Remembering 1972: The Oxford Centre in the Context of Developments in Higher Education and the Discipline of Law

Abstract

In 1992 A.H. Halsey published a book entitled Decline of Donnish Dominion.' This chronicles and analyses trends in the British academic profession from about 1970 to 1989. According to Halsey, in this period funding, salary, research facilities, staff-student ratios, public respect, and every dimension of professional status of academics all deteriorated.2 The first twenty-one years of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies spans almost exactly the same period, which has been one of this most difficult in the history of higher education an era in which we moved disjointedly and painfully from a small elite aggregation of institutions towards something approaching a mass 'system'. The centre was founded in 1972, soon after '1968' and one year before the oil crisis of 1973, two of the great landmarks in Halsey's story.3 When the history of the centre comes to be written it might appropriately be called 'Don's triumphs in adversity' or 'Don and Co.'. That the centre has survived at all is indeed a triumph; that it has flourished is a near-miracle for which Don Harris, his predecessors, and a remarkable team all deserve great credit. The purpose of this paper is to set socio-legal studies in the context of developments in higher education and academic law in England since 1972. It is a by-product of a larger project on the discipline of law in England viewed from a largely historical and ethnographic perspective as a peculiar form of academic culture.4 In this context, the discipline of law refers to that congeries of activities research, reflection, writing, teaching, learning, and bitching that are located mainly, but not exclusively, in faculties, departments, and schools of law. I was tempted to call this paper: 'What might law contribute to socio-legal studies?' This is not a frivolous question. I wanted to explore what, if anything, the institutionalized discipline of law has to offer that is unique or special to socio-legal studies as an enterprise