Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge

Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge

Undergraduates	700
Postgraduates	250
Location	Cambridge, United Kingdom
Campus	Sidgwick Site
Website	www.law.cam.ac.uk

The Faculty of Law, Cambridge is the law school of the University of Cambridge. The Faculty is one of the world’s oldest and finest law schools, renowned for the quality of its teaching and its cutting-edge legal research.^[1] Legal study at the University of Cambridge began in the thirteenth century and the Faculty sits the oldest law professorship in the English-speaking world, the Regius Professorship of Civil Law, founded in 1540.^[2] It is currently ranked as the best law school in the United Kingdom by all major national league tables and has been ranked as one of the top three law schools in the world by the QS World University Rankings since 2013.

The Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge during the day

The Faculty incorporates the Institute of Criminology as well as 11 Research Centres, including the world's leading research institute for international law, The Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. The Faculty has 24 professors, six readers, and over 70 other University, Faculty and College Teaching Officers. The student body comprises about 700 undergraduate and 225 graduate students.

History

The history of legal education in Cambridge dates back to the thirteenth century, when the core subjects of legal study in all European universities were Civil law (the law of ancient Rome) and the Canon law of the Church. Early graduates of the Cambridge Faculty of Canon Law held the highest judicial positions in Europe in the Rota at Avignon. Notable alumni of the Faculty include William Bateman and Thomas Fastolf, who wrote the first known law reports in the ius commune tradition, and William Lyndwood, the principal commentator on medieval English Canon law.^[3]

Sir Thomas Smith, first Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge.

During the English Reformation, King Henry VIII ordered the Faculty to stop teaching canon law in 1535. Nonetheless, the Faculty received some compensation when the same king appointed Thomas Smith as the first Regius Professor of Civil Law in 1540. Academical legal learning was cosmopolitan; Cambridge doctors of law practised in the ecclesiastical and admiralty courts, assisted the nation in foreign embassies, and discoursed on law, justice and government in philosophical and comparative terms.^[4]

English law was added to the curriculum in 1800, with the foundation of the Downing Professorship of the Laws of England. Examinations in law for the B.A. Degree began in 1858, and the Faculty grew steadily in size and in the range of its interests. The other established chairs in the Faculty are: the Whewell (International Law, 1867), the Rouse Ball (English Law, 1927), the Wolfson (Criminology, 1959), the Arthur Goodhart Visiting Professorship (1971), the Professorship of Law (1973) the S.J. Berwin (Corporate Law, 1991), the Herchel Smith Professorship of Intellectual Property Law (1993), and the Professorship of European Law (1994).^[5]

Among benefactions received by the Faculty to support study and research have been the Whewell Trust Fund (1867), for scholarships in international law; Edmund Yorke's bequest (1873), used for the Yorke Prize and other undertakings connected with the study of law; the Maitland Memorial Fund (1906), established in honour of F. W. Maitland, Downing Professor and renowned legal historian, for the promotion of research and instruction in the history of law and of legal language and institutions; the Squire Scholarship Fund, received from the trustees of Miss Rebecca Flower Squire in 1901 to provide scholarships and grants in law; the Wright Rogers bequest (1966), for scholarships and grants; the Hersch Lauterpacht Fund (1967), for the study of international law; and a number of prize funds. Further generous support was provided in connection with the new building.^[6]

Courses offered

The Faculty offers six degrees in Law: BA, LLM, MCL, MLitt, PhD and LLD. In addition, it offers the MPhil in Criminology, the MPhil in Criminological Research, the Diploma in Legal Studies, and the Diploma in International Law.^[7]

Rankings and reputation

Cambridge is unanimously ranked as the best law school in the UK by all major national academic league tables. It is currently ranked first by The Guardian',^[12] The Times'/The Sunday Times' Good University Guide,^[13] and The Complete University Guide.^[14] Since it started publishing its annual rankings for 2010, The Guardian has ranked Cambridge first six times (2010,^[15] 2012,^[16] 2015,^[17] 2016,^[18] 2017,^[19] and 2018^[12]). The Complete University Guide has given the top spot to Cambridge since 2013^[20] and eight times in the last 11 years.^[21] The Times Good University Guide law rankings has Cambridge atop its league table since 2014.^[22]

