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Professor Michael Lobban, MA, PhD (Cantab)

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Professor of Legal History

Location: Mile End
email: m.j.lobban@qmul.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)20 7882 3954

Michael Lobban joined Queen Mary in 2000. 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 Contract Law and Legal History and Legal Theory.

Professor Lobban's research interests lie in the field of English legal history and the history of jurisprudence. He is one of the authors of The Oxford History of the Laws of England, vols XI-XIII (Oxford 2010), in which he covered the history of contract law, tort and commercial law in the period 1820-1914. He is also the author of A History of the Philosophy of Law in the Common Law World, 1600-1900 (Springer 2007), which forms volume 8 of A Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence (ed. E. Pattaro). His earlier books include White Man's Justice: South African Political Trials in the Black Consciousness Era (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) and 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. 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 a number books, including, Legitimacy and Illegitimacy in Nineteenth Century Law Literature and History (Palgrave MacMillan 2010, with Margot Finn and Jenny Bourne Taylor), Law and History (Oxford 2003, with Andrew Lewis) and Communities and courts in Britain, 1150-1900 (Hambledon Press, 1997, with Christopher W. Brooks).

Professor Lobban is co-editor of the American Society for Legal History’s book series Studies in  Legal History, and is on the editorial boards of the Law and History Review and the Journal of Legal History.

Publications:

  • ‘Legal Theory and Judge-Made Law in England, 1850-1920’ Quaderni Fiorentini 40 (2011), pp.  553-94

  • The Oxford History of the Laws of England, vols. XI-XIII (Oxford 2010). Jointly authored with W. R. Cornish, J.S. Anderson, R. Cocks, P. Polden and K. Smith
  • ‘Commercial Morality and the Common Law: or, paying the price of fraud in the later Nineteenth Century,’ in Legitimacy and Illegitimacy in Law, Literature and History ed. M. Finn, M. Lobban and J. Bourne Taylor (Palgrave MacMillan 2010), pp. 119-47.
  • ‘Daniel v Metropolitan Railway Company (1871)  in Charles Mitchell and Paul Mitchell (ed) Landmark Cases in the Law of Contract (Oxford: Hart, 2010), 95-125.
  • ‘Foakes v Beer (1884)’, in Charles Mitchell and Paul Mitchell (ed) Landmark Cases in the Law of Contract (Oxford: Hart, 2008), 223-67.
  • ‘Die Geschichte der Juristenausbildung in England seit dem Mittelalter,’ in C. Baldus, T. Finkenauer and T. Ruefner, Juristenausbildung in Europa zwischen Tradition und Reform (Tubingen 2008), pp. 73-93A 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

Supervision:

Professor Lobban welcomes proposals for postgraduate supervision in the history of legal ideas and practice in the common law world post-1600.

Undergraduate teaching:

  • LAW4005 Elements of Contract Law (Tutorials)
  • LAW6053 Modern Legal History

Postgraduate teaching:

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