About the College

College of Law before the Establishment of the Iraqi State

The establishment of the college goes back to the beginnings of university education in the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the establishment of higher colleges was due to the need to prepare employees for courts that were established in the Western style after the (Student Organizations), as the Ottoman teaching activity in this field began with the issuance of the General Knowledge Law “General Knowledge” On September 20, 1869, the laws and regulations of Derskhaneh were established. The House of Teaching Laws and Regulations was established in July 1870 AD, when it was set up by Justice Superintendent Ahmed Jawdat Pasha in the Court of Judicial Judgments. On October 31, 1886 AD, the Law School was established in Istanbul under the name of the Shahana Law Office, (the Royal School of Law). The reform enacted laws in the light of the techniques of modern European countries, and this resulted in the necessity of studying and teaching those laws to the people. Also, this school has attracted its students from all over the Ottoman Empire, including Iraqi students who later assumed important judicial and administrative positions; in addition to that its graduates worked in the legal profession.

 On first of September 1908 a law school was established in Baghdad, because the cost of traveling to Turkey was high, and not all students wishing to study law could afford it. Moreover, this school is regarded the forth law school in the Turkish Emperor.

The duration of the study was three years, and then it became four years. The curricula taught in the school were the same as in the Istanbul Law School. The study in the Turkish language depends on the specialized books that come from Istanbul. Those curricula were an obstacle to studying in the Arabic language due to the difficulty of Arabizing those curricula and that the exams were conducted orally under the supervision of the specialized teacher, the teachers were from the elite known for their erudition at that time, including the great poet (Jamil Sidqi al/Zahawi), the Mufti of Baghdad (Youssef al/Atta), who was one of the members of the Knowledge Council, (Arif al/Suwaidi), (Muhammad Jawdat) and (Ibrahim Shawqi Effendi) and Sheikh (Nour al/Din al/Shirwani), a teacher of Persian language in the reserve department, and (Hamdi al/Babji), (Hikmat Suleiman) and (Rasheed Ali al/Kilani), and that the last three later became prime ministers during the period of national rule in Iraq.

Prior to the First World War, the school was at the height of its progress, and its graduates had reached (one hundred and fifty).

College of Law after the Establishment of the Iraqi State.

In the year 1921, new students were accepted, and the study period was fixed for three years. Additionally, its management remained entrusted to the British judiciary until it was taken over by Professor Tawfiq Al/Suwaidi in 1924, followed by the most distinguished Iraqi professors in the position. Furthermore, the Law of Faculty of Law No. 10 of  1928 was issued based on the proposal of the Minister of Education, Professor Tawfiq Al/Suwaidi, who abolished all previous regulations and instructions, Ottoman ones or those issued during the era of the English occupation, and achieved a great deal of reform and gave the study the feature of stability. In addition, he changed the name of the institution to a college rather than a school. Also, he named the one who administers it to a president of the college, and assisted by the teacher’s council.

Therefore, it was required that the president of the college be appointed by a royal will based on the proposal of the Minister of Education, and that he have the authority to appoint the staff of the college, provided that this is done with the approval of the Ministry. The teachers were two types and appointed with specific qualifications: the first is full/time teachers who receive salaries in return for their full time. Secondly, is the lecturers who receive a fee for their lectures only.

Then the college has taken an important step in the path of development with the issuance of College of Law System No. 8 of 1939 which has been prepared by Prof. Dr. Abdul Razzaq Al/Sanhouri who made a fundamental change in the structure of the college by changing the name of the head of the college to a dean rather than to a president, and made the study period four years to graduate. After that the graduate is granted a bachelor law degree with a certificate indicating the type of specialization chosen by the student among  two majors, first is a judicial science and administrative and financial sciences that are applied in joiner and senior years of study.

Al/Sanhouri also amended and developed the curriculum in order to seek the depth of teaching and keep pace with the development of legal studies in foreign universities and Arabic was considered the language of study, and the faculty members were entrusted with developing the curricula. The new system assigned the teaching staff and placed them on three ranks: the rank of professors, the rank of assistant professors, and the rank of teachers, and it stipulated the fulfillment of certain academic conditions for those who occupy any of these three ranks, in terms of status and privileges, the professor was placed in the position of a member of the Court of Cassation or a general manager, and the assistant professor in the position of a judge of the second or third degree, according to his seniority and prominence in teaching. The teacher is in a position of governor of the fourth degree. In appointing faculty members, it requires that the nomination be made by the College Council by an absolute majority of all its members, provided that the name of the candidate is presented to the minister of education for approval, and if the minister objects. The candidate must state the reasons for his objection to the name of the candidate and inform the deanship of the college accordingly. If the council reconsiders the nomination and insists on its previous opinion, the nomination becomes final, and these procedures apply to the promotion of faculty members to a higher rank as well.

