Apéndice 16. Professor Dicey (1917)

• Pages: 872-875
• Author: Javier Carlos Díaz Rico

JAVIER CARLOS DÍAZ RICO

872

APÉNDICE 16

PROFESSOR DICEY (1917)

[Redacción, “Professor Dicey: Portrait and Sketch”, Journal of the Society of

Comparative Legislation, 17, new series, 1917, 1–4.].

PROFESSOR DICEY must beyond all question be ranked as one of the fore-

most of modern English lawyers. He has during the course of a long and labo-

rious life applied himself with single-minded devotion to the study of the law of

England, expounding it in the rst place to his students and then, by his publis-

hed works, to the legal profession and to the public at large.

From his early days he was destined for the profession of the law, being per-

haps inspired by the example and having inherited the talents of some of the

distinguished legal family of Stephen to which he is closely related. He came up

to Oxford as an undergraduate in 1854, and had a highly successful curriculum,

obtaining a First Class in the Schools and soon thereafter a Fellowship at Trinity

College. He gained the Arnold Prize in 1860, the subject of his essay being the Pri-

vy Council. Among his tutors at Balliol was the late Henry J. S. Smith, to whom he

has always expressed much indebtedness, and among his contemporaries were

Professors John Nichol, T. E. Holland and Viscount Bryce (the latter slightly his

junior). Leaving Oxford soon after he obtained his Fellowship, he went to Lon-

don to seek his fortunes at the Bar, and gradually acquired a moderate amount

of practice. For a time he acted as “devil” to the late Chief Justice Coleridge. But

his tastes leant more to the scientic and academic side of the profession than to

the forensic, and he soon turned his attention to legal literature. Perhaps a slight

inrmity in the hands interfering with his penmanship may have inuenced him,

but however this be, when the Vinerian Chair of English Law became vacant by

the death of Professor Kenyon, he became a candidate, and was elected to it in

1882. He thereupon became, vi statuti, a Fellow of All Souls’s College, to which

college he has always remained warmly attached.

Into the work of the Chair he threw himself with ardour, stimulating his

students both with tongue and with pen, and it is in no small measure due to

him that the Oxford School of Law has grown up from a small and rather ne-

glected body to be one of the most important and ourishing in the University.

He has supported all movements for its reform and advancement, he has taken

frequent part in the periodical examinations, and has always been keen to keep

them up to the level of a good standard. In particular it may be mentioned, the

University Statute which students holding degrees of outside universities (e.g.

Rhodes scholars) may, after a certain period of residence and study, enter for

the examination and obtain the degree of B.C.L., was largely due to his initia-