Law Clubs.

One of the unique features of the Law School is the student law clubs or courts, whose object is to give their members practice in arguing points of law as they will some day have to argue them in actual courts of law. There are now about a dozen of these clubs which meet every week and by this means about a hundred members of each class get actual practice in legal arguing. The oldest club is the Pow Wow, which was founded in 1870 by eight first year students, among whom are Professor J. B. Ames of the Law School, Austen G. Fox of New York, Russell Gray and Brooks Adams of Boston.

Shortly after the foundation of the Pow Wow a number of other clubs were instituted, and the honor of being elected to one of the three or four oldest clubs is greatly esteemed by all students. The leading clubs are the Pow Wow and the Ames-Gray. Election to either of these paves the way to election to the Law Review, which is a greater honor. Other clubs are the Thayer, Austin, Williston, Story, Langdell, Marshall, Kent, Witenagemot, Washburn and Cooley.

The methods of procedure in these clubs are unlike those in ordinary trial courts, but resemble the way in which a question is argued before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. An agreed statement of fact is written out and the counsel on either side have to deal merely with the points of law involved by that particular combination of facts. There are no witnesses.

Eight men from a class make up each club. The members of the first year class constitute the superior court, which meets sixteen times during the winter, each member arguing four cases during the term. One counsel is taken for each side of the question, and the other six members of the court hear the arguments. These six members are justices and are presided over by a second-year member of the club, who is called the chief justice. The arguments last about two hours, after which the counsel retire and the court discusses the merits of the case; then the counsel are recalled and each justice gives his interpretation of the law, as applied to the agreed facts.

The second-year members make up what is known as the supreme court. These men act twice as chief justices in the superior court and twice they argue before their own court, presided over by a third-year student. On becoming third-year students they are members of the court of appeals. Their work here is only to settle disputes appealed to them by some member of the lower courts. Sometimes different professors preside over the courts in place of a student.