Research output per year
Research output per year
Accepting PhD Students
Professor Cairns is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and an honorary graduate of that of Glasgow. His doctorate was supervised by Professors Alan Watson and Sir Alexander McCall Smith. He has held the chair of Civil Law since 2012, before which he was Professor of Legal History (from 2000), having already been Reader, Senior Lecturer, and Lecturer in Law at Edinburgh, and Lecturer in Jurisprudence at the Queen’s University, Belfast. He has been a Visiting Professor at the law schools of Miami and Southern Methodist University, and a Professeur invité at the École normale supérieure, Paris. He served as Associate Dean (Postgraduate) and Director of the Graduate School in Law from 2000-2003. He has served on the Editorial Boards/Committees of the Edinburgh Law Review, the Law and History Review, and the Journal of Legal History. He has been Chairman of the Council of the Stair Society and President of the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society.
His research has focused on the legal history of Scotland (notably on legal literature, legal education, and the universities), with a special interest in the role of Roman or Civil Law in Scotland, as well as on the legal histories of Louisiana and Quebec. Much of his recent work has explored the position of individuals held enslaved in eighteenth-century Scotland. He is an active supervisor of research students, and has overseen many successful submissions of theses for the degrees of Ph.D. and LL.M. by research.
He welcomes inquiries about postgraduate research in Scottish legal history, European legal history, eighteenth-century legal studies, and slavery and law.
2024 "“Criminal Procedures in Early Seventeenth-Century Scotland: A Medieval Legacy? Pleading and Proving in the Case of Isobel Young, Prosecuted for Witchcraft (1629)” (completed 2020), Julien Bourhis
2023 "Testamentary Law in England, c. 1450-1540”, Matthew Cleary
2022 "The Concept of Ius Possidendi in German Pandectism", Neophytes Christodoulides
2021 "The Construction of the Principle of Consensualism in Contract in the French Civil Code" Kane,. Aubry-Diaw de Baye
2020 “Justice and Society in Strathspey: The Regality Court of Grant, c. 1690-1748", Charles J. Fletcher
2017 "Influence of Jus Commune on the Scottish Judicial Practice of Succession to Moveables in 1560-1660", Ilya Kotlyar
2017 Reception of the French Civil Code in Quebec, Louisiana, and Francophone Swiss Cantons; a Socio-Legal Study", Asya Ostroukh
2016 "The Development of the Will Theory in Scots Contract Law", Stephen Bogle
2012 "The Library of Charles Erskine (1680-1763); Book Collecting and Lawyers in Scotland, 1700-1760", Karen Grudzien Baston
2011 "Viscount Stair's Sources and Citations in a Humanist and Natural Law Context", Adelyn Wilson
2010 "Revolution and Royal Order: The Commissary Courts, 1563/4-1573", Tom Green
1999 "Divine Sentences: Philosophical and Literary Responses to Religious 'Enthusiasm'", Rajit Dosanjh
Ph.D. Supervision Outside Edinburgh
2010 "Ulrik Huber's Dialogus de docendi et discendi iuris", Margaret Hewett (co-promotor, University of Amsterdam)
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Non-textual form › Web publication/site
Cairns, J. W. (Invited speaker)
Activity: Academic talk or presentation types › Invited talk
John W. Cairns (Keynote speaker)
Activity: Academic talk or presentation types › Invited talk
John W. Cairns (Speaker)
Activity: Academic talk or presentation types › Invited talk
John W. Cairns (Speaker)
Activity: Academic talk or presentation types › Invited talk
John W. Cairns (Keynote speaker)
Activity: Academic talk or presentation types › Invited talk
1/01/25 → 30/04/28
Project: Research
Cairns, J. W. (Principal Investigator) & Baston, K. (Researcher)
1/05/12 → …
Project: University Awarded Project Funding
Cairns, J. W. (Co-investigator) & Du Plessis, P. (Co-investigator)
1/01/10 → …
Project: University Awarded Project Funding
Cairns, J. W. (Co-investigator) & Du Plessis, P. (Co-investigator)
1/01/08 → …
Project: University Awarded Project Funding
Green, T. & Cairns, J. W.
1/10/11 → 15/10/14
Project: Research
23/10/17
1 item of Media coverage
Press/Media: Expert Comment
15/07/15
2 items of Media coverage
Press/Media: Expert Comment
5/09/15
2 items of Media coverage
Press/Media: Expert Comment