The law school has played a substantial role in wider Dutch society from its earliest years, being consulted in an official capacity on all manner of subjects from wills to piracy and privateering.

The faculty completed its move into the refurbished Kamerlingh Onnes Building [nl] in Leiden in 2004 where it is housed to this day.

The Hippocratic strands of Aristotelian thought were particularly influential in law, primarily his emphasis on common sense and the parallel between the 'natural equilibrium' of the physical body and aequitas, the Roman conception of justice manifested in the blindfolded goddess holding a set of scales.

[5] The 16th century Leiden academic year contained 160 to 170 days for lectures with other time taken up by holidays, fairs and book auctions.

In 1594, at age eleven Grotius was a student in the faculty and soon proved himself prodigious in liberal arts, sciences and law.

[13] By the mid-19th century, certain scholars were starting to question the importance of analogy and the status quo, choosing instead to idealise development and progress.

In the law faculty, the liberal professor and future reviser of the Constitution of the Netherlands, Johan Rudolph Thorbecke personified this attitudinal shift.

Later in the 1870s opposition reformed against positivism around new treatments of classical notions, such as justice, through academics including Hendrik Lodewijk Drucker, Willem van der Vlugt [nl] and Tobias Asser.

[14] Other notable faculty members of this period were Anthony Modderman and Henri van der Hoeven, the law school of the late 19th century had a considerable range of great scholars.

Following the First World War, the faculty had maintained its strength in scholarship, names such as Cornelis van Vollenhoven in the field of Adat law in the Dutch East Indies, Hugo Krabbe with his contribution to the idea of pluralistic sovereignty, Eduard Meijers in legal history, and Willem Jan Mari van Eysinga in international law.

A planned senate meeting on the subject, prompted by Professor of International Law, Benjamin Marius Telders, was prevented by the Germans.

However, smaller groups of Leiden faculty members met subsequently and lodged individual objections to the policy.

On November 23, two 'non-Aryan' law professors were dismissed including Eduard Meijers, later father of the Burgerlijk Wetboek (Dutch Civil Code).

Cleveringa did not note the ideological underpinnings of the dismissal choosing instead to speak of the greatness of his mentor with the intention of preventing any reckless actions by his students.

Notably, Professor Roelof Kranenburg was arrested in March 1942 because his book on administrative law ignored imperatives of the occupying government.

In 1927, van Vollenhoven conceived the idea of extending the university campus around the Rapenburg Canal, this involved the purchase as well as the conversion of old buildings.