On the teaching system, the system established five chairs for the main subjects, each of which is occupied by a professor, which they are: a chair for Islamic law, civil law, public law, penal law and political economy. The establishment of new chairs by a royal will was permitted at the request of the college council. The system requires that teaching and conducting discussion and research work be done by assistant professors and teachers under the supervision of professors according to their field.

 The system distributed faculty members to four departments: the private law department, the public law department, the penal law department, and the political economy department. It introduced civil provisions, personal status, jurisprudence, and the entrance to the study of law, history of law and Roman law within the specialization of private law.  Additionally, each department supervises the subjects related to its specialization and is headed by the senior professor in the department, and the dean of the college heads the department to which it belongs.

The system imposed fees for studying and fees for obtaining a certificate, for taking an equivalency exam, or for performing a specialization exam in the other branch in the college.  This system has remained in force with the issuance of the Law School Law No. 49 of 1941. In fact, this system included the most foundations and provisions of the previous system, but it made a change in it. It changed some curricula, increased teaching hours, distributed teaching of some subjects over several academic years, and added to the curricula two subjects: Iraq’s economic conditions and moral philosophy, and the obligation to teach a foreign language. In the first and second grades, it permitted the teaching of some subjects in a foreign language, increased tuition fees, and restricted scientific excellence to be exempted by obtaining a general average of no less than 80%. It decreed that a mid/year exam be held in February, with a third of the final grade allocated to it, and the passing grade in the subjects was raised to 50%. It was required that the student obtain a general average of at least 50 in the discussions to participate in the final exam periodically. And two years did not pass before the College of Law system No. 21 of 1943 was issued, which in turn retained more the foundations and provisions of the 1939 system, but it was greatly modified in the 1941 system, as it canceled the year exam and also canceled the two subjects introduced by the previous system from the curricula and limiting specialization to the fourth grade, and it added Maritime commercial law, political and consular science, And the imposition of teaching obligations in two years studies, and two chairs added to the previous five chairs for both commercial law and origins civil pleadings. He authorized the appointment of teaching assistants from among the Bachelor of Law degree graduates with Honor degree or equivalent, and to obtain a license, it requires success in special exams held in the language English. It ruled that the student would be deprived of participating in the final exam if he did not attend 80% of the exam the least of the total lessons and discussions, and whatever the reasons for his absence was.

Then followed the foregoing regulations, another system became effective on October 11, 1954 with some differences.

College of Law after the Establishment of the University of Baghdad.

The structure of the College of Law was not affected by the emergence of the University of Baghdad and the issuance of its successive laws No. 51 of 1963 and Law No. 54 of 1968, although these laws led to a shrinkage in the powers of the dean and the college council in view of the establishment of the University Council and its president who manage the university’s scientific, administrative, financial and social affairs in its various institutions, including the faculty of law, so in many cases, the decisions of its council appear in the form of recommendations that are submitted to the university presidency for approval accepted by the president or by the university council according to the authorities, but the study curricula, the examination system, the entity of the scientific departments, the ranks of the faculty members and the conditions for their appointment were not affected much, although it was noted that Law No. 181 of 1998 added the rank of associate professor to the existing teaching ranks. But the decisive change that took place in this college occurred when reconsidering the structure of the University of Baghdad and the consequent merging of some colleges, cutting or merging scientific departments with existing colleges, in August 1969. A new one is the College of Law and Politics, as for the law department, replace the name of the branch with the name of the department as for the departments of the faculty of law, it is clear that the department includes five branches: Branch of Civil law, Branch of Commercial law, Branch of Criminal Law, Branch of International Law and Public Law, then add to these branches two types: the first one was established in 1976, Branch of Islamic Law. And the second branch was International Private Law that was independent from the branch of Public International Law.

 At the present time, the college is considered an important pillar of the University of Baghdad and a scientific pillars of the pillars the current legislative and political life in Iraq. The faculty members in its four departments have contributed to various forms of intellectual activity inside and outside the country.