 Ladies and gentlemen, may I welcome you on behalf of the Faculty of Law to Professor Warren Swain's inaugural lecture. We're here to celebrate Warren becoming a professor of this university. People from outside the academy and some of the students in the audience today might wonder about this title, Professor. In popular fiction, professors often get depicted as crackpot inventors such as Professor Potts and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. They're portrayed as people who carry out worrisome social experiments such as Professor Henry Higgins and My Fear Lady, as people who are shy and sometimes antisocial as in the form the absent-minded professor. Sometimes professors even get portrayed as positively evil. Witness Professor Moriarty, the arch enemy of the equally learned Sherlock Holmes. Mysterious older men with magical powers but dubious academic standing sometimes get called professors. Witness Professor Marvel in the Wizard of Oz or Professor Drosselmaier in The Nutcracker. These are of course exceptions. Those of us in the academy might prefer to identify with the muscular exploits of archaeology professor, Indiana Jones, or the quieter heroism of the various professors at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The reality is less prosaic but no less exceptional. Professor is the highest rank a university can bestow. It's held by a small minority of staff who work at this university. When we award the title of professor it's a sign that we consider that person to be a leading authority, a truly international scholar in his or her field. While this is not the first lecture Warren has given since becoming a professor of law here, this is the inaugural lecture in the sense it's the occasion we have to acknowledge and to recognise as standing as an academic leader an authority in his field a professor of law at this university. Professor Warren Swain joined the Auckland Law School in June last year. To get here he had only to cross the Tasman from the University of Queensland but Warren's journey in fact starts in Yorkshire, England, most specifically Harrogate. His warm northern accent, his dry scents of humour, his willingness to pitch in and contribute are perhaps typical of the sons and daughters of that county. His origins also explain why he's mad on cricket. His office for any of you who have been there is a veritable Aladdin's cave filled with William the Fourth Book cases, leather sofas, law reports and a comprehensive collection of wisdom's cricketers almanacs, even a bottle of wine or two. Warren has worked in the Durham and Birmingham law schools but it's unsurprising to know that his first academic position was at Hartford College Oxford where he also took his degrees. His doctorate was on aspects of the law of a sumptuous contract law published to international critical acclaim as the law of contract from 1670 to 1870. Warren has made his name as a legal historian but he also writes on contemporary private law and across jurisdictions. He's currently writing a book on the history of the law of contract in Australia and also a biography of the English judge Henry McCarty. He's recently co-edited a book on the leading tort authority of Headley Byrne. Dipping into his extensive list of publications one sees articles on horse sails, usury, pawnbroken and the development of medical liability. He is a man of broad and wide-ranging interests. This is reflected in his teaching. He begins some of his lectures by discussing a renowned painting or reading a great poem. Sadly I see we don't have an overhead with a great painting on it today but I gather that we may hear from Oscar Wilde and from Esobs Fables. Warren produces scholarship of the caliber and of the quantity you would expect of a world-class academic. He works extremely hard on his writing for his teaching and as an academic leader within the law faculty. Within a short time of joining us he was appointed the Associate Dean Academic and Teaching and Learning and I know from student leaders that he's respected for his ability to get things done, his willingness to listen to student concerns and to sort out the teething problems that can arise from new initiatives. Warren's taken a lead on a whole range of new initiatives from more comprehensive and fairer assessment in all courses to grading policy and methods of teaching delivery. He is someone who cares very much about the student experience, about teaching and learning and about the issues he writes and publishes on. He is as such eminently qualified to talk about the topic he's chosen for tonight, the role of the law professor. Would you join me in welcoming Professor Warren Swain? I wish. Thank you Andrew for those kind words and thank you everybody for coming especially those who've come from across the Tasman Sea. In Oscar Wilde's play Lady Windermere's fan Lord Darlington claimed that we are all of us in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars. But as Esop's fables reminds us there are dangers in stargazing and astronomer was in the habit of going out every evening to look at the stars. Then one night when he was in the suburbs absorbed in contemplating the sky he accidentally fell into a well. A passerby heard him moaning and calling out. When the man realized what had happened he called down to him, hey you there you are so keen to see what is up in the sky