Law
Book Details

First Principles

The Melbourne Law School 1857-2007

John Waugh

Australia's first university law course began at the University of Melbourne in 1857

About this Title

First Principles is the story of the distinctively Australian law school that taught the nation's first law course. It tells of the experiences of its students, from those who revelled in learning the law to others who found it strange and forbidding. The lives of staff include achievement, tribulation and even madness, through times of transformation, the quarrels of early deans, and the troubled era of campus democracy.
 
The changing world of legal education is delineated, too: the influence of American ideas, the impact of changes in higher education, and the law school's sometimes difficult relationship with the profession it served. It was during one such battle over the law course that the dean defined its aim as the inculcation of 'first principles'.
 
Balanced, precise, sharp, thoughtfully analytic, original, and engagingly written, First Principles will reveal the Melbourne Law School afresh to anyone with an interest in how law is practised and learnt.

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Preface
1 - A School of Law: 1857-88
2 - Cinderella: 1889-1927
3 - Liberal and Cultured: 1928-45
4 - Building the New Jerusalem: 1946-66
5 - Village Democracy: 1967-88
6 - Performance Against Plan: 1989-2007
Conclusion
Notes
Select bibliography
Index

About the Author

John Waugh is a senior lecturer in law at the University of Melbourne. His publications on legal history and constitutional law include The Rules: An Introduction to the Australian Constitutions.

978-0-522-85448-0