A lifetime in law
Professor Patrick McAuslan’s fifty years in academe is being celebrated in January with a conference celebrating his work.
Professor Patrick McAuslan’s fifty years in academe has been recognised with a conference celebrating his work.
Awarded an MBE in 2001 for services to African land use and environment, Patrick McAuslan studied law at Oxford University and from there became a founder member of the University of Dar-es-Salaam, teaching there from 1961-1966 and specialising in Public Law and Land Law. He then taught at the London School for Economics before becoming one of the four founder members of the School of Law of the University of Warwick, where he pioneered courses in Planning Law and Environmental Law. He returned to LSE as Professor of Public Law in 1986, leaving in 1992 to join University College London as Professor of Urban Management, having previously been seconded to the UN Centre of Human Settlements, where he was the land management adviser to the World Bank, based in Nairobi from 1990-1993. He retired from UCL with the title of Professor Emeritus in 1999.
Joining Birkbeck in 1993 shortly after the College’s School of Law was set up, Professor McAuslan now teaches Land Law and modules on Land Law and Globalisation, and Postconflict Statebuilding, Law and Justice.
Widely published in the areas of land law and property, and law and development, Professor McAuslan’s research interests bring together his theoretical concerns with land and with law and development and his very wide practical experience. He has worked in some 35 countries in the developing world as a policy adviser to governments on land and environmental matters and also as a drafter of new laws on land and natural resources. He has also worked on land law issues in Serbia, Albania and Ukraine, and participated in workshops on land law issues in Romania, The Czech Republic and Slovakia. Among the laws that he has drafted that are now Acts of Parliament are the Town and Country Planning Act of Malawi (1988); the Land Act Uganda (1998); the Wildlife Law of Uganda (1996); the Land Act and Village Land Act of Tanzania (1999); the Forestry Act of Tanzania (2002); and the Planning and Development Act, Mauritius (2004).
He has provided consultancy for international agencies such as the World Bank, the EU, the Council of Europe, UN agencies and bilateral donors on land, local government and natural resource issues. These have ranged from work on urban redevelopment in Riyadh to land law reform in the Maldives and land management in Sudan.
The conference, which took place from January 12 -13 at Russell Square, Birkbeck, also celebrated the 50th anniversary of the University of Dar-es-Salaam and the 20th anniversary of the founding of Birkbeck Law School in 1992. Among the speakers and delegates were former students, Faculty of the School of Law, Birkbeck, and experts in land law and policy.
Law and development: Patrick McAuslan's Odyssey 1961 - 2011