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Two top lawyers have helped a senior academic defeat the University of Sussex's bid to oust him from its senate.

Norman Dombey, professor of theoretical physics at Sussex, will stay for a full three-year term after an intervention by John Griffith, emeritus professor of public law at the University of London, and Lord Lloyd of Berwick, a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. They agreed that the university had exceeded its powers when it ended Professor Dombey's tenure after just two years. He must, they said, serve the full term for which he was elected.

Professor Dombey was elected until July 31 1997. But after a reorganisation of the school of mathematical and physical sciences which elected him, the university and its vice chancellor, Gordon Conway, argued for changes to the senate since Professor Dombey would be representing a faculty which had ceased to exist.