that you don't see what is down here on the ground. The lesson of the fable is this, one could apply this fable to men who boast of doing wonders and are incapable of carrying out the everyday things of life. This lesson needs little explanation in universities of all places but it remains a useful warning when considering today's theme the role of the law professor. Those of us here of a certain age may recall the children's book by Richard Scarry, What Do People Do All Day? Which came out I believe in the late 60s early 1970s. As far as I remember from those dim and distant days law professors do not feature. Those who work for the police, the fire brigade or in hospitals are no doubt more exciting to small children. It would be an odd kind of preschool child that dreams have been a law professor but nevertheless my talk today aims to go some small way to answering the same question what do law professors do all day. The leading Canadian law academic Stephen Waddens had summed up the predicament of the law professor rather well. Law teachers he said are used to being attacked from several directions. Colleagues in other university faculties consider them mere technicians. Law students think on the contrary that their teachers are insufficiently practical and the legal profession regards them as a woolly-minded set of individuals out of touch with reality. I must confess that there is little originality in my choice of topic. As long ago as October 1758 Sir William Blackston on his election to the first pioneering chair made the subject of his own inaugural lectures a discourse on the study of law. On the very first page he made a very conscious illusion to the way that law was studied at the time. It has he said generally being reputed note however unjustly of a dry and unfruitful nature and of which the theoretical elementary part of hitherto received a very moderate share of cultivation and indeed one useful way of looking at the nature of legal education is to look at its history. That was what the great American Joris Roscoe Pound did when he spoke about the evolution of legal education in his own inaugural in 1903. In common with Pound on this I suggest that some of the reasons for the current state of legal education lay in the past though the history of legal education outside the ancient world at least begins in the 12th century. From around 1100 Roman law was studied and taught at Bologna. The first significant law professor there Inerius developed a new type of legal writing. A gloss was added to a Roman text by word explanation. This methodology was taken up by the next generation known as the four doctors Borgaris, Martinus, Jacobus and Hugo. These ideas seem spread to other great European universities which were formed at this time in Paris and Oxford. Note Cambridge was a late starter. In England the common law was already well established. Even though it was neither taught initially in Oxford or in Cambridge rather students were instructed in canon law and civil law. Although it may seem to us now, Oxford was quite an important centre for Roman law instruction. Well why was there this revival in legal education? The reason for this was quite simple. A complete version of the important Roman text Justinian's digest was rediscovered a complete version at the end of the 11th century. And this sparked this revival in legal education. Well what did the early law professors do? Well they did a bit of legal writing and they delivered lectures and oversaw disputations which were formal debates in which students were required to participate. Those of us or those of you and perhaps all of us at one time or another complain of managerialism within universities will be interested to know that in 1250 lecturers were forced to adopt a standard format for their lectures. This went down terribly badly. At the end of their degree and students before they could be awarded a doctorate which was the qualification at the time in Italy were undertook an oral examination and again this is still with us. The process though was described in a Bologna University statute of 1432 as a demanding and frightening test. It has to be said that then as now the law professors were rather a mixed bunch. In Renaissance Italy law professors enjoyed high status and great financial rewards. Many served in public capacities. There were others who lent money to their own students. In which case I suppose a degree of knowledge of the canon law provisions on usury was useful but whatever the deficiencies of European law professors outside of England law professors were undoubtedly custodians of legal education. To take one example the contrast between the lively debate in Germany in the mid 17th century on legal education with what was going on in England at the time could hardly be greater. Even across the border in Scotland students received a broader legal education from the 18th century when three chairs were created at the University of Edinburgh although I see Alison is skeptical about the University of Edinburgh maybe his right to be. In England though and this is the point universities were largely peripheral in legal education. The award of a doctorate in civil law enabled the recipient to practice in the canon law or in the civilian courts and actually the ecclesiastical courts during the middle ages were not concerned with what we now think of ecclesiastical