Professor Michael Lobban, MA PhD (Cantab)
Professor of Legal History
Michael Lobban joined Queen Mary in 2000 as Reader in law. After finishing his doctorate at Cambridge University, he held a Junior Research Fellowship at St. John's College, Oxford, before taking up posts in the departments of law at the University of Durham and Brunel University. He currently teaches courses in Jurisprudence, Contract Law and Legal History.
Professor Lobban's research interests lie in the field of English legal history and the history of jurisprudence. In addition to the publications noted below, Professor Lobban is the author of The Common Law and English Jurisprudence, 1760-1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), which was the joint winner of the Society of Public Teachers of Law's prize for outstanding legal scholarship in 1992, and of White Man's Justice: South African Political Trials in the Black Consciousness Era (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). He has written widely on aspects of private law and on law reform in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as co-editing (with Christopher W Brooks) a volume entitled Communities and courts in Britain, 1150-1900 (London: Hambledon Press, 1997) and (with Andrew Lewis) a volume on Law and History (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Professor Lobban is at the moment part of a team working on the Victorian volumes of the New Oxford History of the Laws of England. His contribution will be on the law of obligations between 1820 and 1914.
Key publications
- A History of the Philosophy of Law in the Common Law World, 1600-1900 (Springer Verlag, 2007). Vol 8 of A Treatise on Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence, (12 vols., gen ed. Enrico Pattaro).
- Slavery, Insurance and the Law, Journal of Legal History 28 (2007), pp. 319-28.
- Common Law Reasoning and the Foundations of Modern Private Law, Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy 32 (2007), 39-66.
- Custom, Common Law Reasoning and the law of nations in the nineteenth century, in A. Perreau-Saussine and J. B. Murphy (ed) The Nature of Customary Law: Legal, Historical and Philosophical Perspectives (Cambridge UP, 2007), 256-78.
- English Approaches to International Law in the Nineteenth Century in M. Fitzmaurice and M. Craven (ed) Time, History and International Law (Brill, 2007)
- Erlanger v New Sombrero Phosphate Co (1878), in Charles Mitchell and Paul Mitchell (ed) Landmark Cases in the Law of Restitution (Oxford: Hart, 2006), 123-62.
- 'Custom, Nature and Authority: The Roots of English Positivism' in D Lemmings (ed), The British and their Laws in the Eighteenth Century (Boydell and Brewer, London, 2005)
- 'Preparing for Fusion: Reforming the Nineteenth Century Court of Chancery: Part I' (2004) 22 Law and History Review 389
- The Chancellor, the Chancery and the History of Law Reform' (2004) 22 Law and History Review 615
- 'Preparing for Fusion: Reforming the Nineteenth Century Court of Chancery, Part II' (2004) 22 Law and History Review 565
- 'The Ambition of Lord Kames's Equity' in A Lewis and M Lobban (ed), Law and History (Current Legal Issues, Vol 6) (OUP, Oxford, 2004)
- 'Old Wine in New Bottles: The Concept and Practice of Law Reform, 1780-1830' in J Innes and A Burns (eds), Rethinking the Age of Reform (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003) 114
- 'The Strange Life of the English Civil Jury, 1837-1914' in J Cairns and G McLeod (eds), The Dearest Birthright of the People of England: the Jury in the History of the Common Law (Hart Publishing, Oxford,
2002) 173
Postgraduate supervision
Professor Lobban welcomes proposals for postgraduate supervision in the history of legal ideas and practice in the common law world post-1600.
