Edward Jenks, the second dean of Law at the University of Melbourne, was born in England in 1861. At the age of sixteen he was articled to a solicitor, but in 1883 an inheritance from his mother made it possible for him to study history and law at Cambridge. His success led to appointments at Jesus College and King's College, Cambridge.
In 1889, Jenks became professor and dean of Law at the University of Melbourne, occupying the first chair of law at an Australian university (his predecessor, William Hearn, had been dean but not a professor of law).
On arriving in Melbourne, Jenks found himself having to teach Australian constitutional law, of which he admitted he had 'no special knowledge'. He later wrote:
In the circumstances, it seemed best for me to throw myself frankly on the confidence of my class, explaining to them the situation in which I was placed, begging their forebearance for imperfections, and promising them at the earliest possible moment something in the way of a text-book. I felt that this latter promise was especially due to those country students who, though obliged to pass the examinations, were unable to attend lectures. Upon them the circumstances bore especially hard.
The result of Jenks' promise was his book The Government of Victoria (Australia) (1891), the first textbook of Australian constitutional law.
His deanship was marked by bitter quarrels with his colleagues in the University. Unhappy in Melbourne and grieving for his wife, who died soon after the birth of their son, Jenks resigned from the University of Melbourne in 1892.
He later became professor at University College, Liverpool, reader in English Law at the University of Oxford, director of legal studies for the Law Society (where he strove to reform the training of solicitors), and professor at the University of London.
His other books include Law and Politics in the Middle Ages (1898), A Digest of English Civil Law (1921) and A Short History of English Law (1912).
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