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Peter Birks was one of the most influential legal scholars of his generation. He owed that influence to the admiration in which his rigorous and innovative thinking was held by lawyers and judges, not only in this country, but throughout the Commonwealth and in Europe. Birks was most widely known through his writings, but in Oxford, in particular, his reputation also rested on his teaching, especially in the famous restitution seminars that he conducted with various colleagues over three decades. He had an enormous impact on the law of restitution/unjust enrichment both in the universities and in the courts. The ‘Birksian school of thought’ has pursued, and will continue to pursue, rational transparency and elegant coherence in legal reasoning, not only in the law of restitution, but across English private law generally.

It would be impossible to write a history of the study of Roman law in England in the second half of the 20th century without placing very considerable weight on the work of émigré legal scholars David Daube, Fritz Robert Pringsheim, and Fritz Heinrich Schulz. The study of legal history, that is, the legal history of the Middle Ages and later, was not so strongly enriched by refugee scholars. Only two made any mark: Hermann Kantorowicz and Walter Ullmann. The two men had a number of things in common. Both were remorselessly erudite scholars of the legal texts of the medieval ius commune, Kantorowicz concentrating primarily on civil law and Ullmann on canon law. Both began their careers with a particular interest in aspects of the theory and history of criminal law, though the treatments of the topic diverged markedly in their mature writings.

The émigré legal scholars featured in this book who came from Germany to Britain (in fact all came to England) were Jews or of Jewish descent, and nearly all were escaping from Nazi persecution. Some were totally assimilated and were either not acknowledged Jews, or were practising Christians. All first studied law in either Germany or Austria, and all were men. This chapter outlines the legal framework as well as the political and cultural context in Britain during the time of the exodus of émigré lawyers from Germany. After sketching the position of the Jewish community in England in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, and anti-Semitism in Britain, British immigration policy and the legal framework in the inter-war years are discussed, along with the position of refugees before and after the outbreak of World War II. After 1905, Britain was less open than it had been to persecuted and poverty-stricken aliens, but remained an important destination for refugees from Europe during the 1930s, albeit within a policy framework designed to encourage re-emigration, mainly to Palestine and the United States.

This chapter assesses the contribution of émigré legal scholar David Daube to the study of Roman law in Britain. First, a short account of his career is given, and some aspects of the study of Roman law in Britain before Daube arrived on the scene, are discussed. Daube was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany in 1909 and died in California in 1999 at the age of 90. He attended the Berthold-Gymnasium in Freiburg, and then in 1927 went on to study law at the Albert-Ludwigs University there. Along with Franz Wieacker, he was a member of the seminar which Fritz Pringsheim ran and in which the most famous of all scholars of Roman law, Otto Lenel, took part. Daube appeared to lack interest in the place of Roman law in the curriculum, in stark contrast with the attitude of Lenel, who was in the forefront of the campaign to defend the position of Roman law in the German universities against successive attacks. Daube and other refugees helped change the nature of legal education in Britain.

Wolfgang Friedmann is best considered as a German émigré who contributed to the common law world, rather than to England. He studied at Berlin University under Ernst Rabel, completing his doctorate in 1930. After a period in private practice he became an assessor in a labour court in Germany. Friedmann's determination to uphold the independence of the court brought him into conflict with the Nazi regime; he was relieved of his post and had to leave Germany in 1934. This chapter looks at Friedmann's life as a legal scholar, his work on comparative law, legal theory, the political and social setting of law, public economic law, administrative law, unjust enrichment, and international law. Like Friedmann, Gustav Radbruch was hospitably received in England, but he also found the place intellectually unsupportive. Both had a deep attachment to the theoretical approach of German legal education and writing, and to an attention to values and sociology.

Among the German legal scholars who emigrated to England during the Nazi dictatorship, Gerhard Leibholz is a special case. The accumulation of a number of factors, each of which is in itself of some significance, makes Leibholz an almost unique figure within the community of German émigré jurists in England before, during, and shortly after World War II. It is surprising that Leibholz's time in England did not leave major lasting intellectual traces. He was a constitutional lawyer who had grown up in the Continental German legal tradition, and perhaps the most striking fact when looking at Leibholz as an émigré legal scholar is that his exposure to a very different tradition in England during his exile did not substantially affect his academic views and teaching. This chapter looks at the life of Leibholz in Germany during the 20th century and during World Wars I and II, his educational and academic background, his exile into England, and his appointment as justice of the Constitutional Court in Germany.

