Standard bearer of Scots law

will breathe a sigh of relief

WHEN David Walker returned to Glasgow to resume the studies which had

been rudely interrupted by the Second World War, he found little trouble

in passing, with flying colours, his oral examination in civil law.

The examiner, no doubt influenced by his own distinguished career in

two wars during which he had been awarded the DSO and MC and attained

the rank of brigadier, displayed a kindly attitude towards

ex-Servicemen. He posed only two questions -- ''Were you in the desert?

What division were you with?''

As several generations of students will testify, exam passes have

become rather harder to come by during the 36-year tenure of David

Maxwell Walker at Glasgow University, first as professor of

jurisprudence after four years of modest success at the Scottish Bar

and, since 1958, as regius professor of law.

He was appointed regius professor at what was then regarded as the

dangerously young age of 38, and has since exerted an enormous authority

and influence on Scots law through his teaching and the number of

massive legal text books he has churned out like some sort of one-man

word factory. Eight hundred pages represents a fairly average David

Walker effort.

On the eve of his retirement, he readily admits that he would not win

any prizes for popularity (he has been known to fail half of a class of

200). ''I regularly fail a lot of students and I have a very bad

reputation with them for being harsh. That is because I am frequently

dissatisfied with the exactness and accuracy of their answers.

''I am not interested in being popular, never have been. What worries

me is that people are going to be let loose on the public with

questionably adequate competence. Every year we pass some people only

with grave hesitation and in many cases they scrape through their

degree.

''One hopes they will learn a good deal in practice, but some of them

do not and probably do things wrong and give bad advice. One hears, for

example, about the large number of deeds which are sent back from the

Keeper of the Register of Sasines for correction.''

He thinks the modern trend towards science subjects and the failure to

study languages, including Latin, means that many students are

unacceptably vague in their use of English, hardly a great

recommendation for a lawyer. ''I'm not satisfied that schools exact high

enough standards. There is constant pressure on the schools and

universities to raise the numbers who pass, and it is very easy to raise

the numbers by lowering standards just a little bit.

''But I am anxious to maintain high standards both at university and

in subsequent professional life, and the only way to do it is to be

strict at the training stage. Standards at the top of the profession are

still very high, just as our best graduates are very good indeed, better

than they were 40 or 50 years ago. The standards of those who just

scrape through are pretty low, and cause us a great deal of worry and

heart-searching.''

His critics argue that while high standards are admirable, they must

be uniformly applied. They claim that in recent years the professor's

marking has become not only harsh but erratic. One legal academic

commented: ''I think that latterly he got fed up with teaching, taking

the view that students were not working as hard as they used to, and

devoted his energies to writing.''

Iain Dyer, who lectures in private law at Glasgow, does not agree.

''He sets a high standard, but I don't think the standard has changed.

He is a brilliant teacher and a superb lecturer -- clear, rational and

orderly. He also has an unbelievable range and could give a consummate

set of lectures on almost any subject.''

While some people regard impending retirement with mixed feelings,

David Walker has become so disenchanted with the attitude of central

government that he is rather looking forward to escaping the daily

grind. He admits: ''I am very despondent about the future, and in many

ways I shall be thankful to get out.

''I think the universities have been very badly treated by the three

Tory Governments. We've been subjected to one cut after another and all

sorts of facilities have been run down.

''We are now in the situation, and have been for some years, where

every time a post falls vacant a case has to be argued for filling it.

Indeed when the question came up of my necessary retirement at 70 the

management group discussed whether the post could or should be filled.

''They decided to fill it, but in other cases the decision has been

that even a Chair will not be filled. For example, the Chair of German

is being left vacant from the end of this year for some time at a time

when the knowledge of languages is more and more necessary, more and

more important.

''The other respect in which the cuts have become very obvious is in

staff salaries. Academic staff in universities have been steadily

falling behind other comparable groups.

''When I began, a professor was paid on a par with a sheriff, whereas

now he's paid little more than half. Consequently, academic life is

financially very unattractive and we are not getting many applicants for

vacancies. In many cases we are not getting good or well-qualified

applicants.

''You can get students leaving for a job as a trainee, particularly in

London, on #15,000 to #16,000 a year which is more than some of the

staff who were teaching them last month. That is an absurd situation.

