OXFORD LAW NEWS Summer 2011 Issue Fifteen The first year of the new Master’s in Law and Finance was celebrated at the end-of-year dinner in July. See page 4. Photos © Rob Judges Oxford judges Contents The tradITION of Oxford alumni on the bench is remarkable, and it has a future. Features ........................................... 2 Judges who studied in Oxford serve today on the South African Constitutional Court, the Bundesgerichtshof, and the European Court of Justice. The Oxford judge on the News ................................................12 European Court of Human Rights, Sir Nicolas Bratza, has just been appointed President of the Court. There are two Oxford judges each on the Australian High Court and the Academic Events ........................18 United States Supreme Court. There is one on the Canadian Supreme Court, and there are two on the Ontario Court of Appeal. Centre News .................................24 The tradition includes Matthew Hale and Lord Mansfield and William Blackstone and Lord Eldon. Many of the great judges of the twentieth century are in the group: Atkin, Radcliffe, Research & Grants .....................30 Greene, Evershed, Denning, Diplock, Scarman and Bingham. In the modern era of English judging since the 1873 Judicature Act, there have been four Lord Chief Justices from Oxford, Honours .........................................35 five Masters of the Rolls, and 13 of those politician-judges, the Lord Chancellors. In Scotland, six of the 35 Senators of the College of Justice studied in Oxford. Student News ..............................38 Not all of these judges studied law in Oxford. There was no teaching in English Law before Blackstone in the 1750s, nor any degree in the subject until the 1860s. Even then, the law Mooting .........................................42 degrees attracted few of the best students before the 1940s. That has changed, and more go to the bench today with the benefit of an Oxford Law degree. Of the 34 Lords Justices of Appeal Publications .................................46 in the Court of Appeal for England and Wales today, 15 studied at Oxford; one studied classics and one studied history, and all the others studied law, as undergraduates or graduates or College News ...............................48 both. But still today, very many Oxford alumni go into law after reading another subject. The tradition is partly due to the role of Oxford in public affairs in Britain over centuries, and Arrivals and Departures .........50 internationally over recent decades. It is also due to the Oxford way of teaching. Tutorials give sound training in advocacy, whether the subject is history or law or mathematics. And the Alumni Events .............................58 common law systems have tended to seek well-equipped advocates for the bench. To judge from our students in 2011, the tradition will live on in the years to come. It will Scholarships ................................60 increasingly be tied to the teaching of law, which has become a strength of the University. The judicial tradition will diversify from its white, male antecedents. But one thing will not change. Benefactors ..................................60 The key technique – asking students to explain their own judgment – is part of our future. Timothy Endicott www.law.ox.ac.uk The Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, St Cross Building, St Cross Road, Oxford OX1 3UL T: +44 1865 271490 F: +44 1865 271493 E: [email protected] the faculty of law at the university of oxford Oxfordfeature Law News Oxford Law Newsfeature Being at All Souls Andrew Burrows Law across Professor of the Law of the University England THE LAW Faculty today is increasingly engaged in connections between legal scholarship and other The Senior Research Fellowship disciplines, and that means working in new ways with other at All Souls has given me the parts of the University. Tony Honoré’s ‘welcome opportunity to devote extended periods of time to research Colloquium projects. My main initial project Finance and taxation is to produce a Restatement of the The Master’s in Law and Finance programme is a unique In 2008, manY of us came together English Law on Restitution of Unjust collaboration between the Law Faculty and the University’s at All Souls College to celebrate Tony Honoré’s record-breaking 60 years as a Enrichment. Although Restatements Saïd Business School (see p4–5). We are also partners in front-line member of the Law Faculty, are common in the United States, research with the Business School through the Centre for including 20 extra years of teaching the idea is novel in this jurisdiction. Business Taxation. and writing after his official retirement The Restatement will comprise a as Regius Professor of Civil Law. statement of principles along with a Public policy succinct commentary. It is proving The University’s new Blavatnik School of Government was to be an exciting and intellectually launched in September 2010, and plans to admit students very demanding task and I am for the Master’s in Public Policy from Michaelmas 