THE AMES COMPETITION

It is interesting to learn that the case of John B. Nemo, an Italian, the legality of whose projected deportation was argued last night in the final round of the Ames Competition is no theoretical dilemma, propounded by professors, but a case now before the Supreme Court of the United States for review, in the original, Mr. Nemo is a Chinese named Bee who registered for the Draft, and was thereupon arrested under the Chinese Exclusion Act for being unlawfully in this country. His rights were upheld by three Boston lawyers in the lower courts for years of bitter litigation. So many legal difficulties developed that the case has become seriously considered by jurists as come seriously considered by jurist as a test of the rights of American citizens. Particularly of Orientals, whose entrance into this country has been illegal; and the review before the Supreme Court of the country will hardly attract more attention than the findings of the acting justices, eminent judges themselves, at the debate last night.

It is not hard to understand why such an actual problem of outstanding legal importance was chosen in the school where the case system was first developed for the teaching of law. The brilliant results that are now predicated with such methods are fully attested by the attention experienced lawyers give a straw trial argued by students in the Harvard Law School. Whatever may be the ever increasing allegations of the impracticality of the colleges, the methods of the graduate schools, and even more, the desire of leading firms to secure the alumni, make such charges against them impossible. And the fact that graduate results are impossible without the liberalizing and disciplinary training of the colleges makes a humanistic education at least a sound foundation for a superstructure.