Regius Professor of Civil Law (Oxford)

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Albericus Gentilis , Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford , 1587

Regius Professor of Civil Law or Regius Chair of Civil Law is the name of a Regius professorship for law at the University of Oxford , founded in 1540 by Henry VIII . It is one of the oldest professorships at the university.

Foundation, endowment

The Regius Chair of Civil Law in Oxford was founded by King Henry VIII along with four other Regius Professorships in Oxford and four others in Cambridge. The other professorships are for Theology ( Regius Professor of Divinity ), Medicine ( Regius Professor of Medicine ), Hebrew ( Regius Professor of Hebrew ) and Greek ( Regius Professor of Greek ). The professorship was then endowed with forty pounds sterling per year. At the same time as the foundation, Henry VIII finished teaching canon law at both Oxford and Cambridge , where a Regius Professor of Civil Law was also donated. According to the statutes of 1549 the Regius Professor of Civil Law had four times a week between eight and nine o'clock in the morning Pandekten , the Codex Justinianus or English canon law teach. The four times weekly teaching obligation was also confirmed in the statutes of 1564 and 1576. The professor was also obliged to arbitrate legal disputes. The aim of the monarch was to limit the influence of the Catholic Church on research and teaching and to strengthen the newly introduced Anglican faith.

The exact foundation date is uncertain. According to some sources, the first professor, John Story , was appointed in 1541. None of the foundation documents survived to this day, but in 1544 Robert Weston was documented as Deputy Story.

The Regius Professorship holder was appointed by The Crown (the English state in its entirety) and continues to teach Roman law , its principles, history, and a few other branches of law. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown changed this practice in 2008 and transferred the selection to the universities. The elected candidate will be notified of his written acceptance of the position to the Cabinet Office and the nomination will then be announced by the Prime Minister and the Regent.

The first professor

It is uncertain when the first Regius professor, the beatified John Story, was appointed. The history of the University of Oxford ( The History of the University of Oxford ) names the year 1541 and adds that Story, together with Robert Weston, was reappointed on February 26, 1546 by letters patent for life. Other sources name the year 1546, from which there is documentary evidence.

Payments from the Treasurer of the Court of Augmentations to Story, as professor of law, could be evidenced in the accounting records from Michaelis (September 29) 1546 to Michaelis 1550, parts of 1553, and 1556 to 1557. Treasury records ( Exchequer ) also contained payments for fees and annual payments for the years 1553 to 1557.

Story's career was turbulent. In 1547 he was elected to parliament and in 1548 spoke out against that of Edward VI. introduced anti-Catholic laws, whereupon he was imprisoned and after his release fled to the Seventeen Provinces (now the Netherlands). When Mary I came to power (July 1553 to November 1558) he was able to return to England and into public life. He was re-elected to Parliament and in the year after Mary's death, 1559, he opposed the Act of Supremacy 1558 , which gave the Crown the leadership of the Church of England . He was arrested again, fled and was captured again, fled again to the Netherlands, where he became subject to Philip II of Spain . Kidnapped by agent Elizabeth I , he was imprisoned in the Tower of London , where he was finally hanged, gutted and quartered in 1571 after torture .

Pope Leo XIII. Beatified Story in 1886.

Reward

In 1617, King James I supplemented the professor's salary by providing the benefice of the Shipton parish ( Diocese of Salisbury ) for the benefit of the incumbent professor, who was then receiving £ 300 from the university. The first recipient of this benefice was Richard Zouch , Regius Professor from 1621 to 1660 and Dean of Arches , the last was Joseph Phillimore (see below).

From the statutes of 1821, the Regius Professor of Civil Law was also automatically a Fellow of All Souls College . According to the guidelines of 1877, the salaries for the professorship were increased to 700 pounds per year, to which the fellowship at All Souls College and the accompanying 200 pounds must be added. The supplementary readership for Roman law was also named in these guidelines .

