HISTORY OF THE FACULTY
The Faculty of Law was established in 1962. It is one of the foundation teaching units of the University of Lagos. Teaching in the Faculty started in October, 1962 with an academic staff of five persons (two Nigerians and three Englishmen); twenty-six pioneer full-time students who started a three-year LL.B. (Bachelor of Laws) Degree Programme. A five-year Part-Time LL.B. Degree (Bachelor of Laws) Programme started in January, 1963, with thirty students, although the part-time programme has been scrapped now.
The Faculty considers its role to be that of providing a sound University education in law in consonance with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Advisory Commission’s Report on the establishment of the University of Lagos. Although Lagos is no longer the political capital of Nigeria, it remains the commercial nerve centre and an ever expanding industrial metropolis. The following observation on page 33 of the UNESCO Report remains very valid.
Lagos is the judicial, commercial and international centre of the Federation and holds the largest concentration of practitioners. It is also the most rapidly developing industrial centre. Moreover, it is the centre of the Federal and constitutional development of law and practice of the greatest significance for all members of the profession in the future. Finally, its general cultural advantages and its specific professional opportunities for association with the members of the bench, the bar and the federal legal services, both public and private, are self-evident.
Since its inception, the Faculty has been going through experimental stages involving several changes in the curriculum. In particular, the changes have taken into consideration the growing need to teach law in the light of social, political and economic changes and the need to inculcate the idea of understanding law not for its own sake but with reference to its relevance to society, locally and internationally.
The Faculty was divided into the four departments with effect from 1st October, 1977. They are: the Department of Commercial and Industrial Law, the Department of Jurisprudence and International Law the Department of Private and Property Law and the Department of Public Law. Each Department is headed by a Professor of Law.
