Professor Edward Jenks

Professor Edward Jenks

The first full-time law professor at University College, Liverpool (as it then was) was Professor Edward Jenks. Fellow legal historians Sir Frederick Pollock and FW Maitland, as well as Sir John Astbury, had previously delivered visiting lectures at Liverpool in 1882, 1883, and 1885, but Jenks was the first full-time professor. He was first appointed as a Professor of Law in 1893 and then subsequently as the inaugural Queen Victoria Chair in English Law in 1895.

Jenks was a prolific author who worked at the same time as FW Maitland, Holdsworth, Goudy, Buckland, Winfield, and AV Dicey. Jenks’ work covered disparate areas including, legal and political history, land law, constitutional law, jurisprudence, politics, and political science. Jenks also went on to be the first law professor at the London School of Economics and the founder of the Society of Public Teachers of Law (now the Society of Legal Scholars). Here, we explore Jenks’ life, including his time at Liverpool,

Edward Jenks (1861-1939)[i] was born in Stockwell in south London on the 20th February 1861. His mother was Isobel Frances, nee Jones, the daughter of Edward Jones of Nottingham. Edward Jones was a furniture manufacturer. Edward Jenks’ father was Robert Jenks. He was a furniture dealer in the City of London. In addition to Edward, Isobel and Robert Jenks also had three other sons.

Education

Edward Jenks was educated first at Dulwich College from 1874 to 1877. He left school at sixteen to become articled to a solicitor. He qualified as a solicitor in 1882. Unfortunately, his mother died in 1883. His inheritance enabled a twenty-two-year-old Jenks to enter King’s College, Cambridge, as an undergraduate law student. His biographer notes that he was “a brilliant law student and the recipient of several prizes.”[ii] These included the Le Bas, Yorke, and Thirlwall prizes. He was also a Chancellor’s medallist. Jenks obtained a first class in 1886. In the following year, he was second in his year in the history tripos.

Jenks was also reading for the bar. He was called by Middle Temple in 1887. He won the Barstow Scholarship in 1887. As noted above, he also won the Yorke Prize in 1891 for an essay entitled “The History of the Doctrine of Consideration in English Law.” This was subsequently published in book form (see below).

Jenks was not finished in his pursuit of degrees however. In 1909, when well into his academic and publishing career, Jenks “quirkishly”[iii] took the London degree of LL.B. He was forty-nine at the time. He obtained a first. In later life, he would also receive honorary degrees from Paris (1929), Wales (1928), and Bristol (1933). By this later stage in his life, Jenks degrees were: DCL Oxon (by decree); MA Oxon and Cantab; Hon. Docteur, University of Paris; Hon. DLitt University of Wales; Hon. LLD University of Bristol; Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) 1930.

Academic Career

Following his undergraduate work at Cambridge and call to the bar Jenks then took up his first academic post in 1888 when he was elected a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, and appointed as the director of studies in law at Jesus College, Cambridge. In the same year, 1888, Jenks left Cambridge for the University of Melbourne to become the dean of the faculty of law.

Jenks married Annie Ingham in 1890, not long after his arrival in Melbourne. She died the following year after giving birth to a son. Jenks married again in 1898. His second wife was Dorothy Mary, nee Forwood,  daughter of a Liverpool family. Jenks’ son from his first marriage was killed in action in 1917. He had won the Military Cross during the fighting in World War One. The medal citation reads:

“His Majesty the KING has been graciously pleased to confer the Military Cross on the undermentioned Officers, in recognition of their gallantry and devotion to duty in the Field:— Temporary Second Lieutenant Alan Robert Constantine Jenks. 61st Field Company, Royal Engineers For conspicuous gallantry and ability on 30th July 1915, at Hooge.”

In 1892, Jenks senior returned to England. He was appointed to a chair at the Faculty of Law, University College, Liverpool. In 1895, this chair became the Queen Victoria Chair in Law. His biographer has noted, ~during his four years at Liverpool (1892-1896) Jenks championed the cause of humanism in legal education against the view, which then prevailed among the leaders of the profession, that a solicitor was perfectly equipped if he had learned the technique of his trade.”[iv] We are told that Jenks had some success. He was able to attract students “to subjects of intellectual interest but little immediate practical value, such as international and constitutional law and jurisprudence.”[v] Lord Chorley QC reflected on Jenks’ Liverpool period noting, “at Liverpool he [Jenks] succeeded after an uphill struggle in establishing a school of law on a basis of genuine scholarship. As he himself put it his object was not merely the sharpening of technical facilities, but the production of wise and public spirited men."[vi]

Jenks left Liverpool in 1896. He took up a position as reader in English law in the University of Oxford. He was also a tutor at Balliol College, Oxford. On his resignation to become Vinerian Reader at Oxford Jenks wrote: “It would be idle to deny that the four years I have spent in Liverpool have been years of much trial and occasional despondency. The apathy of the Englishman towards educational as distinct from merely technical studies is, perhaps, nowhere more clearly manifest than in the legal profession.”[vii]

In 1903, Jenks moved to London to become the Director of Legal Studies at the Law Society. In this role Jenks was pivotal in professionalising the education of articled clerks and solicitors.