Period of decline

Although always prestigious , the Regius professorship was not always a good teaching address. 1846 examined Committee of the House of Commons the state of legal education in the UK. The reports in the same year show how little content the title Regius Chair of Civil Law at Oxford meant at that time. Joseph Phillimore , who took over the professorship in 1809 and held it until his death in 1855 at the age of 80, admitted after a series of evasive answers to the committee that the subject had not been taught at Oxford for almost 100 years. Phillimore was considered an expert in international law. Philip Bliss , Registrar at the University of Oxford, revealed that the university did not hold any exams in any legal sciences. Although the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law was still awarded, the " disputations " were empty formalities.

One of Phillimore's eighteenth-century predecessors, Robert Vansittart , a well-known antiquarian and known for his immorality, held the professorship from 1767 until his death in 1789. He published works in antiquity and was associated with Samuel Johnson , William Hogarth the satirist Paul Whitehead and took part in the debauchery of the Hellfire Club along with the aforementioned . Vansittart's successor Thomas Francis Wenman (1745–1796) and Regius professor from 1789 until his death, is described in the Dictionary of National Biography as one of the few researchers of natural history in Oxford and drowned on April 8, 1796 while collecting botanical samples in the river Cherwell .

Modern

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce , Regius Professor from 1870 to 1893

After Phillimore's death in 1855, the situation improved. Although his successor Travers Twiss had studied mathematics and "Literae Humaniores" (term for classical antiquity at Oxford and some other universities), he took over the professorship immediately after three years in a professorship for international law at King's College in London , where the teaching of jurisprudence was taken more seriously than at Oxford. Twiss' international reputation led Leopold II of Belgium to ask him to draw up the constitution for the Congo Free State (1885–1908).

Twiss succeeded James Bryce in 1870 , an important historian and politician of the Liberal Party, who held both the professorship and a seat in parliament for a long time. He did not give up the professorship until 1893, a year after he had assumed the post of Undersecretary of State in the State Department in the cabinet of William Ewart Gladstone .

In 1955 the prominent German law professor David Daube (1909–1999) from Freiburg im Breisgau took over the Regius professorship as the first foreign academic since the 17th century. He later taught law at the University of California, Berkeley .

Daube was followed in 1971 by Tony Honoré (* 1921), a lawyer known for his work on property , causality in law and Roman law. He held the professorship until 1988. The Rhodes scholarship holder was born in London, but grew up in South Africa . He fought in the first battle of El Alamein in World War II , where he was wounded. He contributed sixteen books and over a hundred articles to the philosophy of law .

In 1988 Peter Birks became a Regius Professor, who held the professorship until his death in 2004. He was a specialist in enrichment law. After Birk's death, the chair was orphaned for over a year. Then in December 2005 the Dutchman Boudewijn Sirks was appointed Regius Professor, who took over the professorship in 2006. Sirks had previously taught philosophy at the Universities of Leiden , Amsterdam , Utrecht and Frankfurt .

Selection of professors

The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown changed the selection procedures for Regius professorships so that they are now advertised as for other professorships. When Boudewijn Sirks retired, an advertisement was published and the requirements for a candidate were described. The election of the German Wolfgang Ernst for the professorship was announced in a press release on January 21, 2015 .

