But
don't miss the introduction to Stephens' "Pleading," and also the
introduction to Stephens' "Digest of the Law of Evidence." Both are
classics and give you the reason and the spirit of our law in
fascinating form.
Let your reading in the law be mainly upon the general principles of
the common law. The study of the civil law will also be
helpful--although English jurisprudence developed of and by itself
with only moderate help from the Romans. Reading statutes is
unprofitable. You should never answer a question or proceed in a case
on the presumption that you remember the statute. The rule of Sir
Edwin Coke ought to be your rule.
"I should," said Coke, "feel that I ought to be put out of my
profession if I could not answer a question in the common law without
referring to the books. I should feel that I ought to be put out of my
profession if I would answer a question in the statute law without
referring to the statute."
_Do not confine yourself to law-books._ A man who does so is like the
farmer who persists in planting the same soil with the same crop;
exhaustion, barrenness, and unprofitableness are the results in each
case. Read generously, widely.
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