Professor George Keeton, LLD FBA, historical founder and forerunner of HKU Government and Laws, was born in Sheffield in 1902.
Having received a first class honours degree in law from the University of Cambridge in 1923, Professor Keeton was appointed inaugural HKU Lecturer in Political Science and Jurisprudence at 1924 at the young age of 22, and was promoted as Reader in Law and Politics in 1926.
His vast academic interests spanned comparative law and legal reforms in China, Japan and Thailand. While at HKU, he completed a two-volume monograph on extraterritoriality in China; taught comparative law courses on English, Chinese, Roman, Hindu, and Muslim law; authored a textbook for undergraduate students entitled The Elementary Principles of Jurisprudence; established a student society; and founded a HKU law journal that published papers on everything from ancient customary law to the latest legal reforms in Europe.
On his return to the United Kingdom, he took up the position of Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Manchester and became Bacon Scholar at Gray's Inn in 1928. Professor Keeton spent some time as a practising barrister specialising in chancery law, but eventually returned to legal academia as Reader in Law at University College London (UCL) in 1931, where he would enthusiastically influence the lives of many future lawyers, law professors and judges in the next five decades.
In 1939, Professor Keeton became Dean of the Faculty of Laws at UCL, and Vice-Provost of UCL in 1966. During the Second World War, he worked hard to keep UCL in existence while in exile in Wales, and after the War he contributed immensely to its reconstruction and restoration. Under his leadership, UCL consolidated its position as a leading global centre of legal education. Professor Keeton was a prolific scholar of equity and trusts and of legal history, and the author of no less than 10 books.
He was keenly interested in politics and international affairs, and was deeply opposed to British appeasement of the Nazis early on. In 1939, he became Director of the London Institute of World Affairs; people associated with the Institute later became world leaders, such as Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
In 1972, he co-founded the Common Law World Review, which would turn out to be one of the most prestigious academic journals about comparative law in the Commonwealth and the United States. In the same year, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree (LLD), in honour of his achievements as a distinguished jurist, from HKU, where he started his illustrious academic career.
Professor Keeton passed away in October 1989, at the age of 87. And yet, his enduring intellectual legacy lives on in the HKU Government and Laws community.
Sources:
Christopher Munn, A Special Standing in the World: The Faculty of Law at The University of Hong Kong, 1969-2019 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2019) 19-20.
'Professor George Keeton M.A., LL.D., F.B.A' (1989) 18(1) Common Law World Review 1.
