School of Law Tercentenary 2007 Homepage

The City of Edinburgh has been a major centre for Law since the middle ages, and for 300 years the University has trained generations of the world's finest legal minds.

The first Chair in Law, the Regius Chair of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations, was established in 1707. The University has created and sustained a history of fine legal scholarship and education since that time.

Now in its fourth century, the School is larger and more diverse than ever. With a dynamic, outward-looking, and research active ethos, it attracts and retains leading as well as promising young legal scholars in both well-established and emerging fields.

The School's alumni have contributed remarkable service both at home and worldwide in legal practice, in high judicial office, in commerce and in public service, and also indeed in literature, the arts and the humanities.

The 2007 Tercentenary constituted a celebration of the School's past, present, and future. These pages offer a variety of resources on those events and on the history of the School which I hope may inform and intrigue current and former students and staff, other scholars, lawyers, and friends of the School.

These pages also outline some of the important initiatives which have been undertaken as a result of the generosity of our alumni and other friends and supporters. These range from enhanced student support to the creation by the Ruth Adler Trust, of the Edinburgh Lectures in Human Rights.

Professor Douglas Brodie

Head of the School of Law