 |
Peter
Roth QC, GL’77,
was a visiting associate professor at Penn Law School
in 1987 and is a former vice-president of PLES. |
When a diverse group of lawyers associated with the Law School
gathered for dinner in one of London’s historic Inns of Court
in 1983, none imagined that the occasion would plant the seed
of what is now the flourishing Penn Law European Society. The
occasion was the appointment of Penn Professor of Law John Honnold
as the Goodhart Visiting Professor at Cambridge University. Several
of his recent LL.M. students decided to celebrate this distinction
by holding a dinner in his honour. The Alumni Office provided
a list of all those from the United Kingdom who had an association
with the Law School. Some had disappeared without trace, but a
search through both legal and telephone directories tracked down
most of them. The result was that 20 lawyers based in Britain,
and one from the Netherlands, gathered with John and Annemarie
Honnold in Lincoln’s Inn for what was intended as a one-off occasion.
When the Inn butler asked what time the dinner would end, I said
that it would surely be over by 11 p.m. since most of the guests
had never met before. At midnight, when everyone was still talking
merrily at the dinner table, they had to be asked to leave so
that the Inn staff could go home.
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| Hon.
John Colyer QC, former PLES President |
There
was a demand to repeat the occasion the following year, albeit without
a visiting Penn professor to celebrate. Annual dinners followed, the
event rotating between Lincoln’s Inn and the Middle Temple. Those
attending were not only alumni – British and Irish LLMs as well as
American JDs (and a few LLBs) who had come to work in London. There
were also those who had taught at Penn (such as John Colyer QC – now
Judge Colyer) and those who had lectured there (such as Sir Sydney
Kentridge QC, an Owen Roberts lecturer in years past). When the ABA
held its conference in London in 1985, this group hosted a large reception
for visiting American alumni in the Reform Club, which many senior
British legal figures attended. |