matters as sort of striking off clergymen who chase around after the choir boys. The courts in the middle ages dealt with a range of matters including marriage, divorce, legitimacy, testamentary disputes, defamation, the action for breach of faith which in some ways mirrors the law of contract. Of course after the English Revolution the ecclesiastical courts were now quite the same despite the restoration. The second major civilian court, the High Court of Admiralty was important but was limited to matters arising on the high seas so those who were taught in universities were dealing only within those jurisdictions. The common law on the other hand which was practically much more important was not taught in universities until Sir William Blackstone gave his famous lectures in Oxford in the mid-18th century. Blackstone despite his rhetoric wasn't concerned about legal education as he made out he was concerned about making money and career advancement he saw these lectures as a means to both. He wasn't actually wrong because he ended up as Chief Justice of the Common Please but the lectures were not within the formal curriculum though it was a breakthrough that lectures were delivered at all and the lectures first delivered in 1753 were extended to 1775 hours in 1754 were evidently a success. They would form the basis of Blackstone's best-selling commentaries on the laws of England. Blackstone was an astute university politician and duly succeeded in his ambition to be the first pioneering chair in 1758 but the lectures were not part of the degree syllabus they were merely something that was delivered by way of extras and Blackstone left Oxford in 1761 for the simple reason that people were not allowed to get married in Oxford in 1761 unless they were heads of house and Blackstone wasn't so he had to leave. I make no comment on whether his choice was a wise one. His two successors Sir Robert Chambers and Richard Woodiston are generally seen as lesser jurists. There's a well-founded speculation that at least part of Chambers' lectures were written by his friend Samuel Johnson. Now we turn to Cambridge. There the situation was even worse. The President of Queens no less described civil law as a refuge of idleness and ignorance although Trinity Hall continued to educate a large number of civilians and indeed importantly the Downing Chair was founded in 1800 which we're still with us. The first holder Edward Christian is better known to his brother Fletcher Christian of meeting him on the bounty fame. He also edited Blackstone's commentaries and managed in between idleness and ignorance to write a few books on legal practice and sat as Chief Justice of Ely but sadly he was not really the kind of dynamic individual who was going to establish legal education and indeed common law legal education in Cambridge. For the most part legal education remained exclusively in the hands of the legal profession. The earliest law students known as apprentices learnt the law by sitting in the court in a designated area known as the crib. There were also some more formal methods of instruction and during the 14th century the ins and courts emerged out of a group of boarding houses many were short lived but in a temple middle temple grazing and Lincoln's in are still with us. A group of ins of lowest data scenes of chance we provided education to attorneys and clerks. After initial training those seeking admission to the bar would attend the ins of court. The process note took seven years during which students took party moots attended lectures known as readings and as today ate very bad food in the dinners. The readings though were an important which were what we call lectures I suppose were an important as a means of passing on the collective wisdom of the profession. But in the 16th and 17th century readings declined then they were abandoned altogether. Moots which were important once in the 14th century also declined in the 17th and survived as a curious relic in a temple until the 1770s. Legal education really in the 18th century in the ins of court was in a pitiful state. Students were left to teach themselves. And one writer of the period which he Campbell advised them a few well-chosen authors will suffice and give the student a clearer idea of this too much perplex study than if he was to read the whole heap of rubbish that has been written upon the subject. It's perhaps unfair to castigate the ins when matters were no better in universities. Many of you will be familiar with Edward Gibbons book memoirs of my life which described how the fellows in Oxford had given up the pretence of teaching. Of his own tutor a Dr Winchester he wrote that he well remembered that he had a salary to receive and only forgot he had a duty to perform. A lot of professors only began to play a central part in English legal education in the 19th century following the founding of the University of London in 1826. Two chairs were created. The first was in jurisprudence and the law of nations and was filled by John Austin. The second was filled by Andrew Amos and was on English law. John Austin remains a major figure in the history of jurisprudence still to a degree. Andrew Amos is largely forgotten. It is though perhaps not much of a surprise that Amos with his anecdotes from practice, history and visual aids was a great success with the students and indeed in some ways