Key 52: Law [ii] 1931-1974

In 1930 a second chair (Public Law) was endowed by the judges of the Supreme Court of Victoria. It was filled by Kenneth H. Bailey, who had succeeded Sir William Harrison Moore as professor of Law in 1928.

George W. Paton (later vice-chancellor) was appointed to a new chair of Jurisprudence in 1931.

A third chair named for foundation professor Hearn was created in 1963 and a fourth chair named for Harrison Moore in 1974. In the same year the chairs of Public Law and Jurisprudence were renamed in honour of Bailey and Paton. The Law Library gained much space with the completion of the Baillieu Library in 1959 and the Faculty expanded into the entire Quadrangle Building when the Administration moved into the Raymond Priestley building in 1969, but the prospect of a new building remained remote for some decades. Accommodation had been less of a problem before the war when most of the staff were part-time lecturers drawn from the ranks of down-town practitioners. They only came up to the University for short periods, but the conditions became very cramped as the numbers of students and permanent staff expanded after the war. A little extra teaching space was gained with a small extension filling the space between the south west corner of the Quadrangle Building and Old Arts forming Cussonia Court in 1970, but the main source of relief was a more stringent quota and curtailment of plans, until in 2002 the faculty moved into a new building in the Melbourne University Private precinct south of Grattan Street.