Governance

Standing Orders of the Board of the Faculty of Law 2023-24 (updated 23 November 2023).

The Faculty of Law is governed by the Law Board, which is chaired by the Dean, Professor John Armour, and comprises a balance of members elected from amongst the Faculty members and the holders of key faculty officer positions (the Vice Dean, the Associate Deans, and the Directors of our Research Centres).  The Board takes decisions on behalf of the Faculty in response to recommendations from the Faculty’s committees, or in response to directives and requests from the University.  

Any member of the Faculty is eligible to be nominated for membership of the Board, and nominations go through the Elections Office in the University yearly. The Dean can also co-opt up to four further members each year to help cover any areas of expertise that might be missing from the membership.

If more than one nomination were received for a place on the Board, the University would organise a full election for that place, though this is unusual.  In practice, nominations are not contested.  Nominations are usually supported by four members of the Personnel Committee.

The Law Board also appoints members to its various standing committees, which are given responsibility for matters ranging from Planning and Resources to Research, Personnel, Examinations, and Equality and Diversity.  Each committee provides a written report of its meetings to the Law Board, which meets twice a term and once in the Long Vacation. 

A list of current Faculty Officers is available under the People section of the website. Their work is assisted by the Support Staff, whose roles and responsibilities can be found by filtering on classification 'Admin/Support Staff' on the main people page. 

For more detailed information about the Law Board, its committees and the role descriptions of the main Faculty Officers, please see the current Standing Orders of the Board of the Faculty of Law.  This document is reviewed and re-published annually by the Board.

The Secretary to the Law Board is Charlotte Vinnicombe, the Head of Administration and Finance.  She is responsible for keeping a record of the membership of each committee and may be contacted at any time with queries relating to the membership of a Faculty committee or Faculty representation on committees elsewhere in the University.  She is also responsible for preparing the agenda for the meetings, and writing the minutes.

Student representation

The Law Faculty places a great deal of importance on the contribution students make to the Faculty’s decision-making processes, and we value the contributions students make to the various Faculty meetings to which they are invited.   

Each of our courses has a student representative who is invited to attend the Undergraduate Studies or Graduate Studies Committee as applicable, the Equality and Diversity Committee, and the unreserved section of the Law Board meetings. Undergraduate student representatives will also be members of the Law Joint Consultative Committee (LJCC), comprising the Presidents of the law societies in each College. Further information about the LJCC can be found on Canvas. The Committee for Library Provision in Law also has positions for both undergraduate and graduate representatives.

The role of student representatives (as defined by the Oxford University Student Union) is to regularly seek out the views and opinions of the students they represent on all matters concerning their student experience; bring course-level issues and concerns raised by the students they represent to meetings of the JCC/GJCC or equivalent; attend and contribute, as far as possible, to any other meetings with staff to which they are invited; ensure that they are prepared for meetings by reading papers and consulting with the students they represent on the issues to be discussed; provide feedback back to the students they represent on the outcomes of meetings; liaise with other course representatives to form a picture of the views of the department student body; and attend training for course representatives provided by OUSU.

Research staff representation

Our research staff are represented on certain committees, including the Equality and Diversity Committee, the Research Committee, and the Athena SWAN self-assessment team, and as members of the Faculty they are also entitled to attend Law Board meetings for the Open Business. 

 Charlotte Vinnicombe, Head of Administration and Finance

September 2023