In 2015, the QS World University Rankings ranked Cambridge as the world's second best university for law.^[23]

Facilities

David Williams Building

The Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge in the evening

The Faculty is housed in the David Williams Building on the university's Sidgwick Site in Cambridge. The Building is named after the University's first full-time Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Public Law, Professor Sir David Williams.^[24] The Building opened in 1996 and was designed by Norman Foster, who also designed the terminal building at Stansted Airport and 30 St Mary Axe (the "Gherkin" in London). The building suffered serious acoustic problems (primarily due to a lack of consideration of acoustics in Foster's design), with its form amplifying any noise from the lower levels and causing significant disturbance at higher levels, not least in the library.^[25] This was fixed in 1999 with the installation of a glazed acoustic screen, separating quiet areas from noisy ones.

The David Williams Building contains the University's Squire Law Library, together with offices, lecture and seminar rooms and common room facilities.

The interior of the Faculty building

Squire Law Library

The Squire Law Library, which occupies the majority of the first, second and third floors of the building, is a dependent library of Cambridge University Library.^[26] It contains one of the three largest legal collections in the UK with almost 180,000 volumes. The collection is very strong across UK law, the law of other major common law countries (the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand), and the law of the European Union, France and Germany. There are, additionally, smaller collections for the law of many other countries. The library provides its users with access to many major legal databases.

The library was founded in 1904, at first with only 8,000 volumes,^[27] although this soon increased. In 1934, together with the Seeley Historical Library, it moved to the Cockerell Building on Senate House Passage, previously the home of the University Library built in 1837-42. The Squire took over the whole of the Cockerell Building on the construction of James Stirling's building for the history library in 1968. With the Squire's own move in turn, its former site became the library of Gonville and Caius College.

Most individual colleges also have a smaller law library of their own.

Research centres

The Faculty has a number of associated research centres:

• The Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (LCIL)
• The Centre for European Legal Studies (CELS)
• The Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law (3CL)
• The Centre for Public Law (CPL)
• The Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL)
• The ESRC Centre for Business Research (CBR)
• The Centre for Tax Law (CTL)
• The Cambridge Forum for Legal and Political Philosophy (CFLPP)
• The Cambridge Transitional Justice Research Network (CTJRN)
• The Cambridge Socio-Legal Group (CSLG)
• The Cambridge Private Law Centre (CPLC)

Societies

There are a number of groups and societies based around the Faculty of Law:

• Cambridge University Law Society
• Cambridge Societies at the Inns of Court (Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, and Middle Temple)
• Graduate Law Society
• The Cambridge University Society for Women Lawyers
• Cambridge University Students' Pro Bono Society
• Cambridge Pro Bono Project

Most colleges also have their own law societies.

Publications

Notable publications produced under the aegis of the Faculty include:

• University of Cambridge Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series (SSRN)
• The Cambridge Law Journal
• International Law Reports
• Clarendon Studies in Criminology (joint venture with the criminology centres at Oxford and the London School of Economics)
• Cambridge Studies in English Legal History
• Cambridge International Law Journal

Notable persons

Alumni

See List of University of Cambridge people

Faculty

Named Chairs

• Downing Professor of the Laws of England (Sarah Worthington since 2011)
• Regius Professor of Civil Law (David Ibbetson since 2000)
• Rouse Ball Professor of English Law (David Feldman since 2004)
• Whewell Professor of International Law (Eyal Benvenisti since 2016)

Others

• Eilís Ferran, Professor of Company and Securities Law since 2005

References

External links

• Official website
• Squire Law Library
• University of Cambridge

Coordinates: 52°12′06″N 0°06′35″E / 52.2017°N 0.1096°E / 52.2017; 0.1096