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

Law School Culture: A Visit to Rutland
reasons, nearly all English law schools have significant numbers of
students from overseas. This continuing reminder of our colonial
past and present penury tends to obscure the smaller number and
special problems of ethnic minority "home" students. 13
The teaching rooms are unremarkable. The two main lecturerooms
in the old building are squeezed into the basement, along
with a xerox room, lockers and lavatories, all windowless and
cramped. The lecture-rooms are ugly, uncomfortable and too
small. Seminar rooms are spread around the building, although not
much small-group teaching satisfies the normal definition of a
"seminar". The teaching rooms, the circulation areas and even the
graffiti could be in almost any academic department.
Returning to the ground floor, one finds three major public
rooms. The Faculty Office, which houses one administrator and
five secretaries; the staff common room, somewhat more elegantly
furnished, which is used for receptions, parties and a few seminars;
an open area, known as "Reality Checkpoint" (again a sign of
American influence), 14 which provides the main, rather limited
social space for undergraduates; and perhaps the one feature of the
new extension that clearly identifies this as a House of Laws. This
is the Moot Court, which was designed to look something like a
court-room, but doubles as the main lecture theatre and meetingroom.
This peculiar hybrid has an elevated bench, a fair imitation
of a jury-box, and cramped uncomfortable pews for counsel; but
the "public" sits in the standard banked seats of a modern lecture
theatre. Here students argue simulated appeals before real or simulated
judges with some eagerness; much less frequently, they stage
an occasional mock trial. Mooting here, as in other English law
faculties is, perhaps surprisingly, not officially part of the curriculum,
but most undergraduates take the opportunity to participate
in at least one mooting competition, and some devote a great deal
of time to it. 15
In recent years a sustained effort has been made to create a distinctive
ambience. This is most clearly revealed in the pictures,
nearly all of which depict heads of male lawyers. The passages of
the upper floors are decorated with framed photographs, which
with the exception of a row of Daumier prints are almost all of
former teachers or reasonably successful alumni, occasionally
upgraded by reproductions of famous judges or jurists. The Moot
Court is hung with class photographs, through which one can trace
the gender revolution: less than 2 per cent, women undergraduates
in 1960, about 50 per cent, today. A perceptive observer will notice
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