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

What are Law Schools for?
vocational and service roles of university courses; challenges to the
possibility of neutrality, objectivity or even relative detachment;
and the fragmentation of knowledge.
Shils' interpretation restates what is still the prevailing orthodoxy
in this country, despite the pressures. 8 It can accommodate a wide
range of differences about means and structures and intellectual
agendas, but it is unequivocal in its rejection of analogies with
factories or businesses or political parties or evangelical churches
or guerrilla bases. The overriding purpose of the enterprise is the
advancement of learning. 9 In talking of British universities Ashby
came to a similar conclusion, 10 while emphasising the pluralism of
our institutions of higher education and the fact that, in contrast
with Continental Europe, technology was adopted if not totally
assimilated into our university system rather than being assigned
to Technische Hochschulen." This interpretation of the academic
ethic accommodates "useful knowledge", professional training and
applied as well as pure research. Insofar as it is correct to say that
law schools and law teachers are now largely integrated into the
university, this analysis of the situation and the ethic applies pari
passu to them.
LAW SCHOOLS AS INSTITUTIONS: TWO MODELS
AND SOME VARIANTS
A panorama of the world's law schools would reveal an extraordinary
diversity in respect of size, relative wealth, the average age
of students, functions and even architecture. 12 When I face our first
year undergraduates at UCL I tell them that their average age is
only 19-20 (despite the welcome leavening of a number of mature
students); whereas I sometimes teach the entering class of the University
of Miami Law school, whose average age is often 26-28.
In 1993 the Faculty of Law in the University of Milan admitted
approximately 4000 first year students; the average intake in British
law schools, outside Oxford and Cambridge, is around 100 13 ; In
Cairo, Paris, Leiden and Oslo law students are reported to number
thousands—despite attempts to end open entry and to limit numbers.
One Minister of Justice, himself a former Dean, told me that
in his country law, as a cheap subject, was the main dumping
ground for excess demand for higher education and the main function
of legal education was to reduce juvenile delinquency by
keeping youngsters off the streets—one version of the custodial
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