Law teaching began when the School was founded in 1895. It was part-time and in the evening. From 1906 it was taught on an inter-collegiate basis with UCL and King’s. Subjects ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ offered fitted with the ethos of the School and included Industrial and Commercial Law, The Law in relation to the Exchange and Distribution of Wealth, Modern Constitutions, and International Law with special reference to Africa. Subjects were taught to non-law students, and often co-taught with those from other disciplines. Among those teaching were R. A. Wright (later Lord Wright, a judge in the House of Lords), A. V. Dicey, Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford, and Dr L. F. L. Oppenheim (author of International Law).
The School became a more professional operation in 1919 with the appointment as director of William Beveridge (now associated with the “Beveridge Report”, important for Britain’s post-World War II welfare state). In his memoir Beveridge recalls his view that the School had to be one for all the social sciences, and that his “first practical inference from this lay in strengthening greatly its legal side.”
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Read our collection of short biographies of distinguished former students and staff.
The Modern Law Review (MLR) was first published in June 1937. More than eighty years on, it is one of the leading academic law reviews in the world, continuing to uphold the founding editors’ aim of publishing scholarship which ‘deals with the law as it functions in society’. As well as publishing six issues of the law review each year, the MLR organises lectures and supports seminars, scholarships and prizes in order to promote legal education and the study of law. The MLR was founded by a group of like-minded legal scholars from ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ and across the University of London, though under its first general editor, Lord Chorley (editor between 1937 and 1970) it became increasingly associated with ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳.
Read more about the history of the Modern Law Review