McGILL LAW JOURNAL
Volume 13
Montreal
1967
Number 2
The Opening of the New Law Building
A Message from the Dean
From time-to-time every institution undergoes changes in tempo,
direction, and perhaps over-all aspirations. The McGill Law Faculty
is the oldest university law school in the Commonwealth, with its
beginnings in 1848. Since that time its history has been the history
of Nineteenth Century Quebec and of Federal Canada. While es-
sentially a Civil law school, the courses taught and the ideas discussed
have reflected, and increasingly mirror, the two great systems, the
civil law and the common law, both operative in Canada, with the
related legal patterns of the United States acting as a modern ca-
talyst and model for the growth of Canadian and Quebec law,
particularly in their effects on Canadian legal education and, there-
fore, on the activities of the McGill Law Faculty itself.
Only in 1950 did the Faculty acquire a building of its own when
it moved into Chancellor Day Hall, formerly the home of Mr. J.K.
Ross. For sixteen years the Ross house, now named Chancellor Day
Hall after McGill’s first Chancellor –
and one of the Commissioners
appointed to draft the Quebec Civil Code of 1866 – was the home
of the Faculty. But a student body that had grown to over 200 in
the B.C.L. course, over 50 in the fourth year Bar preparation course,
and from 30 to 50 post-graduate students from over 20 countries in
the world, required facilities of a different order of magnitude.
The new building, officially opened on January 21, 1967, and
increasingly occupied since late November, 1966, is now able to
provide the Faculty with the library and classrooms it needs for its
further development. The Institute of Air and Space Law founded
in 1951, and the Institute of Comparative and Foreign Law founded
in 1965, will both be served by the four Library floors, the three
large classrooms and three seminar rooms and the striking Moot
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Court, together with many small study places to accommodate post-
graduate students. The Library itself, one of the better Law Faculty
Librairies in Canada, is planned to expand to perhaps over 100,000
volumes within the next fifteen years.
Above all, the Law Faculty will serve the needs of the new Quebec
and the new Canada, embracing the civil law and comparative-com-
mon law courses within a Canadian Federal legal and political
system now undergoing severe trials. As a civil law school and a
comparative law centre, training for the Bar, encouraging legal
scholarship and legal reform, the Faculty now has a building worthy
of its established programs and its new objectives.
MAXWELL COHEN,
Dean of Law
McGill University
The above words of Dean Cohen are highly indicative of the
general feelings of pride and accomplishment which accompanied
the opening of the new Chancellor Day Hall on January 21, 1967.
The opening of the new building was an auspicious occasion for
several reasons. First and foremost it brought to fruition the dreams
and efforts of many former and present members of the faculty.
Today both the student body and the staff have, so to speak, a “home
of their own” where their legal studies may be carried on in sur-
roundings which are both physically and academically conducive to
intellectual development.
The building itself is a six storey complex, modern in design and
spacious throughout. The library, which occupies the top four floors
of the building, has a fine collection of over 35,000 volumes, in-
cluding the acclaimed Wainwright Collection, comprising the personal
library of the French legal historian Olivier Martin.
While the library is perhaps the outstanding feature of the new
building, the new Moot Court must not go unnoticed for it will play
a large and important role in training the student in courtroom
procedures.
The opening January 21 was especially significant in that it
brought together several eminent jurists of world fame, each of
whom received the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa at a
special convocation. Those honoured were:
The Honourable Robert Taschereau, Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court of Canada, who officially opened the new building;
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OPENING OF THE NEW LAW BUILDING
199
The Honourable Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
of the United States, who gave the Convocation Address;
The Right Honourable Lord A.T. Denning, Master of the Rolls,
London, England;
The Honourable Ivan C. Rand, former Justice of the Supreme
Court of Canada and sometime Dean of the Faculty of Law, Uni-
versity of Western Ontario;
Professor Jean Carbonnier, Facult6 de Droit et des Sciences Eco-
nomiques, Universit6 de Paris, France;
The Honourable George S. Challies, Associate Chief Justice of
the Superior Court of Quebec.
Thus, it is with no little degree of pride and anticipation that
the Students and Faculty settle down in their new surroundings
where they will attempt to keep alive the spark of juristic learning
Which has for so long been the hallmark of the Faculty of Law.
