Frank Beasley Medal

  Frank Beasley 

(1897 - 1976)

 

                                                                  Photograph from UWA Archives 20501P ADB 

   

 

                               PHOTOGRAPH FROM UWA LAW SCHOOL

Frank Reginald Beasley was educated at Magdalen College School, Oxford before moving to Western Australia in 1914. In 1915, he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force serving with the 11th Battalion at Gallipoli and in France. After being granted leave in 1919, he studied with the Council of Legal Education, London, and at Wadham College, Oxford, where he graduated with honours in jurisprudence. He returned to Australia and was demobilised in October 1920.

Professor Beasley enrolled in law at the University of Sydney. He graduated with first class honours and was admitted to the New South Wales Bar. He then worked for the directors of Farmer & Co, lectured in international relations for the University's adult education programme, became a University examiner in political science and jurisprudence, and joined the Round Table Movement and the Grotius Society. From seventeen applicants, in 1927, Professor Beasley was appointed the foundation Professor of Law at the University of Western Australia.

In establishing the Faculty of Law, Professor Beasley succeeded in attracting and holding the support of Perth's practising lawyers — at least to some extent, by employing leading members of the profession as part-time lecturers. His own speciality was Constitutional Law. He frequently spoke on radio about international affairs. His public discussions aroused controversy during the 1930s and sometimes provoked criticism from members of the Parliament of Western Australia.

Teaching at UWA’s newly established Law School was suspended between 1941 and 1943, when Professor Beasley was himself called for full-time duty. The activities of the Law School were revived in 1944.

From that time until his retirement in 1963, Professor Beasley undertook the usual intramural duties of a senior Professor, was President of the Staff Association between 1952 and 1954, and continued his involvement in adult education.

Despite early post-war difficulties in the relationship between the Faculty and the Barristers' Board, Professor Beasley secured a good range of full-time teaching staff. In 1948 he founded the University's Annual Law Review.

In 1963, Professor Beasley retired as Dean of UWA’s Law Faculty. He had been Dean for 37 years. He had been an austere, sometimes severe, teacher with a passionate commitment to the ideals of scholarship, service, and morality. His dry, acerbic wit was both feared and relished and his manner was described as ‘forthright and incisive’ and at times ‘devastating and emotive’. But, there was no denying his energy, determination, and dedication to the Law Faculty and the University.

Following his retirement, Professor Beasley became a consultant on the establishment of Monash University's Law School. He would go on to occupy an office as a Special Lecturer and Library Adviser at Monash Law School until the late 1970’s. During this time Professor Beasley also served 18 months as a Visiting Professor at the University of Singapore and six months at the Australian National University, Canberra. Beasley was awarded Honorary Doctorates in law from the University of Melbourne in 1956 and the University of Western Australia in 1974.

Professor Frank Beasley passed away on 3 June 1976. The University of Western Australia's law library is named after him and his bust stands at its entrance.

Frank Beasley Medal 

In 1927, the Senate of the University of Western Australia formally announced its decision to establish a Law School – made possible by strong support from the Barristers’ Board and the local legal profession, the beginning of the close link that has always existed between the profession and the Law School. On 26 September 1927, the University appointed Frank Beasley as the Law School’s first Professor. By 1 November, Beasley had arrived in Perth; the first Faculty Meeting was held on 25 November, and classes commenced in 1928. 

Over the next few years, Beasley placed the Law School on a firm foundation. He was assisted by five visiting lecturers, but as the only full-time staff member he had to teach the remaining six subjects himself. In addition to running the Law School, he established the Blackstone Society as a communal organisation for the law students, played a full part in the life of the University on many fronts (from coaching the rowing eight to serving as Chair of the Professorial Board and Acting Vice-Chancellor), and was active in public life, broadcasting and lecturing and establishing the WA branch of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. 

Teaching had to be suspended in 1942 and 1943 after Beasley, an experienced World War I army officer, was called up for full-time military service, but recommenced in 1944. In the post-war period, Beasley continued to build up the Law School: by the time of his retirement in 1963, he had completed no less than 37 years as Professor and Dean. By then he had managed to secure the appointment of some additional full-time staff members – though even in the year of his retirement there were still only four full-time staff, assisted by nine part-timers. In 1944, he persuaded the University to give the Law School a vacant wooden building in the north-west corner of the campus, but was always looking ahead to the time when Law might have a new purpose-built Law School, and in 1958 his blueprint for a new building (based on his experience of law schools in North America when on study leave) was accepted by Faculty. In 1962, just before his retirement, the University Grants Commission agreed to fund the new Law School, and Beasley’s successor, Douglas Payne, took up the initial concept and saw the project through to completion in 1967. Beasley established the Annual Law Review in 1948, and built up the Law Library, described in 1957 as ‘one of the finest working law libraries in this country’; his expertise was recognised on his retirement from UWA in 1963 when he was recruited by Professor David Derham to establish the law library of the new law school at Monash University.

At the time of the 75th anniversary in 2002, the Law School, led by Dean Bill Ford, decided to create a commemorative award to honour distinguished graduates who had made exceptional contributions to the law, the Law School and legal education. The award was to take the form of a medal named for the Law School’s founding professor – the Beasley Medal. The first two medals were presented on 9 May 2003, at a ceremony in the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery preceding a dinner in Winthrop Hall, to Sir Francis Burt (LLB 1940), former Chief Justice of Western Australia, and Sir Ronald Wilson (1949), WA’s first High Court Judge. During next few years, there were further presentations to John Toohey (1950) and Geoffrey Kennedy (1953); and at the 90th anniversary dinner on 1 September 2018, medals were presented to David Malcolm (1960) (posthumously), Robert French (1971), Wayne Martin (1974), Christine Wheeler (1980), Sue Gordon (2002) and long-serving staff member Professor Richard Harding. Though the original concept has now been slightly modified in light of the changing nature of the Law School over the past 50 years, the Beasley Medal remains, as always intended, the most important means by which the Law School publicly acknowledges and celebrates exceptional contribution and achievement on the part of its most distinguished graduates and scholars.

Medal recipients

UWA Law School acknowledges and celebrates the exceptional contribution and achievement of its most distinguished graduates and scholars.