John W. Cairns

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.

Successful Edinburgh Ph.D. Supervision as Primary, Secondary, or Joint Supervisor:

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)

Professor John W Cairns's Homepage at Edinburgh Law School

Centre for Legal History