Amos was a visionary. He introduced written examinations on his course with a prize for the best student. Austin on the other hand was a failure. His lectures were dry and abstract. He undoubtedly had deficiencies as a teacher rather than relying on notes like Amos. Austin just read out large passages of text. There was little engagement with the audience. In the first year of teaching he had 35 students. This dwindled to less than 10 rather like some of my own courses. After four years he was forced to resign from his chair. The common law began to be taught for the first time at Oxford as part of a joint degree with history in 1850 and separately in 1872. The law tripos was introduced in Cambridge in 1858. The Oxford historians were relieved when 1872 came along. They were glad to be rid of the lawyers. William Stubbs no less, Regis Professor of Modern History, complained that the subjects were too different in character. But actually really it was all about intellectual snobbery. In much the same way as these days, media studies degrees are looked down upon. The history professors in Oxford thought law was this ghastly technical trade type of thing and indeed some of those who gave evidence to the University of Oxford Commission which was looking into the degree programme at Oxford at the time suggested that law was too easy. It was an easier route to a BA than a proper subject i.e. classics. Outside universities legal education remained in poor health but the situation slowly began to improve. Law degrees become established. We get proper professors. So great professors like Frederick Maitland, Sir William Anson, Sir Frederick Pollock, Henry Mayne, Sir William Markby, Sir Thomas Hirst, Sir Ging Holland, Sir Paul Vinogradoff. So you got a knighthood in those days as a chair. A stand comparison with their successors. Law as a subject for study only did grow slowly. In 1909 there were 109 teachers of law in universities. By 1945 there were only 130. And it was only really in the 1950s that law started to really be seen as respectable. As Brian Simpson discusses in his posthumous book, law really even in the 1950s are Oxford's least. We're seen as a dumping ground for the stupid including in that term by the academic staff and the students. Another of those early law professors, Albert van Dicey, also made legal education the subject of his inaugural. You can see that I hadn't got an original idea so I just thought I'd copy them. He chose a provocative title, can English law be taught in universities? Dicey recognised the value of practical training but also explored his defects. I think what he said still remains relevant. At the universities a student can be taught to regard law as a whole and to consider one part of English law to another. At the universities it can be taught what from the nature of things can never be learnt in chambers, the habit of analysing and defining legal conceptions. Such an analysis is not the work of men wholly occupied in the daily requirements of legal practice yet its importance can hardly be overrated. Practitioners still tell me that much of the university syllabus is redundant. I keep being told that the main issues that arise for those concerned in practice on the law of contract are interpretation remedies and perhaps contract formation. This may well be true but to adapt a phrase of CLR of James I had to get in some cricket for Professor Dawson. What do they know of contract who only interpretation know? At the same time it cannot make sense that the contract syllabus has largely remained unchanged since the time that Queen Victoria was on the throne. In a humorous piece on legal education, James Gordon gave what he called an honest course description for contract law. Contracts study rules based on a model of two-fisted negotiations with equal bargaining power. This is an American phrase, dicker freely, voluntarily agree on all terms and reduce their understanding to a writing intended to embody their full agreement. Learn that the last contract fitting this model was signed in 1879. There is a good deal of truth in this caricature. Part of the problem is the way in which students are left without even a flavor of context as something basic as standard forms, let alone long-term contract in globalization, consumer law to name but a few deficiencies. Despite a vast and sophisticated body of theoretical literature, insights from such literature forms almost no part of any contract course that I'm aware of. But this tension between legal practice and universities is an old one as long as both exist it won't be eradicated. It's the same issue has been that faced early academic laws in New Zealand. Law professors in fact are obviously often poor advocates for their discipline, although it has to be said that both sides of the argument are not always shy about displays of arrogance. The same fiction or friction albeit in a different form is found when it comes to the second aspect of the work of a law professor, writing and thinking about the law. The title of this section, Legal Research Hardly Like Finding a Cure for a Fatal Disease, comes from a remark of a former colleague, the University of Birmingham at his retirement party. In a way of course he was right, but it does not follow as he implied that legal research is unimportant or has little value. Yet once again an examination of the history of