The Faculty of Law is one of the professional schools at the University of Otago. Otago is New Zealand's oldest law school, lectures in law having begun in 1873. The Faculty of Law is currently located in the Richardson Building at Otago's main campus in the city of Dunedin.
The Faculty of Law awards the degrees of Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.), Master of Laws (LL.M.), and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.). A Bachelor of Laws Honours program also exists and is reserved for approximately the top 10% of LL.B. students. In 2007, the Law Faculty had approximately 800 equivalent full-time students. Approximately 200 students are in each of second, third, and fourth-year law, and over 700 students are enrolled in the first-year LAWS 101 course, which is a prerequisite to being admitted into full-time legal studies as a second year law student. Approximately 60% of the law students are female.
The first law lecturer at Otago was Sir Robert Stout, who went on to serve as Attorney-General, Prime Minister, and Chief Justice of New Zealand. Otago's law library is named the Sir Robert Stout Law Library.
Mark Henaghan is the current Dean of the Faculty of Law. The Faculty is composed of 27 full-time academic staff members, with 10 full professors, 3 associate professors, 10 senior lecturers, and 4 lecturers.
The faculty leads the Human Genome Research Project, sponsored by the New Zealand Law Society, which considers issues in the regulation of human genome-based technologies in New Zealand, on a legal and ethical basis.
Famous quotes containing the words university of, university, faculty and/or law:
“The great problem of American life [is] the riddle of authority: the difficulty of finding a way, within a liberal and individualistic social order, of living in harmonious and consecrated submission to something larger than oneself.... A yearning for self-transcendence and submission to authority [is] as deeply rooted as the lure of individual liberation.”
—Wilfred M. McClay, educator, author. The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, p. 4, University of North Carolina Press (1994)
“It is the goal of the American university to be the brains of the republic.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The dramatic art would appear to be rather a feminine art; it contains in itself all the artifices which belong to the province of woman: the desire to please, facility to express emotions and hide defects, and the faculty of assimilation which is the real essence of woman.”
—Sarah Bernhardt (1845–1923)
“A strong person makes the law and custom null before his own will.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)