I was not among those present at the founding of the Review, but I am truly an old subscriber, for, being then in my first year at the Law School, I was promptly lined up for a subscription. Thus I received the first number and read it from cover to cover, not omitting advertisements.
I have just as carefully read the Review ever since, but possibly I read the advertisements more critically than I once did, because my interest in the welfare of the Review keeps me always in the hope that the advertisements will increase in space and thus add to the revenue.
A span of twenty-five years is certain to bestride changes, and the advertisements show it. In its early days, as I recollect, "The Campus," a tavern housed in a shanty just north of the University's bounds, and noted for its dirt and its ale, had its modest card in the advertising columns; and I wish it could lawfully be there today, because I hold with Chesterton that cafeterias, while useful things, do not stimulate cheerful thoughts. At the old Review smokers and dinners we cultivated law learning on a little real beer, if I may pervert what the early editors of the Edinburgh Review said of their efforts; and I claim the right to wonder whether the Boards of recent years will ever look back on their cider affairs in quite the same mood of recollection. After all, the part that dietetics can play in the progress of civilization has yet to be estimated. Therefore just as Carlyle remarked after reading Froude's rhapsodic introduction to his History of England, that Frederick the Great was raised on beer-sops and Napoleon subsisted mainly on soup, wherefore meat-eating possibly might not have been the chief agency in England's greatness, I refer any who may claim greater days for our Bar as the result of Mr. Volstead having lived, to the dessert habits of Lord Eldon and the customs of Marshall's time.
My apology for approaching the record of the Review in this fashion is that the personal side of its history---the student side---is part of a certain balance which is characteristic of this institution. Although to serve the purposes to which it was dedicated personalities have always been excluded from its pages (announcements as to changes in Law School personnel, and, of late, brief records of contributors, being the extent of the departures from this rule), it must be remembered that the Review is first and last a product of the Law School. It started with a student board of editors, and it always must have a board drawn from its student body.
That is why the Great War stopped its publication. The Faculty could have taken over the task of editing the Review until the students returned form national service, but if that had happened there would no longer have been a Review. It was better, therefore, to preserve, even at the cost of stopping publication, the balance between the contribution of the experienced observer and the editorial notes of the student.
To that end the articles have always been contributed by members of the profession. In selection the embrace the range which goes from the active practitioner to the teacher in law; and (with but one exception, which personally I regret for the sake of principle) no editor has ever had a hand in this regard. But the editorial work is done exclusively by the Board; it is aided at times by suggestions from the Faculty or elder brethren of the Bar, but always, in last analysis, the finished product is the output of the Board.
Thus in the nature of things the editorial board has acquired a character of its own and has become an institution of the Law School. The record of its meetings and the reports of its executives have all been kept, and they furnish interesting reading in themselves. But, more than that, the Board has gathered unto itself, as all such institutions in English-speaking countries inevitably do, its own treasury of tradition.
Always the work has been hard and the requirements exacting, because the standard set at an early date it has been a point of pride to maintain. And on the whole it has been well maintained, not only in the performance of getting out the Review, but in the equally important undertaking of choosing the successors of the members who annually graduate.
In spite of work, however, there has been place for other things. Many friendships have been formed to last through the years succeeding; and the brighter things of life have never been wholly disregarded, it being recognized that the most serious of conferences occasionally can be helped out by good humor.
And, so taking it by and large, this self-perpetuating body seems to the present observer to have well fulfilled the purposes of its being. Through its ranks many men have passed to find distinction, most of them at the Bar, but some in finance, others in teaching, and still others in public life. Names cannot be mentioned, but the men are there just the same, despite the fact that the oldest of them have not yet passed middle life. Nor are they all to be found in New York; for the Law School is essentially not local in its method or its population, and therefore the Law Review Board is represented by its ex-editors in the South and in the West as well as in the larger cities of the East.
The Review itself is just as catholic in character. Dedicated as it was to study the origins and mirror the development of the law, its ideal has been to confine itself to no one feature of that complex.
The constant reader can appreciate this, I believe, without going behind the scenes, but the records left behind by the succession of departed groups of editors put the idea in even better relief. Through all the reports of meetings of the board, and the exhortations of departing executives, runs the thread of an anxiety never to let the magazine get parochial and always to make its appeal as broad as could be.
And so we find contributed articles touching here a problem of constitutional law and there a point of international right, but relieved by discussions of that homely but lovable thing, the common law---the common law in the sharp lights of controversial points, the common law in the softer tones of its history. Many of these articles, of course, are of transitory interest, and passing years bear away their appeal (who now would read, with flushed interest of the Insular Cases?) but in great part the articles are of permanent value. A few, indeed, almost belong to literature; and of such I particularly recall Sir Frederick Pollock's "Genius"---for it has been published in book form---and you will appreciate what the Secretary meant. But there are many other articles, by American writers as well as by English-men like Pollock and Holdsworth, and Canadians like Ewart, of equal merit and of as lasting quality. Of these writers of our own country I will not speak; the faithful reader of the Review knows them, and the new subscriber not only will meet those of the older group who are still with us, but he will become acquainted as well with younger writers who are still with us, but he will become acquainted as well with younger writers who are taking the place of the departed.
Following the contributed articles and ahead of the book reviews in each issue, the reader will find the editorial notes on recent decisions. And here again I find in the records of the board the same evidence of an ambition that is in great measure achieved in the actual outcome. The desire has been to select cases of the greatest value by reason of the points presented or suggested, points illustrating growth here, and development there, in the law wich governs us.
How far that intention has been realized can safely be left to a practical test. The lawyer or the student engaged in research will find that no better start on a fundamental question can be made than by going to the back volumes of the Review. I do not mean to say that the labor of twenty-five years of high purpose has resulted in anything cheap. I would not extol the Review as a "corpus juris" or a digest, or anything of that sort; but it remains true that the Review has brought practical benefit, and it little matters whether that was principal object or an obiter result.
Of recent years another editorial department has been added in the shape of notes on current legislation. Here again a process of selection has been necessary, for if possible, even more care has to be observed in this department than in the selection of decisions for review. After all, courts have certain work to do, and, speaking generally, they do it with as few vagaries as may be; but American Legislatures have too little to do, and most of them meet too often for the good of their commonwealths. Consequently the observer of current legislation must learn to discard large mass of waste if he is to select anything worth while. But the work justifies itself, for current legislation is a field of interest practical as well as theoretical. In this new departure the work of the Review shows steady increase in value.
I am quite aware that what I have written hardly does more than suggest the topic assigned me and that interesting features of the growth of the Columbia Law Review have not been put forward with the treatment which their interest and importance deserve. But after all when you are fond of a person, an institution or a place, you can speak only in terms of impression. And, as I have set forth above, the Review in its present as in its history, gives me always the feeling that it well maintains the valuable balance between the things of present interest and those of permanent interest, just as, in the minor key, the recollections of an ex-editor vary between work and lighter side of intercourse.
