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

Law in the Universities: The Historical Context
38 op. cit. at p. 154.
39 There is no accepted definition of a law school: in 1975 Wilson and Marsh
reported that 21 universities in England were running full degree courses, and 3
in Wales; by then there were also 19 polytechnics and local authority maintained
institutions offering degree courses in law, with others in the process of securing
recognition (op. cit., below n. 41 at pp. 242-243). These figures exclude commercial
colleges and tutors and the University of Buckingham, which was founded
in 1973 as a private university.
40 Report of the Committee on Social Studies (Heyworth Committee) (1965) Cmnd.
2660, para. 38.
41 J. Wilson "Survey of Legal Education in the United Kingdom", (1966) 9 J.S.P.T.L.
(N. S.) p. 5 (hereafter First Wilson Report); this was followed by "A Second Survey
of Legal Education in the United Kingdom" (J. F. Wilson and S. B. Marsh reprinted
in (1975) 13 J.S.P.T.L. (N. S.) pp. 241 -331 and two supplements (1978 and 1981).
John Wilson published a third survey in (1993) Legal Studies 143, which deals
with the old universities only and needs to be read with P. Harris and S. Bellerby,
A Survey of Law Teaching, 1993, which covers the former polytechnics and most,
but not all, other public sector institutions in the United Kingdom (hereafter ALT
Survey, 1993).
42 ibid.
43 G. Gardiner and A. Martin, Law Reform NOW (1963), Chaps. 1 and 11.
44 This contrasts strikingly with the present Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee
(ACLEC) which, under the Courts and Legal Services Act, 1990, only has places
for two law teachers and has a majority of "lay" members.
45 Gardiner and Martin, op. cit, Chap. 11, argued that a law degree should (with
a few exceptions) be a prequisite of entry to both branches of the profession, but
they stopped short of advocating a common system of training.
46 The main factors were probably fear of fusion, especially on the part of the Bar;
distrust of academics; internal divisions within the Law Society; and resistance
to the trade school model by law teachers.
47 It is now widely believed that if the Ormrod Committee had taken more account
of Treasury Rules governing funding of higher education we might have had a
very different system and rather more generous public financing of professional
training. Law, unlike medicine, engineering, education and architecture, has
been left largely to professional organisation and private finance outside the state
higher education system. It is difficult on the available evidence to judge whether,
if the Committee had unanimously and strongly recommended an integrated
system of professional legal education and training under the UGC, perhaps on
an analogy with medical schools, they could have persuaded a reluctant government
to fund all or most of the process. Five years earlier it might have been a
realistic option; but by 1971 the costs of higher education had become a major
concern. Scotland and Northern Ireland learned from this mistake and have publicly
funded vocational courses within universities (without much sacrifice of professional
control). I was a member of the Northern Ireland Committee, chaired
by Sir Arthur Armitage, who had served on the Ormrod Committee. With the
help of an experienced civil servant who understood public finance, all proposals
for vocational training outside the university system were shot down on the
ground that they would not secure public funding.
48 Several years later Professor Gower acknowledged in public that the decision to
liquidate the standing committee was "a fatal error": "Instead of the Advisory
Committee proving to be a forum in which the professional bodies and the uni-
46