Lassa Oppenheim, Hersch Laurerpacht, and Georg Schwarzenberger played a significant role in their time in teaching and writing about general public international law in the United Kingdom. Oppenheim, Laurerpacht, and Schwarzenberger — who held university chairs in international law in England and whose primary vocation was as teachers and writers — had little in common other than their German-speaking and Jewish background, and their subsequent British naturalisation. This chapter looks at the state of public international law in 20th century England, the English tradition of international law, and the influence of the émigré legal scholars on international law scholarship. As far as international law is concerned, three international developments of the half-century were: the move to international organisations in the political and other spheres; the development of permanent international courts and of a recognisable international judicial technique for dispute resolution; and the attempt to control the use of force as an instrument of policy in international relations.

This chapter examines living in technical legality from the location of the legal scholar. Technical legality means that thinking about law and especially law and technology, has to escape the circularity of the Frankenstein myth, through coming to know the complex networks of technical legality. In this chapter George Miller’s classic Australian post-apocalyptic film Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior provides a map of the functions of a very familiar manifestation of technological humanity, the human-automobile in Australian law, politics and culture. What is shown through this cartography is a way of thinking law and technology that goes beyond the closed metaphysics of the Frankenstein myth. In mapping complexity, complicity, collusions and surprises within the networks of the present, the law scholar-nodes functions as a privileged location whereby the technical legality can be self-reflective; where the effects and affects of the continually changing world are seen. Further, in generating knowledge about the networks of the present, law-scholar-nodes can empower others, other embodied nodes in the networks, the monsters that have come to inherit the Earth, to live well in technical legality.

It is virtually impossible to write about comparative law without beginning with a comment on the phrase itself. As has often been observed, there is no such thing as comparative law. Even though comparative law as a branch of legal study had secured definite recognition during the latter half of the 19th century, the confusion of terminology persisted well into the 20th century. This may account in part for a debate about the nature or definition of comparative law, which today seems unnecessary, if not actually barren. This chapter discusses comparative law in 20th century England, the formation of the Society of Comparative Legislation in December 1894, the contributions of Sir John Macdonell in the field of comparative law, contributions of the émigré legal scholars to the modern literature of comparative law, research on comparative law during the 1930s and the years during World War II, and law reform and legal education in England.

Otto Kahn-Freund was an émigré legal scholar whose contribution to the scholarship of labour law was an entirely singular one. By the 1970s, he was rightly regarded as the doyen of labour law studies in Britain. It was recognised that, as a subject of academic study, labour law had grown from most modest beginnings in the preceding thirty years, almost entirely as the result of Kahn-Freund's inspiration and enthusiasm. By the end of that decade, and even more in the early 1980s, that particular process of cross-fertilisation had become a matter of fascination to the growing community of British employment lawyers, and a considerable amount of writing was devoted to analysing and expounding Kahn-Freund's legacy. This chapter chronicles Kahn-Freund's early life, his academic apprenticeship with eminent and charismatic lawyer and Social Democrat politician Hugo Sinzheimer, his tenure as a professor at the London School of Economics, his contributions in the fields of family law and conflict of laws, and his election as chair of comparative law at Oxford University.

By definition, private international law is fundamentally concerned with a trio of cross-border issues: Do the English courts have jurisdiction to hear a case? What law is the court to apply? And will the judgments of the courts of another country be recognised in England? One of the interesting themes of the 20th century development of private international law in England was to see the extent to which this characteristic developed and with what consequences. A further significant thread was that of the relationship between public and private international law. This chapter looks at developments in private international law in England at the dawn of the 20th century, including jurisdiction of the courts, recognition of foreign judgments, range of cross-border issues, choice of law, and family law matters. Developments during the 20th century include law reform, interface of public and private international law, law on international trade, and role of the jurist. The legacy of émigré legal scholars from Germany in the field of private international law is also examined.

