WADE, (Henry) William (Rawson) 1918-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born January 16, 1918, in London, England; died March 12, 2004, in Fulbourne, Cambridgeshire, England. Educator, attorney, and author. Wade was considered a giant among scholars of British academic law, specializing in constitutional, real property, and administrative law. Attending Cambridge University, he received his B.A. from Gonville and Caius College in 1939, and his M.A. from Trinity College in 1946; he was called to the Bar of Lincoln's Inn that year. A fellow at Trinity from 1946 until 1961, he was also a lecturer at Cambridge from 1947 to 1959, a reader there from 1959 to 1961, and Rouse Ball Professor of English Law from 1978 to 1982. In the 1960s and early 1970s, furthermore, Wade was Professor of English Law and fellow at St. John's College at Oxford. From 1976 to 1988, he served as Master of Gonville and Caius College. This distinguished career was supplemented by his extensive research and publishing endeavors, releasing such textbooks and other scholarly works as Administrative Law (1961; eighth edition, 2000), Towards Administrative Justice (1962), The Law of Real Property (1959; seventh edition, 2000), and Constitutional Fundamentals (1980); he also edited the Annual Survey of Commonwealth Law from 1965 to 1976. In his books, published articles, and his teaching, Wade supported a more open government, complained about the English constitution and the disparities between public and private law, and offered insightful interpretations on legislation such as the European Communities Act of 1972 and the Human Rights Act of 1998. A fellow of the British Academy from 1969, for which he served as vice president from 1981 to 1983, Wade received several honors for his contributions to the study of law, including being named a Knight of the British Empire in 1985 and receiving an honorary doctorate from Cambridge in 1998.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Daily Telegraph, March 18, 2004.

Guardian (Manchester, England), March 24, 2004, p. 23.

Independent (London, England), March 19, 2004, p. 35.

Times (London, England), March 26, 2004, p. 33.