History
The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies was established in 1947 in response to recommendations made in 1932 by Lord Atkin that the United Kingdom needed an institution “which would be a headquarters for academic research and would promote the advancement of knowledge of the law in the most general terms”. On the 11th June 1948, the Institute was officially opened by the Lord Chancellor, William Jowitt, 1st Earl Jowitt as an Institute of the University of London. The first director was Professor Sir David Hughes Parry, a distinguished Professor of English Law at the London School of Economics and for many years Vice-Chancellor of the University of London. The Librarian, K Howard Drake also acted as administrative secretary for the Institute.
Housed at 25 Russell Square, the Institute occupied all floors of the building, the ground and first floors reserved for the library with rooms on the second and third converted into offices or study/seminar rooms. The library held 11,000 books in its first year, a substantial number donated by Dr Charles Huberich. An internal telephone system connected all the rooms with a hand book lift installed to move books from floor to floor."
By 1949, the Institute was running out of space and were given permission to extend into the basement and ground floor 26 Russell Square. Here it remained until 1976 when the Institute moved into No. 17 Russell Square, part of the newly built Charles Clore House designed by Sir Denys Lasdun. At the official opening on 1st April 1976, the then Chancellor of the University of London, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother over stayed and her official schedule had to be abandoned.
In 1994 the IALS became one of the member institutes of the School of Advanced Study.
The Institute is currently in the process of a five-year building refurbishment, the first phase of which was completed in September 2012, incorporates a larger café and improved lecture facilities on the ground floor.
Read more about this topic: Institute Of Advanced Legal Studies
Famous quotes containing the word history:
““And now this is the way in which the history of your former life has reached my ears!” As he said this he held out in his hand the fatal letter.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“All history and art are against us, but we still expect happiness in love.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)