Department of Law. FACULTY: FRANCIS PRESTON VENABLE, Ph. D., President. Dean and Professor of Common and Statute Law and Equity. Professor of Law and Equity. KEMP PLUMMER BATTLE, LL. D., CHARLES STAPLES MANGUM, A. B., M. D., THREE FULL COURSES 1. Elementary and Business Law. 2. Course Prescribed by Supreme Court of North Carolina for Applicants for License. 3. Advanced Course for Degree of LL. B. Spring Term Begins Tuesday, January 5th, 1904. Summer Term Begins Wednesday, June 8th, 1904. For Terms, apply to President, F. P. VENABLE, or Dean, J. C. MacRAE, Chapel Hill, N. C. JOURNAL OF LAW. PUBLISHED AT THE UNIVERSITY. Vol. I. JANUARY, 1904. The North Carolina Bar. No. 1. When Chief Justice Chase took his seat in the Circuit Court of the United States at Raleigh in June, 1867, he was pleased to express himself as much impressed with the tone and character of the gentlemen whom he met as leaders of the Bar in North Carolina. A further acquaintance, official and social, seemed to confirm him in the opinion that here he found the peers of the most eminent lawyers who practised at the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States. There were governors and cabinet officers and legislators and untitled lawyers whose ambitions had been satisfied with the pursuit of professional practice among their own clientage all their lives. And, above all, there were specimens of high-toned gentlemen of whom any State, and any profession might have been proud. With few exceptions these gentlemen were natives of North Carolina, educated in her schools, cultivated in her society, and developed at her Bar. The old law schools of the State, that at the University, presided over by Judge William H. Battle, who was assisted at one time by the Hon. Samuel F. Phillips, and at another by the Hon. Kemp P. Battle, and that at what was familiarly called Logtown, presided over by Chief Justice R. M. Pearson, had sought to lay deep the foundation principles upon which students of law, after admission to the practice, might raise the superstructure by long continued and diligent labor. The course of study prescribed by the Supreme Court was directed, for the first examination, for admission to practice in the County Courts, more especially to real estate law, because in those days land titles had not been settled and there was much litigation concerning them; the action of ejectment was begun in the County Courts and invariably carried by appeal to the Superior Courts, the trial below being but a preparation for the real trial in the Superior Court. "Blackstone's Commentaries, second Blackstone particularly," and Coke and Fearne and Saunders comprised the first year's course. The manner of teaching was somewhat different then; the students, especially those under Judge Pearson, were left to themselves to read and think and discuss and digest, with an occasional lecture when the Judge came in from his court, all culminating in the final examinations, as the result of which, permission was granted the successful ones to apply for license. The principal preceptors were the Supreme Court Judges who had taught most of the applicants. Between the two schools there was sharp and honorable competition; the examinations were oral, and the capacities of the individual applicants were well known to at least one of the examiners. After having passed his first examination and been admitted to practice in the County Courts, the way was open to the young lawyer to devote his attention to pleading and practice, evidence and equity, the constitutions and the higher branches of criminal law, corporation law had not then assumed its present importance, and the year, at least, to be spent in following the courts and learning by experience the modes of trial and the ways of the profession. There were not so many books to read; there were no encyclopædias and comparatively few reports, but there was much of thought and pure reason which served to |