Law reform in the twenty-first century

Legal Studies ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Toulson

In this paper, which is the text of a lecture given at the official launch of the Law School at the University of Bradford on 11 May 2006, the history of law reform in England is traced, the role of the Law Commission is analysed and future prospects are considered.

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 284-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Bird

AbstractThe Bodleian Law Library has only existed as an entity in its own right for less than 50 years. Yet part of the collection dates back to the days before the founding of the Bodleian Library in 1602. The rise and fall in fortunes of the teaching of law at Oxford is closely tied to the establishment of the law library. A lesser known aspect of the history includes the ties between Oxford and the United States, especially its oldest law school, William and Mary Law School. In this paper, Ruth Bird offers a brief history of the University of Oxford and then looks at the history of law teaching, before moving on to the evolution of the Law Library itself, and some links with our cousins across the pond.


1983 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
George L. Haskins

On October 3, 1881, William Henry Rawle, the distinguished Philadelphia lawyer and scholar, addressed students at the University of Pennsylvania Law School hoping to illustrate, ‘in a very general and elementary way,’ the differences between the growth of English and early Pennsylvania jurisprudence. ‘It would have been more interesting and more broadly useful,’ Rawle apologized to his audience, ‘if the attempt could have been extended to embrace the other colonies which afterwards became the United States, for there would have been not only the contrast between the mother country and her colonies, but the contrast between the colonies themselves.’ Rawle was confident that such an examination would have revealed how ‘in some cases, one colony followed or imitated another in its alteration of the law which each had brought over, and how, in others, the law was changed in one colony to suit its needs, all unconscious of similar changes in another.’ ‘Unhappily,’ Rawle explained, ‘this must be the History of the Future for the materials have as yet been sparingly given to the world.’


The Ural State Law University solemnly celebrated its centenary. It updated the appeal to the past of the university, to the traditions of Russian legal education and science. The anniversary became simultaneously an event, an object of study, and a strategy for learning the legal-university history. The aim of the article is to defie promising, largely interrelated historical and legal subjects of the history of the law university. Multifaceted signifiance of the anniversary for the law university is considered: its role in the development of academic culture and corporate commemorative practices, in promoting the image of the university, in gaining new knowledge on the university, in studying the pre-institute period of its history (1918–1931). The problem of the sources of knowledge on the history of the USLU is defied. The particular importance of legitimizing the transition periods is described. For example, the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of 1919 explicitly recognized the university in Irkutsk and the faculty of law as the basis of our university. The author raised the question of the need to interpret sources that are not typical for the law university history’ such as oral history, museum subjects. The article noted the importance of politics and ideology in the history of law university, as well as the prospects of its consideration through the prism of the anthropological approach.


Author(s):  
Eva Steiner

This chapter assesses the process of law reform in France. Although a full-time Commission has been set up in France to deal with the codification of the law, no similar permanent institution exists for keeping the law under review and for making recommendations for its systematic reform. There is thus no French equivalent for the Law Commission such as in other countries. Therefore law reform initiative has been left entirely to government departments and Members of Parliament and this is confirmed by the 1958 Constitution. Consequently, in practice, the majority of bills have their origin in government departments, and in particular the Ministry of Justice, whose function it is to deal with the organisation of the civil and criminal justice system. The role of supreme courts in reforming the law is also highlighted in the chapter.


Author(s):  
John V. Orth

This chapter focuses on Sir William Blackstone (1723–1780), the author of the most important book in the history of the common law. The four-volume Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769) and the series of lectures Blackstone delivered at Oxford from 1753, changed the way lawyers thought about the law. Blackstone’s Commentaries were read by more people, non-lawyers as well as lawyers, than any other English law book. Their influence is difficult to overstate, and extends into the twenty-first century. Almost as momentous was Blackstone’s influence on legal education. While gradual, the transfer of legal education from the law office and the courts to the university, which Blackstone pioneered, had an enormous impact on legal development, as law professors contributed to the formation of generations of lawyers and themselves came to play a significant role in legal development.


2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Melville

AbstractLaw Reform Commissions are permanent bodies which operate in common law countries, and are charged with the task of recommending law reform. The Commissions conduct research into the need for law reform, and it appears this research is guided by a common set of broad principles. A comparison of the ways in which the New Zealand Law Commission and the recently defunct Law Commission of Canada put these principles into practice reveals that different Commissions use different approaches when putting these principles into practice.These different approaches reflect the ways in which the role of law within society and the role of the Law Commissions in shaping the law are conceived. For some Commissions, legal reform is a technical process driven by a desire for increased efficiency and effectiveness. For other Commissions, legal reform is seen as directing, rather than merely reflecting, social and legal norms, and is self-consciously aimed towards achieving the goals of social justice.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric M. Adams

This article is about the making of modern legal education in North America. It is a case study of the lives of two law schools, the University of Alberta, Faculty of Law and the University of Minnesota Law School, and their respective deans, Wilbur Bowker and Everett Fraser, in the decades surrounding the Second World War. The article follows Bowker’s unorthodox route to Alberta’s deanship via his graduate training under the experimental “Minnesota Plan” — Fraser’s long-forgotten effort to place public service at the centre of American legal education. In detailing an overlooked moment of transition and soulsearching in North American legal education, this article underlines the personalities, ideologies, circumstances, and practices that combined to forge the still dominant model of university-based legal education across the continent. Highlighting the movement of people and ideas, this study corrects a tendency to understand the history of law schools as the story of single institutions and isolated visionaries. It also reveals the dynamic ways in which law schools absorbed and refracted the period’s ideological and political concerns into teaching practices and institutional arrangements. In bold experiment and innate conservatism, personal ambition and institutional constraints, and, above all else, faith in the power of law and lawyers, the postwar law school was born.


1996 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
John M. Law ◽  
Roderick J. Wood

The authors examine the history of the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta. Beginning with a look at the early requirements to practice law in Alberta, the authors discuss the events leading to the establishment of the first permanent law school in the province. An analysis of the evolution of the Faculty is conducted. Along the way, the important contributions of many individuals, from John A. Weir to Wilbur Bowker, are acknowledged.


2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-34 ◽  

AbstractNick Brotchie, Librarian of the Scottish Law Commission, provides a history of law reform initiatives in Scotland, traces the evolution of the Scottish Law Commission and explains the process of law reform in Scotland.


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