The Magdalen College Connection

Cedric Hampson won the Rhodes Scholarship in 1955.  He read for the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) at Magdalen College, Oxford.  His tutors at Magdalen were Rupert Cross, John Morris and Gunter Treitel: three of the most brilliant academic lawyers of the common law world.

The current author of Cross and Tapper on Evidence, Professor Colin Tapper, was a first year undergraduate when Cedric Hampson was in his second year of the BCL. Hampson was the first Australian that Tapper had encountered in person. Colin Tapper recalls the occasion:

“I have a particularly vivid recollection of first seeing Cedric in the Law Library at Magdalen when I first entered it as a timid freshman.  I think he was then in the second year of his BCL, ensconced in a chair at the head of the long table in the middle of the old Law Library.  I think he was the first Australian I had ever seen, or heard, and he amply fulfilled my expectations in both respects.  I don’t think he was wearing a slouch hat with corks dangling from the rim, but only in that did he fall short of my prototype.  I was far too junior to him to have got to know him well, but he gave an inspiring impression of benign wisdom from afar.”

Cedric Hampson later steered many other Queenslanders in the direction of Magdalen College.  They include the Chief Justice of the Federal Court, Patrick Keane.

Some of us recently joined Chief Justice Keane and Cedric Hampson QC to thank them for encouraging us to read the BCL at Magdalen. Unfortunately, Shane Doyle SC and George Brandis SC were unable to join us:  Shane was on the other side of the planet and George was attending a Shadow Cabinet meeting in Canberra. We were joined by this year’s Rhodes Scholar, Jessica Howley, who will soon travel to read the BCL at Magdalen. Jessica continues the Magdalen College connection that Cedric fostered 55 years ago.   

These days Colin Tapper is Emeritus Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford and still teaches evidence at Magdalen College.  Both Hampson and Tapper were taught evidence by Sir Rupert Cross. 

Many do not know that Cross, the author of Cross on Evidence, Statutory Interpretation, Precedent in English Law and many other works was blind from the age of one.  His achievements in the face of that disability remain truly inspiring. The professional and academic achievements of his students from the 1950’s, Hampson and Tapper, are equally inspiring.

Justice Peter Applegarth

Photo of Magdalen College by Ozeye