Blackstone's Tower: The English Law School - College of Social ...

Law in the Universities: The Historical Context
profession. Law schools have not so far been perceived as, or performed
the role of, professional schools and for a long time law's
credentials as a proper university subject were questioned by colleagues
in science, social science and the humanities. Even since
the period of high demand and rapid expansion after 1945, law
has only been a small part of the total picture: until recently law
students and law teachers have hardly ever exceeded 3.5 per cent
of the total, and have generally been nearer to 2 per cent; their
share of the budget has been even less. 2 ' Where a law school has
achieved separate status as a faculty, it is typically the smallest and
is considered to be an anomaly. Perhaps commentators on higher
education, like historians, have considered law to be a mysterious
closed world that it is difficult for outsiders to penetrate.
The low visibility of law in discussions of higher education
policy is of considerable significance in interpreting the present
situation of law schools. For most practical purposes, law in universities
and polytechnics has been treated as just one, relatively small
and insignificant part of the humanities and social sciences. This
suggests a crucial hypothesis: changes in undergraduate legal education
closely reflect changes in higher education because most
important decisions affecting the discipline of law in universities—
on admissions, numbers, student-staff ratios, gender ratios, resourcing,
teaching methods, quality assurance, terms of service and
career development of academics—have much more closely
reflected changes in higher education than changes in legal practice
and the legal system. Insofar as this is true, most policy debates
on legal education have had little impact on the development of
law schools. There are some exceptions, notably the rigid division
of legal education and training into separate stages after 1971, but
as we shall see this served to reinforce the closer integration of law
into the academy. Against this background let us briefly consider
some of the main developments in higher and legal education since
the Second World War.
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1945-60: Quiet Expansion.
From 1943 it was foreseen that there would be a major demand
for the expansion of higher education and plans were drawn up to
cope with the post-war bulge and to increase numbers. The 1944
Education Act was designed to reshape the whole educational
system and in particular to prepare many more for entry into further
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