DICEY+100. ALBERT VENN DICEY: A CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. Edited by Andrew Dickinson, Timothy Endicott and Wolfgang Ernst. Intersentia (2024) xviii and 181pp, plus 4pp Index. ISBN 9781839704260. Paperback £85.

Last year this Quarterly drew to the attention of its readers the account of his professional life by F A Mann: [2023] LMCLQ 171. In keeping with the understanding that even the fullest timetable needs to make space for general studies, it is timely to notice a volume considering and reconsidering the contributions of A V Dicey to English law. It is derived from papers given at a conference to mark the centenary of death of the author of The Conflict of Laws: a marvel when it was produced, and an institution ever since. In addition to those dealing with the conflict of laws, the volume contains assessments of Dicey’s contribution to legal education, to the constitution, and to political thought. Its great advantage over the more usual mammoth biography written by a single, relentless, hand is that eleven experts, wearing their expertise wonderfully lightly, offer essays on particular issues found in or derived from Dicey’s legal life. It is never dull, never boring. Produced by Intersentia, the book is not exactly cheap, but is clean, trim, and pleasing to behold.

We may start with Dicey’s contribution to legal education. Prior to the last quarter of the 19th century, the university’s contribution to the systematic study of English law was a sick joke. Dicey arrived just as reform was beginning to take shape. Even so, he had drawn attention (pp 30–35) to the low level of academic salaries, the crushing misery of university examinations, and the fact that little or no control was exercised to ensure that those appointed to chairs actually bothered with the teaching they had been appointed to deliver. Nihil sub sole novum. In May 2024 it was reported that newly qualified lawyers with a major London firm of solicitors would have a starting salary of £150,000: lest there be doubt about it, university teachers are not so rewarded. University examinations are grimmer than ever: it is as true as it was when Dicey said it (p.32, faintly echoing Cicero’s lament about the appetite of Romans) that students “learn in order to be examined instead of being examined on what they have learned”, but the micro-management of those who might have supposed that the assessment of papers was a matter for their professional judgment, and that alone, is now beyond all reason. And far too many of those appointed to tenurable posts are told that their entire career depends on publishing “research” of a kind that conforms to criteria set by people who are equipped neither to research nor to teach. No wonder, then, that so many view teaching the law as a millstone.

Dicey understood the proper role of the professor as being to equip those leaving university for the maelstrom of pupillage and the life of a professional lawyer which