legal writing shows that it comes out distinctly second best, at least in the common law when set against the civilian writers. But let's start with legal writers who mattered and the Roman jurists. The jurists were distinctly Roman invention. My old tutor Peter Birx once said it's curious about the Romans and the Greeks, that the Greeks produced all this philosophy, art, democracy. The Roman system was not largely at least latterly democratic and they produced the greatest legal system the world has ever seen. But the early jurists were priests and once details of legal procedure were made, public secular jurists start to emerge, they become really important figures. And in a legal system in which the judges are lay people, those who are experts on the law are important. But it wasn't just that, they began the process of thinking about the substance of law. And indeed academic disputes are not new. In the middle of the second century AD the jurists formed themselves into two hated rival armed camps, the Sabinians and the Preculians. It's unclear whether there were educational establishments or merely groups who shared a common opinion, but they were shall we say vibrant intellectual disagreements between them. As far as the work of jurists as a source of law is concerned, the institutes of Gaius, the author Gaius, if it was Gaius, lists the following of sources of law. The laws of the Roman people consist of legae, plebiscites, centrist consulates, imperial constitutions, we're getting there, edicts of those possessing the right to issue them. And the answers of the learned. The answers of the learned were important. In another text, Gaius informs us that if the jurists were all agreed, then that opinion had force of law. Where there was a disagreement, a judge was free to choose. This caused chaos, but in 426 AD the law of citations produced a method of deciding who was to be followed. It was a kind of head counting. In the event of a tie, one of the jurists, Papinian, was to have the casting vote. The great jurist Papinian, Paul Gaius, continued to influence legal development long after their death through the European legal system. The rediscovery of Roman law already mentioned didn't just reinvigorate legal education, it reinvigorated legal scholarship and intellectualizing the law. And in the 15th century Roman law combined with canon law would form the basis of private law across Europe, the so-called just commune. Theologians played an important part and big ideas were involved here. So an important group of jurists, the late scholastics, began to synthesize Roman law, canon law with the philosophy of Aristotle and Aquinas. In the 16th century, the humanist writers began to promote law as a subject that was necessary to produce complete and cultivated individuals who exercised moral virtue. This was combined with enthusiasm for classical writers. By the 17th century natural law is built on the humanistic preference for kind of scientific arrangement and logic of its kind, even if they shed some of the other tenets of their writing. Legal scholarship in France and Germany diverged in the 18th and 19th centuries but jurists in both countries were important in the French Civil Code and the German Civil Code, the BGB. The role played by jurists in the common law on the other hand was rather more peripheral, was judges rather than jurists who were important. Of course, some were both, Blackston already mentioned, was a rather second rate Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and this remains true to our own time where three law lords, for example, Lord Goff, sadly passed away recently, Hoffman and Roger were oxydons. Two of those three were important legal scholars. The legal literature on the other hand of private law was largely an arid affair. There were law books, of course. Most of these were concerned with legal procedure but between Blackston's law and customs of England in 1260 and Blackston's commentaries, there isn't much written on private law unless you look at things like Thomas Luton's 10 years on property law. The first two treaties in my own era, the law of contract, was written by Geoffrey Gilbert in 1724. This was very influenced by Roman law and the writings of Thomas Hobbes. Gilbert was important because he portrayed the law of contract as a coherent whole with a distinct theoretical rationale with detailed rules. This work was unpublished. It was followed by the misleadingly titled Treaties of Ecutive 1737 attributed to Henry Ballot and probably not written by Henry Ballot, but Ballot attempted to blend Puffendorf's version of natural law with the common law. The lead do that was not surprising. Natural law was fashionable at the time, but the attempt to link the two was never really a terribly successful. Contract law, though, starts to be of interest to people who are not really lawyers. So Adam Smith and the moral philosopher William Paley, they began to take notice of the subjects. These men were not writers of legal treaties, but they had an interest in the nature of contractual obligations. In this respect, these men were closer to the mainstream European writers. They were thinkers, they were scholars, they were like European jurists. Most of the writers on the law of contract were very different types of individuals. They were not law professors, jurists, or even intellectuals of any