The Origin of the Law Journal

Abstract

It may be of interest if, after the lapse of fifty years, I record my memories, now dim, of the birth of the Cambridge Law Journal in 1921. Credit for the initiation of the venture belongs to the Committee of the Cambridge University Law Society, an undergraduate club founded in January 1901. In the academic year 1920–21 I was treasurer of the society and the junior officers were A. T. Harries of Emmanuel, R. Branston of Christ's, R. M. Hughes of Downing, and T. Simpson Pedler of Queens'. This group came to see me and propounded the proposal that the society should publish an annual magazine. T. S. Pedler was the most active spokesman, and I have always regarded him as the ultimate founder of the Journal. The original idea of the group was to publish a magazine containing an account of the doings of the society and of other matters relating to the law school in general. My contribution to the venture was to persuade the officers that if the society was to have a magazine it should be a scholarly production edited by a law don and embodying some of the features of the Harvard Law Review.