If the Present were the Past

Abstract

In his 1955 inaugural lecture as Professor of Comparative Law at the University of Cambridge,1 CJ Hamson suggested that the survival of legal history, and by implication comparative law, depended on it being thought of as part of every substantive area of law, rather than only as a separate discipline. Facing a decline in the subject’s appeal and the research done on it, this approach sought to protect its long-term future by ensuring that some of its content and reasoning were studied by all students. Today, legal history’s position is no more certain (though, one might hope, no less). There is much excellent legal history research being done, but student interest in the subject is hardly robust. Looking back at Hamson’s inaugural plan reminds us that there are some battles we have been fighting for a long time; some we might even be fighting forever. But are all things in legal history so constant? Are all legal actors doomed to rehearse the debates and repeat the tasks of their predecessors? Put another way, we might well wonder what future legal historians will think of us, our work, and our ideas today. I would like to briefly consider just two aspects of Hamson’s call: the legal historian’s role in the law school, and legal history’s relationship with other areas of law, particularly comparative law. Like Hamson, the focus will be on English law, but the issues and ideas apply more generally. Hamson gave his address just before the role of the legal academic in England and Wales was about to change significantly. AWB Simpson’s recollection of Oxford in the early 1950s was that law did not enjoy a high academic reputation, and most undergraduates at the university who planned to join the Bar did not read law.2 However, this …