Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge

The Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge in the evening

The faculty is housed in the David Williams Building on the university's Sidgwick Site in Cambridge. The Building is named after the University's first full-time Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Public Law, Professor Sir David Williams.[23] The Building opened in 1996 and was designed by Norman Foster, who also designed the terminal building at Stansted Airport and 30 St Mary Axe (the "Gherkin" in London). The building suffered serious acoustic problems (primarily due to a lack of consideration of acoustics in Foster's design), with its form amplifying any noise from the lower levels and causing significant disturbance at higher levels, not least in the library.[24] This was fixed in 1999 with the installation of a glazed acoustic screen, separating quiet areas from noisy ones.

The David Williams Building contains the University's Squire Law Library, together with offices, lecture and seminar rooms and common room facilities.

The interior of the faculty building

The Squire Law Library, which occupies the majority of the first, second and third floors of the building, is a dependent library of Cambridge University Library.[25] It contains one of the three largest legal collections in the UK with more than 180,000 volumes. The collection is very strong across UK law, the law of other major common law countries (the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand), and the law of the European Union, France and Germany. There are, additionally, smaller collections for the law of many other countries. The library provides its users with access to many major legal databases.

The library was founded in 1904, at first with only 8,000 volumes,[26] although this soon increased. In 1934, together with the Seeley Historical Library, it moved to the Cockerell Building on Senate House Passage, previously the home of the University Library built in 1837-42. The Squire took over the whole of the Cockerell Building on the construction of James Stirling's building for the history library in 1968. With the Squire's own move in turn, its former site became the library of Gonville and Caius College.

Most individual colleges also have a smaller law library of their own.

Named Chairs

• Downing Professor of the Laws of England (Sarah Worthington since 2011)
• Regius Professor of Civil Law (David Ibbetson since 2000)
• Rouse Ball Professor of English Law (Louise Gullifer since 2019)
• Whewell Professor of International Law (Eyal Benvenisti since 2016)
• Sir David Williams Professor of Public Law (Alison Young since January 2018)
• Harold Samuel Professor of Law and Environmental Policy - Jorge E Viñuales since 2013

Others

• Trevor Allan, Professor of Jurisprudence and Public Law
• Catherine Barnard, Professor of European Union and Labour Law since 2008
• Eilís Ferran, Professor of Company and Securities Law since 2005
• Matthew Kramer, Professor of Legal and Political Philosophy
• Graham Virgo, Professor of English Private Law since 2007
• Richard Fentiman, Professor of Private International Law