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Chapter 3: University Legal Education Begins

Early University of British Columbia Law Teachers

It is not surprising then that two of the early University of British Columbia arts faculty were, in addition to their other credentials, fully qualified law teachers. Theodore H. Boggs, who taught jurisprudence and constitutional law with Henry F. Angus as early as 1920–1921 held bachelor of arts degrees from Acadia and Yale and master’s and doctoral degrees from Yale University. He joined the University of British Columbia as an assistant professor in the department of economics in 1916–1917, was promoted to professor in 1919–1920, and served as department head for the department of economics, sociology, and political science from 1920 through to 1931.

Henry F. Angus, who joined the University of British Columbia as assistant professor in the department of economics, sociology, and political science in 1920–1921, would have graced any law faculty in the British Dominions. Following completion of a bachelor of arts degree from McGill University in Montreal, he went on to Oxford, where he took first class degrees in law at both the bachelor of arts and the bachelor of civil law levels in 1913 and 1914, respectively. Angus subsequently recalled his Oxford legal education with some fondness, reporting that in his second year there: "[t]he study of law became more interesting as I had an opportunity of attending informal classes at which Geldart discussed cases or Holdsworth entertained us at tea while he discussed legal history."

Also admitted to the degree of barrister-at-law by the Inner Temple (one of the four professional bodies admitting barristers in England) in 1914, Angus followed war-time military service by working briefly in the chambers of Joseph Ricardo of the Inner Temple ("a small but varied practice. . . . I was learning more than I could have done in larger chambers where the premium would have been high") and heading the department of law of the Khaki University of Canada in London, England. (The examiners of the Khaki University, incidentally, included such legal luminaries as "Geldart, Holdsworth, Odgers and others". It was nonetheless thought by Benchers of the Law Society of British Columbia not to provide a credible education for, in 1920, they refused to give credit for any courses completed at the Khaki University’s Department of Law.)

Career opportunities of one sort or another frequently fell in Angus’s way after the war. The head of the Khaki University under whom he worked in 1919 was Dr. H. M. Tory, a great Canadian educator and the president of the University of Alberta. Angus reports that "[a]lthough a good administrator he could be very impulsive and on one occasion, annoyed with a letter he had received from the Dean of his Law School that practically amounted to a resignation, he asked me if I would accept the post." This opportunity was declined. So too was the offer, made not once but twice in quick succession, of a tutorship in law at Magdalen College, Oxford. Angus was determined to pursue a legal career in Vancouver and would not swerve from this object despite the academic temptations thrown before him. When he did return home, however, gaining a foothold in Vancouver legal practice was surprisingly difficult. Despite great learning, a wealth of experience, and thoroughly sparkling credentials, he subsequently recalled that the:

outlook in the law business seemed rather gloomy and I discovered that it would take some little time for me to prepare for an examination on the statutes of British Columbia. However, within twenty-four hours of arriving in Vancouver, I was invited to join the staff of the University of British Columbia on a part time basis. This offer was the result of an introduction by Walter Sage who was teaching in the Department of History. I was very doubtful of my qualifications to teach Economics but the head of the department, Dr. T. H. Boggs, was most encouraging and the university obviously had to get some assistance on an emergency basis to deal with the flood of students returning from the war. These considerations quickly overcame my scruples.
I was accepted, on a part time basis, in the law firm of E. P. Davis, then leader of the British Columbia Bar and, early in 1920 I was called to the bar in British Columbia . . . I still expected to be a full time lawyer at the end of the academic year.
The law business did not warm up very quickly and the arrangement with the university continued for a second and third year. I found university work very congenial.