kind. They were in effect hack practitioners who thought to make their name by writing on the subject and selling books. Some of them did a fairly good job. Indeed, Joseph Chitty, his practical treatise on the law of contracts, was first published in 1826. A 31st edition still remains in print. So perhaps irony that the most influential jurist on private law in England before the 1870s was not English. He was a Frenchman, Robert Joseph Poitier, who had been translated into English by Sir William Evans in 1806. Poitier's basic premise was that contracts were formed by meetings of wills, meeting of minds, and from this he constructed a whole theory and rationale. It's not surprising that he appealed to more English writers of a more theoretical bent like Sir Henry Colbrook, but he also appealed to judges. The reason I think for this, which is discussed in my last book at Great Lent, still available in remainder shops, is that actually he came at the right time in that English law at the time was trying to construct a new model of contract. And judges and lawyers, it was easy just to pull a book down from the shelf. In time, this theory was blended with English law and that created attention. Writing in the 1880s, the jurist Dicey again said of this earlier generation of legal writers, though perhaps not Poitier, that they had learnt law without mastering its principles. The Oxford Contemporary Sir William Anson, explaining the preface to his principles of contract law, the main object with which I have set out has been to delineate the general principles which govern contractual relations from beginning to end. The idea that contract law could be reduced to principles had earlier echoes, certainly, but had a new level of sophistication in the works of Anson and Sir Frederick Pollock. Anson also became quite rich in that his treatise sold in large numbers and was influential on generations of law students. But largely still, the impetus for most legal writing came from the legal profession rather than universities. It was a way that a young barrister could make a career. Though it's important still to note New Zealand reference coming up that the influence of jurists on the law of contract was much more significant than on the law of tort, with perhaps the early exception of the well-known New Zealand legal writer Sir John Salmon who wrote a book on the subject in 1807. I say this in front of Professor Beaver, I'm sure he'd agree with me, that in the absence of a generally agreed and accepted intellectual framework, tort law remained a disorganised jumble. In many respects, it still does. It's comparatively rare though for a modern jurist to shape a whole area of private law. One obvious example being the late Professor Peter Birx and his work on just enrichment in England. Though fashions change, judges, I can say this with only one present, can be fickle. The High Court of Australia had showed itself hostile to Birx's analysis, preferring instead to drawn equitable principles. But Birx, if nothing else, cannot be accused of failing to address large themes and few writers have had such a profound impact. The more limited influence of academics tends to involve more specific areas of legal doctrine rather than shaping a whole subject. And indeed, modern studies have shown the impact of writing is sporadic at best. The High Court, certainly on what they now don't call unjust enrichment in Australia, wisely cited me. So one can have an impact in a small way, but having a large impact is much more difficult. And judges in the United States in particular have argued that there's a disconnect between what legal academics write about and what legal practitioners are interested in. Within that jurisdiction, much of the work is highly theoretical, much of it is elegantly constructed. Other pieces of legal writing, at least to me, are incomprehensible. And I give you an example. I challenge anyone to make sense of Peter Gabal and Duncan Kennedy roll over Beethoven in the 1984 Stanford Law Review. Duncan Kennedy being a really actually important legal writer. One commentator described this famous article as sounding like a pair of old acid heads chewing over a passage in Sartre. Kennedy though, undoubtedly an important figure. Fasile. I had a long list to choose here, and grateful to my former colleague Professor Ross Grantham for suggesting this by Scott Herschwitz, Harry Potter and the Trouble with Taught Theory, which appeared in the Stanford Law Review in 2010. You can have a jolly evening reading that. It's rather long. I'm not suggesting note that theoretical writing about private law is pointless activity, quite the opposite. And indeed it can be a frustrating exercise to make sense of law without a normative structure. Although reasonable people can differ on the value of the exercise. A great deal of modern academic writing, it has to be said, is very bad indeed. I can only plead me a culpa. It's not entirely the fault of academics, even. In New Zealand as elsewhere, the pressure to publish without having much to say simply reflects the requirements of the PBRF. But all the same, these pessimistic thoughts should not entirely obscure the contribution that legal writers have made and may continue to make. My point rather is the one that the limited influence of common law writers is important, but has been somewhat piecemeal. And indeed until