It is a pleasure to be asked to introduce this special bi-bicentenary event, marking 200 years since the start of both Chitty on Contracts and UCL. We are here today to talk about contract law. But I should like to say something first about the foundation of UCL and its law school. The great name associated with UCL and law is of course that of Jeremy Bentham. Here we are in Bentham House. And, as you probably know, the great man is at UCL himself, now located in the Student Centre, sitting in a glass case as what he called an ‘auto-icon’. It is only right to mention that Bentham was not a lawyer, was not involved in founding UCL and, contrary to what you might have thought, did not bequeath his corpse to UCL – he merely left some of his books to the Library …
Lord Leggatt, Chitty at 200 (Conference on Contract Law: Past, Present and Future, University College London, 12 June 2026).
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