Eventually, the legendary Vancouver lawyer E. P. Davis came around to offering "a full-time post with a small salary and permanent prospects" in his law firm. Angus declined. At thirty-one years of age and after a great deal of deliberation he deviated for the first time from his constant adult ambition of making a career at law. He was committed now to a life’s work at the university. Angus was to flourish as a university professor. He quickly rose through the academic ranks, published numerous scholarly articles and a half dozen books, was elected to the Royal Society of Canada, and achieved a degree of eminence in the world of ideas. He was a member of two royal commissions, worked in government during and following the Second World War (1941 to 1951), and served as chair of the Public Utilities Commission of British Columbia for a number of years. Angus, moreover, did his fair share of work in university bureaucracy and administration, serving as head of the department of economics, political science, and sociology from 1930 through 1956 ("a dubious appointment", he said, made because he "had no rivals in the department and financial pressures forbade any expensive experiment") and as dean of the faculty of graduate studies from 1949 to 1956.

These features of his life are well known. Indeed, Angus has become a celebrated figure in the history of the University of British Columbia—the complex that houses the faculty of commerce and business administration is named after him. Less well known is his role in developing undergraduate legal education at the university. From the time of his return to Vancouver at the end of the First World War, the University of British Columbia developed a number of courses that provided relatively large doses of legal education to students in arts, commerce, and other undergraduate disciplines.

The courses ranged from what appear to have been merely "service" courses, introducing the outlines of legal obligation to business students or engineers, to quite serious courses of an intellectual or jurisprudential nature. The importance of these subjects as part of a rounded general education for citizens who would fill responsible positions in their society should not be disparaged. More narrowly, such courses must have formed an important—perhaps indispensable—role in the professional formation of many students who later went on to more narrow practical training in preparation for careers in the legal profession. Many years later, former Chief Justice Nathan Nemetz told an interviewer that "Professor Henry Angus . . . taught me a great deal of jurisprudence in his government courses". Other distinguished jurists were also exposed to Angus during their undergraduate education, including Judge Art Lord, Bruce Fraser (later County Court Judge in New Westminster), and Meredith McFarlane (later Mr. Justice McFarlane of the British Columbia Court of Appeal). Interviewed in 1995 by Professor Tony Sheppard of the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law, Mr. Justice McFarlane recalled the influence of Henry Angus on his professional formation:

McFarlane: I was in the last freshman class in the old Fairview Buildings and I graduated with my B.A. in 1928.
Sheppard: I see . . . and in your B.A. program did you take any law related courses at that time? Were you already decided on your career as a lawyer at that point or had you yet to make up your mind?
McFarlane: I made up my mind, I think, very shortly before I graduated and one of the important factors in my decision was lectures I had taken in classes called Government I and Government II, in which the professor was Angus . . . Henry Angus.
. . . and I was most interested in his lectures and learned about things like Sorrell v. Smith and Quinn v. Leathem, and that’s what got me started.
. . . [Professor Angus] was, I thought, an outstanding professor . . .
Sheppard: So it was really Professor Henry Angus that sort of was the primary . . . role model in heading into law then . . . he whetted your interest? . . .
McFarlane: It was the trigger . . . it was a triggering event, I think.
Sheppard: Do you have a legal background? Do you have antecedents in the legal profession?
McFarlane: No, none of my parents or grandparents were in the law at all. First of the gang for that.

A very large proportion of British Columbia lawyers who attended university in the province would have received their first exposure to legal studies in this way. The university, it should be remembered, was an important "feeder" to the legal profession in the province even before university education was required of aspiring lawyers. A Preliminary Survey of Higher Commercial Education in 1923 reported that fully twenty "male graduates of the University of B.C. who were primarily interested in the study of Economics" in the classes of 1918 to 1922 had chosen to pursue careers in law. These young men would have constituted an important portion of British Columbia articling students in any given year. The number represents fully one third of the designated graduates from the University of British Columbia over this period and the largest single career choice of the eight listed in the survey (teaching came a distant second at fourteen, while "business in B.C." followed with twelve).

Chapter 3 continued

Copyright © 1995 The University of British Columbia Faculty of Law. All rights reserved.
Please address questions or comments to Professor W. Wesley Pue, pue@law.ubc.ca