Talk:Bachelor of Civil Law

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Law Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.
???	This article has not yet received a quality rating on the assessment scale.
???	This article has not yet received an importance assessment on the assessment scale.

	This article is part of WikiProject Education, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of education and education-related topics. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to featured and 1.0 standards, or visit the WikiProject page for more details.
Portal
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

[edit] DPhil and DCL

After obtaining the BCL degree, it is possible (though rare) to proceed to the degree of Doctor of Civil Law (DCL) in recognition of published work or court judgments. It is also possible separately to carry out legal research work as part of the Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) programme.

I shan't rewrite this (yet!) but I do think it is unclear.

Firstly, is it really necessary to have the BCL before taking the DCL? I have never heard that it is and I can't see any rationale for it. Indeed, I should be surprised if everyone who is a DCL was a BCL before that. I am prepared to be surprised though!

Sorry, I was too hasty. It is all explained here: http://www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/1997-8/weekly/190398/acts.htm#3Dec The BCL does appear to be a prerequisite for the DCL, but I think this is only a technicality. A suitably qualified candidate for the degree of DCL who does not already hold the degree of BCL is admitted to both degrees at the same time without having had to earn the BCL in the usual way.

Secondly, I think it is rather a mistake to mention the possibility of progression to the DCL before mentioning the possibility of going on to take a DPhil. As I am sure the person who wrote this meant to convey, the BCL may be used as a stage towards doing a DPhil, rather as an MA (in the non-Oxbridge/Dublin sense), MSt, MSc, MPhil, etc might be a stage towards a DPhil (or PhD). The DCL would possibly then be conferred after perhaps twenty or more years of scholarship.--217.134.108.63 08:18, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Things may have changed a bit since my day, but back then there were two ways you could get a DCL. Firstly, if you were one of the great and the good, you got awarded one as an honorary degree (the same way other law faculties confer an LLD), and obviously there is no precondition (so far as I know, Nelson Mandela does not have a BCL). Secondly, if you did have a BCL, you could write a fairly manificent thesis at least 7 years after taking your BCL, you could apply for a DCL on that basis. I have never heard of anyone being awarded one via the second route, but I think it is on the University statute book. Apparently there is a similar quirk in Cambridge where you can upgrade your BA to a PhD (instead of an MA) if you submit a thesis of top calibre work, but no one in practice ever utilises it. Legis 15:06, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Postscript. What was extremely common though (and probably still is), is 2 year BCL candidates, enrolling for the DPhil, and then just bulking up the BCL thesis and getting awarded a doctorate after only 1 year. I very much doubt that practice has been stamped out yet. Legis 15:08, 16 October 2006 (UTC)