List of Regius Professors of Civil Law at Oxford

Surname name suffix from to Remarks
John Story circa 1541 1557 for a large part of the time with Robert Weston and William Aubrey
Robert Weston DCL 1546 1553 together with John Story; Weston later served the Crown as Dean of Arches and Lord Chancellor of Ireland.
William Aubrey BCL, DCL 1553 1559 for some time together with John Story
John Griffith 1559 1566
Robert Lougher BCL, DCL 1566 1577 Lougher was a founding member of Jesus College. Lougher's name was also given differently than Lowgher in other documents.
Griffith Lloyd BCL, DCL 1577 1586 Lloyd is referred to as Griffin Floyde in other sources.
William Mowse († 1588) LL.D. 1586 1587 Mowses name is also given as William Mowsse or William Mosse. His term of office as Regius Professor is given very differently, since he already held the lectures on his behalf before he was appointed by the king himself.
Albericus gentilis DCL 1587 1608
John Budden BCL, DCL 1611 1620
Richard Zouch DCL 1620 1661 Zouch was the first Regius Professor to receive the benefice from Shipton.
Giles Sweit DCL 1661 1672 Sweit is also known in the Latinized form of the name, Egidius Sweit and in different spellings as Giles Sweet or Giles Swett. Sweit was knighted on March 25, 1632.
Thomas Bouchier DCL LL.D. 1672 1712
James Bouchier DCL LL.D. 1712 1736
Henry Brooke DCL LL.D. 1736 1752
Herbert Jenner DCL LL.D. 1753 1767
Robert Vansittart DCL 1767 1789
Thomas Francis Wenman DCL 1789 1796
French Laurence DCL 1796 1809 Laurence's brother Richard was appointed Regius Professor of Hebrew in 1814 .
Joseph Phillimore (1775–1855) DCL 1809 1855 Phillimore was the last Regius professor to still draw the benefice from Shipton.
Travers Twiss 1855 1870
James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce 1870 1893
Henry Goudy 1893 1919
Francis de Zulueta 1919 1948
David stave 1955 1970
Tony Honoré 1971 1988
Peter Birks 1989 2004
July 2004 Feb 2006 vacant
Boudewijn Sirks 2006 2014
Wolfgang Ernst LL.M., LL.D. 2015 today After Daube, Ernst is the second German on the chair. In 2017 Ernst was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e New Regius Professor of Civil Law Appointed. University of Oxford press release, December 1, 2005.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h TH Aston (Ed.): The History of the University of Oxford. Volume III: The Collegiate University. Pp. 358-360.
  3. ^ A b The Pembroke Legal Tradition: some famous Pembroke lawyers. Website of Pembroke College, Oxford; Retrieved April 8, 2014.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Richard J. Evans : On her Majesty's scholarly service . In: Times Higher Education , Feb. 7, 2013; Retrieved July 17, 2014.
  5. ^ Reg. Cong. 1535-63, fo. 100.
  6. ↑ a b c d e West-Wicksted on British-History.ac.uk; Retrieved May 25, 2016.
  7. ^ A b c Richard Evans: The don who's making history . In: The Independent , October 23, 2008; Retrieved July 18, 2014
  8. ↑ a b c d e f Stermont-Synge on British-History.ac.uk; Retrieved May 25, 2016.
  9. ↑ a b c Public Record Office : PRO E 323/3, red. 91, 4, red 38/39, 5, red 35/37, 6, red. 22/24, E 405/499, 507, fo. 75v, 510.
  10. ^ A b c Life of John Storey Retrieved April 8, 2014.
  11. ↑ a b c The historical register of the University of Oxford, completed to the end of Trinity term, Regius Professorship for Civil Law ; Part 1 online; accessed on May 6, 2015.
  12. ^ Appointment of Richard Zouch on the website of the Clergy of the Church of England Database ; accessed on May 7, 2015.
  13. ↑ Appointment of Joseph Phillimore on the Clergy of the Church of England Database website ; accessed on May 7, 2015.
  14. ↑ All Souls College on British-History.ac.uk; Retrieved May 19, 2016.
  15. ^ Scotland Yard: South of Whitehall Place on British-History.ac.uk; accessed on May 27, 2016.
  16. ↑ a b TH Aston (ed.): The History of the University of Oxford. Volume VII, Part 2, Oxford 1984.
  17. ^ A b c EI Carlyle, Robert Brown: Vansittart, Robert (1728–1789), jurist. In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
  18. ^ A b Wenman, Thomas Francis (1745–1796), civil lawyer and botanist. In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
  19. ↑ a b Twiss, Sir Travers . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape  27 : Tonalite - Vesuvius . London 1911, p. 493 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
  20. ^ Bryce, James, 1st Viscount . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape  4 : Bishārīn - Calgary . London 1910, p. 699 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
  21. ↑ Daube, David. In: Who Was Who 1996–2000. A. & C. Black, London 2001, ISBN 0-7136-5439-2 .
