In the 16th and 17th centuries during long summer breaks when the Courts of Justice were not sitting, law students wrote and performed plays on legal themes at the Inns of Court. They were watched by lawyers, judges and even the monarch and government of the day.

Paul Raffield, director of undergraduate studies in law at the University of Warwick, says that the plays are both an opportunity for students to suggest how the ideal state should be governed, and an important part of helping to develop rhetorical skills and the ability to persuade an audience.

Why, he thought, shouldn’t students do that now? Performing to the Queen might be out of the question, but students who opt for Raffield’s module, Origins, Images and Cultures of English Law, write their plays on legal themes, with advice from the university’s playwright-in-residence, currently Tarell Alvin McCraney. The course examines the beginnings of English law, going back to the Ancient Greeks, and the cultural, political and artistic influences on its development.

Workshops take place in Warwick’s Reinvention Centre, a flexible teaching space with bean bags and cubes instead of desks and chairs. Inspired by Aristotle and Plato’s ideas of community and friendship as the basis of the ideal state, students work in groups to produce a script on a legal theme, applying what they have learnt in lectures. Raffield, who combines careers as an academic, actor, and director, says that students do not shy away from big philosophical questions such as: “Is it ever justifiable to kill somebody?”

“Some have never had any theatrical experience, but they get really involved. They meet up at the weekends and in the evenings to work on these plays,” he says, adding that the course is “an eye-opener” because it encourages students to apply their intellect and their imaginations.

“For a lawyer to have an active imagination — and see beyond the rigid structure of a particular case — I think that’s vital.”

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