The United Kingdom's First Woman Law Professor: An Archerian Analysis
| Published date | 01 March 2015 |
| Date | 01 March 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2015.00701.x |
| Author | Fiona Cownie |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 42, NUMBER 1, MARCH 2015
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 127±49
The United Kingdom's First Woman Law Professor:
An Archerian Analysis
Fiona Cownie*
In 1970, at Queen's University Belfast, Claire Palley became the first
woman to hold a Chair in Law at a United Kingdom university.
However, little is known about the circumstances surrounding this
event, or Claire Palley herself. This article (part of an extended project
exploring her life history) seeks to address the question `Was there
something about Claire Palley herself that made it more likely she
would become the United Kingdom's first female law professor?'
Initially focusing on method, it seeks to answer that question by
utilizing, for the first time in the context of legal education, the
theoretical perspective provided by the work of the soci ologist
Margaret Archer. Reflecting upon Claire Palley's subjectivity, it
focuses on those aspects of her personality which enabled her to
pursue a successful career and become a pioneer in her chosen
profession.
INTRODUCTION
Both at the time of her appointment and since, almost nothing has been said
publicly about Professor Palley's pioneering role. At the time, there was no
mention of her appointment in the Times, despite the fact that the paper took
its role as a journal of record seriously then, and included a section on
`University News'. It was not until the appointment of Gillian White at
Manchester in 1975 (the second woman to become a Law Professor in the
United Kingdom) that Claire Palley's appointment was mentioned in the
Times. Professor C.F. Parker, then President of the Society of Public
127
*School of Law, Keele University, Staffordshire ST5 5BG, England
f.cownie@keele.ac.uk
I would like to thank Claire Palley for participating in this research and for generously
agreeing to share her life story. I would also like to thank Linda Mulcahy, David
Sugarman, and Tony Bradney for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.
Any errors remain the responsibility of the author.
ß2015 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2015 Cardiff University Law School
Teachers of Law (SPTL) wrote to the paper to point out that a statement
released by Manchester University, talking about Gillian White as the first
English woman to be appointed to a Chair in Law in the United Kingdom,
was very carefully worded. He noted that Claire Palley (who had been born
in South Africa) and Frances Moran (Professor of Law at Trinity College
Dublin 1944±63) had both held chairs in law before Gillian White.
(Professor Parker's reference to Frances Moran, the very distinguished
holder of the Regius Chair in Law at Trinity College, is rather confusing, as
she did not hold a United Kingdom Chair).
1
This discussion of Claire's
appointment came not only several years after the event, but was also
somewhat opaque. Similarly, when the history of Queen's University Belfast
was published in 1994 no mention was made of Claire's achievement.
2
Thus
the public record of the appointment of the first woman to hold a Chair in
Law in the United Kingdom is extremely scant.
One of the most frequent questions I am asked about the appointment of
Claire Palley is `Why her?' `What was it about her that made it likely she
would be the first woman to occupy a Chair in Law in a United Kingdom
university?' These questions, of course, are mainly focused on only half the
story, what social scientists call `agency', based on the characteristics of the
individual involved. In the main, this article focuses on providing an answer
to that question by analysing Claire Palley's subjectivity. But in thinking
about an individual's subjectivity, we also have to take acco unt of
`structure', which includes forces in society such as criteria for appointment
and promotion.
3
And in thinking about structure, we also need to take
account of `culture', the attitudes, behaviours, and ways of doing things
which reflect a shared understanding of the way the world works. As this
project progresses, it is intended to take a holistic approach to Claire Palley's
life, placing it in its social, economic, and political contexts. At this initial
stage, however, the focus is firmly on Claire's subjectivity.
It is here that the theory put forward by Margaret Archer is particularly
useful. Archer is a proponent of realist social theory, which sees structure
and agency as `distinct strata of reality, as the bearers of quite different
properties and powers', and her work is often referred to as being that of a
`critical realist'.
4
Technically, talking about a critical-realist approach to the
study of social life is incorrect, because critical realism is `. .. a philosophical
approach that seeks to be an ontological ``under-labourer'' for a range of
128
1 C.F. Parker, `Women Law Professors' Times, 28 June 1975, 13. Claire Palley
remembers that she did not point out to Professor Parker that she was English by
descent and a citizen of the United Kingdom at birth!
2 B.M. Walker and A. McCreary, Degrees of Excellence: The Story of Queen's, Belfast
1845 ±1995 (1995).
3 K. Knorr-Cetina and A.V. Cicourel (eds. ), Advances in Social Theory and
Methodology (1981).
4 M.S. Archer, Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation (2003) 2.
ß2015 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2015 Cardiff University Law School
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