  22. ↑ Online list of Rhodes scholarship holders ( Memento of the original from November 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 1, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk
  23. ↑ a b Gerhard Dannemann: In Memoriam Peter Birks (1941–2004) ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / ouclf.iuscomp.org archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . on the University of Oxford website; Retrieved April 8, 2014.
  24. ^ Job Description and Selection Criteria for the position of Regius Professor of Civil Law (PDF) at the All Souls College of the University of Oxford; Retrieved March 25, 2015.
  25. ↑ a b Press release from the Office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, January 21, 2015, Regius Professor of Civil Law, Oxford University: Wolfgang Ernst . ; Retrieved March 25, 2015.
  26. ↑ a b c William Aubrey. In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), Last updated: 2004, accessed April 8, 2014.
  27. ↑ Appleyard-Azard on British-History.ac.uk; accessed on May 27, 2016.
  28. ↑ a b c d e f Lloyd-Lytton on British-History.ac.uk; accessed on May 27, 2016.
  29. ↑ a b Flooke-Fyrmin on British-History.ac.uk; accessed on May 27, 2016.
  30. ^ Charles Henry Cooper: Memorials of Cambridge. vol. 1. William Metcalfe, Cambridge 1860, p. 125.
  31. ↑ a b Mordaunt-Mytton on British-History.ac.uk; Retrieved May 25, 2016.
  32. ^ TH Aston (Ed.): The History of the University of Oxford. Volume III: The Collegiate University. Pp. 360-361.
  33. ^ English Universities, Schools and Scholarship in the Sixteenth Century: Civil law at the universities . on Bartleby's website; Retrieved April 8, 2014.
  34. ↑ a b St. Peter's Hall on british-history.ac.uk; accessed on May 17, 2016.
  35. ↑ Gabel-Gilmore on British-History.ac.uk; accessed on May 24, 2016.
  36. ^ Brian P. Levack: Budden, John (1566-1620), civil lawyer. In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
  37. ↑ Bruges-Bythner on British-History.ac.uk; accessed on May 27, 2016.
  38. ↑ Zouche, Richard . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape  28 : Vetch - Zymotic Diseases . London 1911, p. 1045 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
  39. ↑ Zanchy-Zouch on British-History.ac.uk; Retrieved May 19, 2016.
  40. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Joyce M Horn (Ed.); Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1541-1857: Volume 6, Salisbury Diocese . ; First published in 1986, Institute of Historical Research, London; accessed on February 17, 2016.
  41. ^ A b The Oxford University Calendar: 1833 - Corrected to December 31, 1832 . J. Parker and H. Slatter, Oxford, p. 35.
  42. ^ Richard Newcourt: Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Parochiale Londinense: An Ecclesiastical Parochial History of the Diocese of London, Containing an Account of the Bishops of that Sea, from the First Foundation Thereof . Volume 1. Benj. Motte, London 1708; accessed on April 13, 2015.
  43. ↑ a b c d A pocket companion for Oxford or Guide through the University . Blenheim, Ditchley, and Stow, 1766, p. 106.
  44. ↑ a b Bludworth-Brakell on British-History.ac.uk; accessed on May 27, 2016.
  45. ↑ Elizabeth R. Lambert: Laurence, French (1757-1809), lawyer and politician. In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
  46. ↑ Gordon Goodwin:  Laurence, Richard . In: Sidney Lee (Ed.): Dictionary of National Biography . Volume 32:  Lambe - Leigh. , MacMillan & Co, Smith, Elder & Co., New York City / London 1892 (English).
  47. ↑ Papers of James, Viscount Bryce, 1826-1958 at archiveshub.ac.uk, accessed April 8, 2014.
  48. ↑ Goudy, Henry . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape  32 : Pacific Ocean Islands - Zuloaga . London 1922, p. 299 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
  49. ↑ Archive of the British Academy ( Memento of the original from March 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Data set for Francis de Zulueta; Retrieved April 8, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.britac.ac.uk
  50. ^ Obituary for David Daube on the University of California, Berkeley website; Retrieved April 8, 2014.
  51. ↑ Archive of the British Academy ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Record for Tony Honoré, accessed April 8, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.britac.ac.uk
  52. ↑ The curriculum vitae of Professor Boudewijn Sirks on the All Souls College website at the University of Oxford; Retrieved March 25, 2015.
  53. ↑ Wolfgang Ernst, LL.D. honoris causa, Edinburgh, July 2017 on The Edinburgh Legal History Blog; accessed on July 16, 2017.