for a imilti-narional coniniunitv. XOt siirprisiiigh', legal education has often been unsatisfacton’. One important, hut not the sole reason, is that law students are multifarious, rhey do not all env isage the same career; some wish to he practitioners, hut even thev' might wish to be advocates or solicitors; others look for a career in business or even in politics. A glance at ancient Rome and earlv Bvzantium indicates fromelementarv te.xthooks like the Institutes Cjaius through Justinian's Digest aw emphasis on rules of priv ate law with no smell (if the courtroomor scent of the chambers where social realities meet law. At the same time, Roman works on forensic oratorv, such as Seneca's Coutro-eersine^cetwi strenuously to avoid dealing with real law.^' \\ hat the Humanist jurists in the i6th centurv trained their students to do in practical life 1 reallv do not know. T he predecessors that the Humanists reacted against spent an inordinate amount of time on a relativ ely small number of issues."'’ On the dismal state of legal education in the U.S.A., 1 ha\ e expanded elsewhere.^' The universally used case-book method is absurd: it presents legal rules as contained in a tiny number of (abridged) cases wrenched from their historical and even social contexts. In so far as the approach is justified, it is as an exercise in rhetoric, not in law. My suggestion (inev itably) is that legal education at the L niv ersity level should contain a strong element of comparative legal history. Students should be made aware-with conscious effort-of the role that legal history plays in the shaping of rules for today and tomorrow. Legal history is valuable for its own sake, but ev en more for explaining present and future lavv.^ ’Hie Ivrasmus program goes some wav to remedy the pnvblem. 41 See, e.g. Watson, Out of Context, pp 83ff. 42 See, e.g. Franz Wieacker, Private Law, pp. 65ff.; i23ff.; i73ff. 43 Watson, Out of Context, pp. i4off. 44 To inject a personal note. For more than fortyyears I have taught, off and on. Legal Philosophy. More and more I have become convinced that, with the exception of natural law, legal philoSophy reveals little of the nature of law. 176
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