page_title: Dundee Law School
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Dundee Law School / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The lobby at the University of Dundee School of Law
context_page_description: The Dundee Law School is the law school of the University of Dundee in Scotland. It provides undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in Scots and English law, permitting students to qualify into all three United Kingdom legal jurisdictions. The school is based in the Scrymgeour Building—named for Henry Scrymgeour, a 16th-century legal philosopher from Dundee—while the Law Library is based in the libraries building, both on the university's main campus. The Law School is part of the wider School of Social Sciences at Dundee.
context_section_description: The origins of the Law School begin with the foundation of the University of St Andrews, around 1413. A group of Augustinian clergy, driven from the University of Paris by the Avignon schism and from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge by the Anglo-Scottish Wars, formed a society of higher learning in St Andrews, which offered courses of lectures in subjects including law. Through several centuries the teaching of law was incorporated into St Mary's College at St Andrews. By the late 19th century, St Andrews was contending with geographic isolation and dwindling numbers of students, whilst University College Dundee, founded in 1881, was burgeoning in nearby Dundee.
  Law lectures had commenced in Dundee on 18 January 1866 with the first, entitled "Law Studies", given by William Guthrie. Guthrie, at that time an advocate, later became editor of the Journal of Jurisprudence (1867-1874) and of editions of both Erskine and Bell's Principles of the Law of Scotland (1870-1899). This series of lectures was sponsored by the Society of Writers in the city and in particular organised by Sir Thomas Thornton, founder of the eponymous law firm.
  Following several aborted attempts at various forms of incorporation and association, in 1890 the university college began to establish closer links with St Andrews and it was incorporated into the university in 1897. The campus in Dundee was reconstituted as Queen's College in 1954, with the teaching of law formally transferred to a new Faculty of Law in Dundee. In 1967, the independent University of Dundee was created by Royal Charter, incorporating the former Queen's College, including the now School of Law. St Andrews became, and remains, the only ancient university not to offer the study of law.
caption: The lobby of the Scrymgeour Building
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