recently, law professors within the common living marginal really figures. There is good legal writing. It can be fueled and perhaps should be fueled by anger or at least a belief that the laws it stands is not quite right. Writing of this sort is an important safety valve. Sometimes it can even influence the direction of private law. The remaining 20%, which I'm going to say something briefly about, it's the topic that will interest many of us and that's administration. As many of you know, I sit on many university committees, including several with the Deputy Vice Chancellor in the front row. And the contracts of employment of professors typically require that 20% of time is spent on service. Well, this means actually something of a mystery. Certainly law professors can provide important public service. Some act as public intellectuals, as Professor Kelsey in the second row is an excellent example. Others are involved in law reform. One of my predecessors in this law faculty made a significant contribution, which should really be noted to drafting the New Zealand contract statutes. In the United States, law professors who are members of the American Law Institute are involved in drawing up restatement. The same idea as was made clear to me by Andy Burroughs when I met him recently is now catching on in England, albeit on a smaller scale. Some law professors, such as myself, are unable to aspire to such greatness. Our lot is to sit there in the middle of the night trying to keep the good ship of the university and faculty moving forward. And I want to finish with some remarks on administration and politics. As an amateur in such matters, I have drawn inspiration from others. The best book that I know of bureaucracy of any kind is Parkinson's Law by C. Northcote Parkinson. He's best known for the idea that work expands to fill the time for completion. He said much else besides. His discussion, actually this is brilliant, his discussion of the workings of finance committees is particularly insightful. His later work and the discussion I can summarise is that it's a firm they're talking about, what do we spend money on? They spend massive amount of time on trivial things like the cost of a bike shed. Things of vast importance and vast cost go through on the nod. His later work in laws and out in laws and out laws is a useful guide for anyone wanting to ascend a greasy pole within any organisation. The chapter on the function of folly is worth five minutes of anyone's time. Universities of course are a special kind of organisation. Cardinal Newman and others have given a great deal of consideration to the philosophical value of universities, which is important. But this inaugural is a view from the gutter. Let's therefore breed some less rarefied air. Universities as other large institutions are political institutions. Almost all the types of personality that can be found amongst the academic staff in universities are contained in C.P. Snow's unjustly forgotten masterpiece, The Masters. I'm not sure how many of you have read it, but it is a masterpiece. The plot concerns the election of a new master to a Cambridge colleague. The characters in the novel provide a useful cross-section of university life. The devious, the naive, the openly ambitious, the quietly ambitious, the disengaged, the venal, the insecure, and the model headed. By coincidence, the best work on academic politics was written by a Cambridge don as long ago as 1908. His name was F. M. Cornford. Cornford is particularly good on arguments that were used in Cambridge at the time and no doubt still against any form of change. There are a number. Time only permits me for two personal favourites. The first, the principle of the wedge, states that you should not act justly now for fear of raising expectations, which you are afraid that you will not have the courage to satisfy. The wedge argument implies the admission that the person who uses it cannot prove that the action is not just. On the other hand, the principle of unright time. The principle of unright time is that people should not do at the present moment what they think is right at that moment, because the moment at which they think it ripe has not yet arrived. Time has a trick of going rotten before it is ripe. Alas, time for me has become ripe, and so it is now time to stop talking and to thank you all for coming. Well, thanks very much, Warren. We all greatly enjoyed that. Professor Swain has drawn upon his expertise in legal history and the law of contracts to provide us with a fascinating account of legal education and legal scholarship in the common law tradition, which sets the emerging role of professors of law in the context of the generally far more developed educational traditions of civil law jurisdictions. Professor Swain's broad-ranging scholarly and erudite treatment of this history and of the work of those 19th century scholars who began to forge a distinct identity for legal education and legal scholarship within the university demonstrates the commitment to teaching, research and the advancement of legal education that have marked his career to date. His inaugural also gives us a foretaste of the sort of contributions that he will make as a professor of law at the University of Auckland. Please join with me in thanking Professor Swain for his lecture and in wishing him ongoing success in his career here.