''The Government has gone far too far in looking at universities as

commercial undertakings which must pay their own way. We are treated by

many departments of government and the University Funding Council as if

we were biscuit manufacturers or road repair contractors.

''The latest line, which I regard as total idiocy, is that we are

having to tender to take students at a contract price. We are bidding

the price at which we will take students from 1994 and the obvious

consequence is that the universities which bid lowest will get the money

and the students.

''Running universities on the cheap is inevitably going to result in

shoddy workmanship and cheap degrees, cheap in every sense of the word.

I think the Government policy is totally misguided.''

He has equally strong views on the future of Scots law and the role of

those who seek to change it. He sees the present Government reforms as

unnecessary and undesirable. He thinks the plan to allow banks and

building societies to do conveyancing will be neither cheaper nor

simpler, and will signally fail to provide the customer with independent

advice.

''I'm also very much afraid that the people whom these bodies employ

for conveyancing will be the rejects of the profession. I think they are

liable to be the ones who cannot make it or are doing it for pin

money.''

Nor is he convinced of the role of the Scottish Law Commission,

although he sees the utility of a permanent law reform body. He thinks

that the commission is generally too liberal in its attitude and

sometimes tends to display an unhealthy zeal for reform for its own

sake.

''The area in which most law reform has been carried out in recent

years is family law, and I strongly disagree with a great deal of it.

''I disagree, for example, with making divorce so easy. I strongly

disagree with the attitude that cohabitation is the norm and marriage is

an oddity. There have even been views at the law commission as to

whether one should continue to have marriage as a legal concept at all.

I think this is profoundly wrong.''

He does see a real and continuing threat to the independence of our

legal system. ''We've been in danger for years now of being watered

down, partly because of a tendency within Britain for more and more law

to become UK law, and within Europe the tendency will be for many areas,

particularly commercial law, to become Europe-wide.

''The individuality of Scots law is very much under threat. Partly the

courts and Judges are to blame. Parliament and Whitehall are very

largely to blame and undoubtedly it would make life much simpler for

them to abolish all the differences.

''I think that would be a mistake, partly because I cherish the

Scottish legal system, partly because I think in many respects it is

superior to the English system and partly because in many respects I see

no justification for change.''

One thing that will not change when Professor Walker retires is his

enthusiasm for writing large books to add to the 40 or so he has

produced so far. Apart from walking the dog and going for a drive,

writing, in longhand on A4 with a fountain pen, is his hobby.

His books are not universally admired. The critics envy his sheer

industry and concede that, at the very least, his books are an

invaluable reference point for further study, but feel that sometimes

the quality has suffered because he has simply taken on too much.

Iain Dyer concedes that Walker may not be a great stylist, but argues

that when it comes to collecting, ordering, rationalising and setting

out information, he is incomparable.

''When I was a student there were hardly any books. Then David

produced his book on damages which everybody criticises, but you can

never find it in the library because lawyers are always borrowing it. He

virtually began the practice of having modern legal text books. He has

written half of them himself and played a major part in engineering the

rest.''

Whatever the critics say, the Walker ink will continue to flow after

his retirement in a room set aside for him at the university. The second

volume of his legal history of Scotland, from 1286 to 1488 is due out in

the autumn and he will be the Scottish editor of a major new project, a

law dictionary. If all that sounds dry as dust, you can't always judge

by the title.

His 1300-page Oxford Companion to Law, published in 1980, is now

available in braille and Chinese, but probably never featured on Arthur

Scargill's list of required reading.

After tracing the history of trade unions in the book, Professor

Walker accuses them of modern-day tyranny and brutal intolerance. ''They

are no more democratic or tolerant than the medieval church at its

worst. They are dedicated to restrictive practices, laziness,

selfishness and insatiable greed. They represent the gravest threat to

democracy, liberty, economic progress and prosperity yet known.''

His views on the ruling classes were no more flattering. He saw the

tax system as ''traditionally, the principal way in which the ruling

classes in organised communities have oppressed, fleeced and

expropriated some of their subjects.

''Not the least evil features of the modern tax system are the army of

unproductive civil servants concerned with the assessing and collecting

of taxes, the enormous volume and constantly changing detail of the

chaotic and largely incomprehensible body of verbiage called the law of

taxation. In the law of taxation justice has no place at all.''