Quite the day

It seems that 1 June was the day that everyone wanted to visit Edinburgh Law School. We had friendly and illuminating talks earlier in the day with groups from the University of Ghana and Tilburg University, and then the big event was a small invitation only roundtable and then an incredibly well attended lecture by the Chief Justice of India.

It seemed that every Indian law student for miles around, including the North of England, had flocked to the Law School to hear the CJI. I thought that the lecture theatre was quite busy last week for the lecture I went to, but this was something else entirely. Justice Chandrachud is, it must be said, a very good speaker and a wise and thoughtful responder to questions. A very smart man indeed, and exceedingly humane in his concerns around justice and inequality. The latter is what he wrote a thesis on nearly 40 years ago at Harvard. He touched on a number of things that I know about law in India (essentially citizenship issues) and I'll be interested to get the chance to chat to him tomorrow at a dinner about those questions. I was largely just the ringmaster today although since the questions at the lecture had been pre-submitted it was not a tricky job at all.

The reception afterwards was vibrant and busy although the caterers did us no favours by dumping the wine and canapés in the cafe and running away. Luckily one of our staff colleagues and a research student came to the rescue and did bar tending duties, and the students seemed keen to help themselves to the canapés. But I was not impressed. I was also a bit disappointed that despite promises "from above", no one from the university senior leadership made it along because of other commitments. Scotland's top judge managed it, though, so we were grateful for that.

All in all, a big day for a global law school, and I'm incredibly grateful to colleagues who did a wonderful job of organising everything, including two colleagues who stepped up and did tours around the building for some of our guests.

It's chocolate from Ghana, by the way.