In 1924, he would become a Professor of Law at the London School of Economics in the University of London. Like Liverpool before, this was also a newly established chair.

Jenks was pivotal in founding and an early president of the Society of Public Teachers of Law (now the Society of Legal Scholars). Jenks was the first Honorary Secretary until he became President during the 1919-1920 academic year. This organisation was apparently referred to as “Jenks’ Trade Union.”[viii] Lord Chorley QC noted that, “Edward Jenks has been called the father of the Society of Public Teachers of Law, and undoubtedly he was the main architect of its successful building up.”[ix] Cownie and Cocks’ work, ‘A Great and Noble Occupation: The History of the Society of Legal Scholars’[x] contains numerous references to Jenks including his initial 19th June 1908 letter to Professor Walter Copinger of Manchester University sowing the seeds of creation for the society. Chaloner Dowdall (later a circuit judge) and nine Liverpool colleagues were encouraged to attend early meetings of the society.[xi]

Jenks published a great number of books and articles. His books included:  

  • Modern Land Law, 1899.
  • Constitutional Experiments of the Commonwealth, 1891.
  • The Government of Victoria (Australia), 1893.
  • His Yorke Prize essay on consideration and its history was published in 1893 as The Doctrine of Consideration in English Law.
  • Jenks’ Law and Politics in the Middle Ages was published in 1898 and again in the second edition in 1913.
  • A History of Politics, 1900.
  • Parliamentary England, 1903.
  • A Digest of English Civil Law was published between 1905 and 1917.
  • Husband and Wife in the Law,
  • Short History of English Law, 1912.
  • History of the Australasian Colonies, 3rd ed. 1912.
  • The Book of English Law, 1924.
  • Edward I, 2nd ed. 1924.
  • Outline of English Local Government, 7th ed., 1930.
  • Digest of English Civil Law, 3rd ed. 1937 (editor and part author).
  • Short History of English Law (4th ed.), 1928.
  • Government of the British Empire (5th ed.), 1937.
  • The State and the Nation, 4th issue 1935.
  • The New Jurisprudence, 1933.
  • The Ship of State,
  • Jenks also edited four editions (14–18) of Stephen’s Commentaries on the Laws of England.

There is a portrait of Jenks which is in the possession of the University (previously College) of Law, London. The artist was F Bennett and the 1925 portrait was rendered in oils. 

In addition to his honorary doctorates (noted above) Jenks was made a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1930. According to Who’s Who, Jenks counted his hobbies as “boating, motoring and tramping” (long-distance walking).[xii]

Jenks retired as an emeritus professor to his home Tawton House, Bishop’s Tawton, Barnstaple, north Devon. Jenks died at home on the 10th November 1939, at the age of seventy-eight.

In summarising Jenks’ contribution Honoré has noted:

“Indefatigable in both mind and body, and obstinate to a fault in maintaining a view once formed, Jenks’ varied writings in law and history were less the product of original research than sustained attempts to spread a knowledge of English law and its history…their author was the person most responsible for raising the professional and academic standing of teachers of law in the early part of the twentieth century, for making English private law accessible to continental lawyers of that period, and for ensuring that the education of solicitors was less narrowly technical than, left to itself, the profession would have chosen.”[xiii]

The editors of the Modern Law Review noted in 1940 upon his death that he was: “a personality who had as wide an influence in the law during his generation as anyone of his contemporaries.”[xiv]

References

[i] Honoré, T. Jenks, Edward (1861-1939). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004. Hereafter Honoré. See also: Lee, RW. Edward Jenks, 1861-1939. PBA, 26 (1940), 399-423. See also: Dr. Edward Jenks. R. S. T. C. The Modern Law Review, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Jan., 1940), p. 215. See also: Chorley, R. Edward Jenks, 1861-1939 - In Memoriam (1947) Journal of the Society of Public Teachers of Law (New Series), Vol. 1, Issue 2 (1947), pp. 114-117. Hereafter Chorley.

[ii] Honoré.

[iii] Honoré.

[iv] Honoré.

[v] Lee (cited by Honoré).

[vi] Chorley, p. 116.

[vii] Kelly, T. For Advancement of Learning – The University of Liverpool1881-1891. University of Liverpool Press, Liverpool, 1981, p. 115.

[viii] Dr. Edward Jenks. R. S. T. C. The Modern Law Review, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Jan., 1940), p. 215.

[ix] Chorley, p. 114.

[x] Cownie, F & Cocks, R. A Great and Noble Occupation: The History of the Society of Legal Scholars. Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2009, p.1.

[xi] Ibid, p.3 and 4.

[xii] (2007, December 01). Jenks, Edward, (20 Feb. 1861–10 Nov. 1939), Emeritus Professor of English Law and late Dean of the Faculty of Laws, in University of London, attached to London School of Economics and Political Science; Creighton Lecturer for 1931–32; formerly editor of the Independent Review; Barrister. Who's Who & Who Was Who.

[xiii] Honoré.

[xiv] Dr. Edward Jenks. R. S. T. C. The Modern Law Review, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Jan., 1940), p. 215.

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