Excerpt from A Treatise on the Law of Insurance: Fire, Life, Accident, Marine; With a Selection of Leading Illustrative Cases and an Appendix of Statutes and Forms

Finally, it may be objected, that to devote attention to an examination and discussion of actual cases will induce the stu dent to pin his faith to isolated decisions rather than to rely upon general principles, and will encourage in him a habit of superficial disputation at the expense of hard study. However forcible this objection might be if directed against the exclu sive use of the case system, it offers no adequate reason for neglecting to take advantage of the undeniable assistance to be derived from a collection of well-selected cases with which to illustrate the more general propositions of the text-book. And the great weight of testimony from those who have tried the experiment certainly favors the further use of selected cases for purposes of debate in the class-room. The collision of mind with mind among the students who take an active part in the argument is stimulating and instructive; and the free and open discussion of principles, based upon definite statements of fact, brings the teacher into more vital and influential relations with his class, and affords him the better opportunity to discover and correct their difficulties and mistakes.

With respect to the law of insurance, the more recent American text-books are, for the most part, elaborate digests of decisions, altogether too voluminous for the class-room. Moreover, much of their space is given up to a consideration of phraseology which does not appear in the later forms of policies, and consequently is more or less obsolete and no one of them treats specifically of the New York standard fire policy, which is now used exclusively within this State, and has been substantially adopted by several other of the largest States. English text-books on this subject, such as Porter and Bunyon, relate principally to English forms of policies and English statutes and decisions, which differ in important particulars from our own; while no one of the books named treats of marine insurance, although in it, as the oldest branch, the first principles of insurance law were established.

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