want to go easy on their successors, who will someday compete with them. Only when a large majority of law students demand a change, will change occur.