December 1887: The Law Journal editors decried the lack of a prescribed course of preparation for the New Jersey Bar Examination. “We should have a definite plan of study, a definite course of examination provided for, which should develop and expand but not change suddenly with the whims of successive examiners,” they wrote. “Then we shall give the students an incentive to definite intelligent study, instead of having them learn a lot of definitions and rules of practice, and trust to luck as to whether they happen to know the questions they may chance to be asked.”
100 Years Ago
December 1912: The Court of Errors and Appeals affirmed former Hudson County Sheriff John Zeller’s conviction of criminal conspiracy. Zeller had attacked his indictment, which hinged on the power of the Court of Oyer and Terminer after disqualifying him as sheriff to appoint elisors to summon a grand jury. Chief Justice William Gummere led the court’s majority that found the action authorized, but a forceful dissent said the claimed authority “was so plainly repugnant to the bill of rights that no court in England, since Magna Carta, has ever thought of exercising it.”
