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

Law in the Universities: The Historical Context
introducing a new note of vigorous intellectual ism into academic
law. 31
Thus on the surface the period 1945-60 was marked by steady
expansion, but little intellectual ferment. Visiting Americans made
unfavourable comparisons to their own law schools with varying
degrees of diplomacy. 32 However, as with the university system,
the seeds of change were sown. In particular, the legal profession
was expanding and more and more of those who had chosen to
read law went on to qualify professionally. The pattern of the law
degree as the normal route of entry began to develop slowly. For
many years solicitors' clerks had been able to study for Part I of
the solicitors' finals by attending lectures at an "approved law
school", but as the university law schools focused more on undergraduate
teaching, mutual dissatisfaction built up, and the system
broke down, ending a long period of close association between
the Law Society and provincial university law schools. 33
Expansion also involved recruitment of more teachers. Most of
the next generation of academic lawyers graduated in the fifties
and started teaching then or in the early sixties. A significant
number had experience of American law schools or of teaching in
Africa or elsewhere in the Commonwealth or both—experiences
which opened their eyes to new possibilities. 34
The Turbulent Sixties
Euphoria, turbulence, and change mark the decade of the sixties.
It is impossible in a short summary to do justice to the richness
and complexity of the story of higher education in this period. The
most persistent theme was expansion. This is also the era of the
Robbins Report, 35 the creation of the binary system (despite
Robbins), the establishment of the Open University (which by
arrangement with the London External Division did not include
law) and, of course, student unrest. This period also saw a slow,
often imperceptible, weakening of university autonomy, and the
start of what Halsey has called the "decline of donnish
dominion" 36 :
Few academics saw the writing on the wall. 37 Stewart suggests
that the keynotes in higher education from 1960-65 were "optimism,
new ideas, expansion and opportunity." 38 To start with law
expanded at a slightly lower rate than average, but in most other
respects the story is similar to higher education as a whole, usually
after a slight lag.
31