2012. grateful for the invaluable assistance The Law Faculty is working with the School, to ensure that of an Advisory Group comprising students in the new Master’s programme will gain a useful academics, judges and practitioners. understanding of the distinctive legal opportunities and All Souls, with its unique devotion challenges that arise in the making and implementation of ALL SOULS is a major centre for the law. to research and its wide variety of public policy. We believe that legal studies in Oxford can gain Archbishop Chichele, a lawyer, founded Fellows, not least the many visiting from collaboration with scholars of public policy. The Dean the college in 1438, and lends his name academics, provides a wonderful of the Law Faculty serves on the new School’s Management to the five Chichele Professorships, working environment.’ Committee, and Anne Davies is working with the School of including the Chair in International Government on the development of its academic programme. All Law (held by Vaughan Lowe), and the Just three years later, in May 2011, we Nicola Lacey Chair in Social and Political Theory were back at All Souls to celebrate Professor of Criminal Law (held by the legal philosopher Jeremy another Honoré milestone, namely Human rights Waldron). William Blackstone was the Tony’s 90th birthday. It is a pleasure to and Legal Theory In 2010, the Law Faculty and the Department for Continuing first Professor in any university to teach report that Tony remains as active in Education agreed that the Faculty would co-operate in the common law, as Vinerian Professor the life of Oxford Law now as in 2008, of English Law (his successor today is and indeed as in 1988. He continues provision of the Department’s two-year part-time Master’s Souls Professor John Gardner Andrew Ashworth). The College is also to teach two BCL courses a year, and in International Human Rights Law. Students from all home to the Professor of Criminology yet another book (Justinian’s Digest: It has been a wonderful privilege over the world take the course, and many go on to work in University College, (Ian Loader), and the Regius Professor Character and Compilation) was to take up a Senior Research international organizations. Quondam Fellow of All Souls of Civil Law (Boudewijn Sirks). The recently published by OUP. Fellowship at All Souls this year International human rights law is also a central component Anson Room in the beautiful Codrington At his 90th birthday celebration, ‘ and to rediscover the intellectual in the University’s highly-respected Master’s in Refugee and writes, Library has a substantial collection convened by current Regius Professor of law reports and monographs, and Boudewijn Sirks, three of Tony’s closest excitement of Oxford. I am currently Forced Migration Studies. The Law Faculty works with the working on a cross-disciplinary Refugee Studies Centre, the Director of which is a member particular strength in legal works on the academic friends gave talks in his honour. civil and common law of the sixteenth to Nicola Lacey, Senior Research Fellow at All study of the development of ideas of the Faculty. We are currently working with the Centre on of responsibility for crime since fundraising to endow a permanent post in the field. eighteenth centuries. Souls, spoke of Tony’s part in the history At present the All Souls lawyers include of Oxford legal theory, especially in the the eighteenth century; and on the COngratuLatIOns TO Andrew Burrows one Examination Fellow (Fraser Campbell intellectually revolutionary era of the 1950s comparative political economy of International relations and Nicola Lacey, who took up Senior of Clifford Chance LLP), one Visiting and 60s, and picked out three favourite criminalisation and punishment. Very important links also exist between International Law in Research Fellowships at All Souls College Fellow (Professor Campbell McLachlan Honoré papers for particular appreciation. It has been marvellous to have the Oxford and international relations, a perennial strength in in September 2010. These positions make of Victoria University, Wellington), one John Gardner, Professor of Jurisprudence, opportunity to attend seminars and All Souls a research centre for academic Fifty-pound Fellow (James Walmsley reprised themes from the Hart and Honoré consult colleagues across all these the University. leaders. Four of the fifteen Senior Research of Wilberforce Chambers), and several book Causation in the Law and argued that Fellows are lawyers; Andrew and Nicola Quondam Fellows, including Dr Anne the main claims of the book stood the test fields of study. But it has also been a Philosophy join the legal historian Paul Brand, and Davies, Fellow of Brasenose, and Dr Sarah of time in spite of changes in philosophical special pleasure to join such a strong Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill, a leading Wilkinson, of Blackstone Chambers. The fashion. Detlef Liebs, who made a special group of lawyers at All Souls, and to Our link with the Philosophy Faculty is long-standing find the Faculty flourishing.