History of the Law School

The Law Faculty has been in continuous existence for 150 years. It was one of the original Faculties of the College when it was founded as Queens College Galway in 1846. Sister Colleges were established in Cork and Belfast. The other Galway faculties were Arts (with Science and Literary divisions) and Medicine. The Law Faculty at that time had two professors who bore the titles of "Professor of English Law" and "Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy". The aptly named Hugh Law was the College's first Professor of English Law and Denis C. Heron was the first Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy. They received £150 by way of salary from the College and each was entitled to two pounds from every non-matriculated student who attended a course of his lectures in the Faculty, with an additional five shillings going to the Bursar on behalf of the College.

University education was a controversial issue in Ireland for many years and the system was subsequently modified. The Galway Law Faculty survived these changes which, indeed, were mostly technical. In 1882, the Queen's University was dissolved and Queen's College Galway became, for a time, a constituent College of a new Royal University of Ireland. In 1909, as a result of the Irish Universities Act, 1908, the Royal University of Ireland was itself dissolved and two new universities instituted. The original Queen's College Belfast became Queen's University of Belfast, and the Colleges in Cork, Galway and Dublin (the latter founded as the Catholic University in 1854 with Dr. H. Newman as rector) became constituent Colleges of the National University of Ireland (N.U.I.). Maynooth College, founded as a Catholic seminary in 1795, became a recognised College of the N.U.I. in 1910.

The foundation chairs, in English Law and in Jurisprudence & Political Economy, survived the troubled times that characterised Irish 19th century university education. In 1924, however, the central chair became the Professorship of Law and Jurisprudence. Law teaching continued with varying success until a renaissance of the Faculty began in 1978 with the appointment of Professor Kevin Boyle to the Chair of Law. Kevin resigned in 1988 to take up his present position as Law Professor in the University of Essex. The part-time Chair of Common Law was established in 1980 (the most recent holder was Professor Bryan McMahon who has since been appointed to the Bench) and, following an endowment from the Jefferson Smurfit Group, the Chair of Business Law was founded in 1982. The present holder is Professor Liam O'Malley.

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