Professor Richard Taylor will be President of the Society of Legal Scholars
A University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) Professor of Law has been elected to become President of a prestigious and influential national law society in two years’ time.
Professor Richard Taylor, who is close to completing 40 years of service and is now an Emeritus Professor at the University, was elected as Vice-President for 2017-18 at the Society’s Annual Conference at Oxford University last month. This means that in 2018-19 he will become the President of the Society, which boasts approximately 3,000 members and is the oldest and largest learned society in the field of law.
The Society of Legal Scholars is the principal representative body for legal academics in the UK and Ireland and its members also include members of the senior judiciary, academic and professional lawyers and law makers. In his role as President, Professor Taylor will take the lead in the many and varied activities of the Society in promoting and supporting legal education as well as bringing the prestigious 2019 Society of Legal Scholars Conference to Preston.
"Obviously I am flattered and delighted to be elected to a post with such a distinguished list of predecessors going back for over a century with so many iconic names that were legends to me when I was a student ."
Professor Taylor commented: “Obviously I am flattered and delighted to be elected to a post with such a distinguished list of predecessors going back for over a century with so many iconic names that were legends to me when I was a student and a young academic myself.
“I am also very pleased that my election means that the highly significant Society of Legal Scholars Conference of 2019, which will mark the 110th anniversary of the Society, will be coming to UCLan having been to universities such as Cambridge, Edinburgh, York, London, Dublin and Oxford in recent years. The four day conference always attracts an impressive number of senior judges and legal experts from both Government and the professions to speak at the plenary sessions as well as the many distinguished academics, both young and old, from all over the world, giving papers at the 28 subject sections.”
UCLan Deputy Vice-Chancellor and former Dean of the University’s Lancashire Law School Lynne Livesey congratulated her former colleague. She said: “It is a richly deserved accolade and an affirmation of the incredibly high esteem in which Richard is held by his academic and practising peers across the discipline."
"It is a richly deserved accolade and an affirmation of the incredibly high esteem in which Richard is held by his academic and practising peers across the discipline."
“The Society of Legal Scholars is the most highly regarded of the various legal societies, both in the UK and internationally. It is an absolute honour for UCLan to be able to host their conference and, more importantly, for us to have among our professors someone whose personal achievements and influence in academia and the legal world have culminated in his election to the top position.”
Professor Taylor is originally from Oswaldtwistle. He studied law at the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics and qualified as a barrister. He is one of the authors of Blackstone’s Criminal Practice and has written many other books as well as sitting part-time as a tribunal judge. He has lived in Pleasington for the last 18 years and has had a long and varied career at UCLan since first being appointed in 1977, including being Head of the Lancashire Law School for 14 years and, more recently, its Director of Research. He now continues his involvement as an Emeritus Professor.