Georg Schwarzenberger described himself as ‘European; born and bred in Germany, with British nationality and British loyalties’. His life was indeed characterised by the crossing of borders: he distanced himself from his Jewish religion and bourgeois family, emigrated from Germany to England, and, finally, changed his scholarly area from international law to international relations. Schwarzenberger was born in Heilbronn, Württemberg, in 1908. For his legal studies, Schwarzenberger chose the University of Heidelberg, considered the most liberal university in Germany. This chapter chronicles the life of Schwarzenberger as an émigré legal scholar in England, his settlement in London, his approach to international law, his promotion of international law, his work on international law and power politics, and his influence on English law.

Hermann Mannheim and Max Grünhut left Germany for England — the first in January 1934, and the second five years later — both as a direct consequence of Nazi persecution. Leon Radzinowicz, on the other hand, was already in England on a mission supported by the Polish Ministry of Justice when the clouds of war gathered, and wisely decided not to return to his native Poland, where he would almost certainly have perished. It is widely acknowledged that Radzinowicz's influence on the establishment of criminology as an academic discipline in his country of adoption was, in the long run, more decisive than either Mannheim's or Grünhut's, for he was the founder of the first Institute of Criminology to be established in a British university. Yet the prospect of criminology being recognised as a discipline worthy of governmental support would have been negligible without the contributions already made by Mannheim at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Grünhut at Oxford University. This chapter looks at the careers of Mannheim and Grünhut as émigré legal scholars in England and their academic contributions.

There was an important distinction among émigré legal scholars in England (very few came to Scotland in the first place), between those scholars who were already well established in their academic careers in Germany before they had to emigrate and those who had not completed their preparation for an academic career, although they might already have taken their doctorates in law before they left Germany. The former continued their research and writing, insofar as circumstances allowed, but were not normally appointed to formal professorships. There seemed to be no movement to create personal chairs for them, and there was a feeling that however good their understanding of English in general, their spoken English was insufficient for lecturing on a regular basis. Fritz Heinrich Schulz is a good example of the older generation. This chapter offers personal recollections of Schulz and other émigré legal scholars who escaped Germany and went to Britain: Guenter Treitel, Otto Lenel, Fritz Robert Pringsheim, Francis A. Mann, David Daube, and Walter Ullmann.

Roman law in the United Kingdom had two 20th century histories. One was happy, and the other was not. For generations, Justinian's Institutes had played an enormously important part in the formation of the common lawyer's mind. That debt was real even for the many who remained unaware of the identity of the creditor. By the end of the century the teaching of the Institutes course to young lawyers in the early stages of their legal education had almost completely died out. The other, by comparison, has nothing immediately to do with the education of common lawyers. It is the story of the British contribution to research and scholarship on Roman law itself. The uprooted Romanists who came to Britain were part of, and partly made, both of these different stories.

Ernst Joseph Cohn was born in Breslau, Germany on August 7, 1904 to Max Cohn and Charlotte Ruß. Before taking up his studies at the law faculty of the University of Leipzig in Germany, he attended the primary and secondary schools of his home town. His doctoral thesis deals with problems of communication of declarations of intention through the medium of messengers, in particular with the legal effect of a declaration received by a messenger. He obtained his doctorate degree as a summa cum laude. This chapter chronicles Cohn's legal education and academic career in Germany, his legal research and publications before leaving Germany and emigrating to England, his research on English law as well as international law and comparative law, his interest in civil procedure and arbitration, and his views on private international law and unification of law.

Legal scholars who left National Socialist Germany for Britain ranged from graduate students to some of the most eminent members of their profession. Martin Wolff can safely be said to have figured on the latter end of that scale. He is widely acclaimed as one of the greatest law teachers of the 20th century. For more than half a century, his treatise on property law was the leading aurhority in its field for courts, practitioners, scholars, and students alike. At the same time, Wolff was respected as an authority on German commercial law and family law. His strong teaching and research interests in private international law and comparative law gave him a familiarity with the common law which many other German émigré law scholars were lacking. This chapter chronicles the life of Wolff in Germany and his emigration to England, his works on private international law and their influence on academic writing and on courts, his work and life at Oxford University, his social life, other people's personal impressions of him, and the late recognition he received.