The Edinburgh Centre for Private Law exists to foster and develop a tradition of private law scholarship at Edinburgh University which goes back to 1722. The Centre holds seminars, symposia and conferences, encourages research and informal discussion, and facilitates publication.

The The Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law is a new research centre within the School. It will provide a focal-point for research in public law at Edinburgh, addressing current constitutional developments in the United Kingdom, comparative constitutional law, constitutionalism beyond the state, and constitutional theory. We also hope to foster strong research links with scholars working elsewhere.

The Centre for Law and Society, established within the University of Edinburgh's Faculty of Law in 1983, serves as a centre of excellence for teaching and research in criminology and jurisprudence. The Centre has developed an international reputation for its research in legal and criminological theory.

The AHRC Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law was established on 1 April 2002 with the generous support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The Centre will continue the work of its four co-Directors - Professor Hector MacQueen, Ms Lilian Edwards, Professor Graeme Laurie and Dr. Charlotte Waelde - who have worked together since the establishment of their earlier research centre SCRIPT in 1998. The centre reverted to its original name of SCRIPT in Febrary 2008.

The Europa Institute has developed as one of the preeminent centres in Britain for the study of the institutions, policies and law of the European Communities.

The Scottish Centre for International Law was established in 1999 at the University of Edinburgh. Its aims are to promote research and study in international law, to play an active role in the development of international law in and outside Scotland, to promote excellence in the teaching of international law, and to offer a wide range of expertise on all matters pertaining to international law.

The Centre for Commercial Law is a research centre at Edinburgh Law School, University of Edinburgh.
The aim of the Centre is to foster research in Scottish, British and European commercial law and to promote excellence the teaching of commercial law (in particular with respect to our LLM in Commercial Law). The members of the Centre conduct research in various fields of commercial law, for instance, company law, banking law, labour law, agency law and consumer protection law. In all these cases we study Scots and UK commercial law in its comparative European or international context.

The Centre for Legal History was set up in 1992 under the direction of Mr. W.D.H. Sellar. In 1998, Professor John W. Cairns, Chair of Legal History, became the director of the Centre. The aim of the Centre is to encourage and foster the study of legal history in general, with particular attention being paid to Scots law and to Roman law in the broader civilian context.

The Joseph Bell Centre for Forensic Statistics and Legal Reasoning has been set up to evaluate present and interpret evidence. The Centre draws on skills in statistics, law and artifical intelligence from the University of Edinburgh, Glasgow Caledonian University and the Lothian and Borders Police Force. Researchers from Australia, Belgium, England and the United States are collaborating with the Scottish researchers.

Study of the Legal Framework on Human Rights and the Environment Applicable to European Enterprises Operating Outside the European Union. This study conducted for the European Commission seeks to clarify the existing legal framework for human rights and the environment applicable to European enterprises operating outside the European Union. It will provide a basis for possible measures to further operationalise the UN 'Protect, Respect, Remedy' Framework put forward by the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Business and Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie in the European Union and its Member States.

CITSEE - The Europeanisation of Citizenship in the Successor States of the Former Yugoslavia (CITSEE) is a study of the citizenship regimes of the seven successor states of the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia). It is funded by an Advanced Investigator Award for basic research made to Jo Shaw by the European Research Council and runs for five years from 1 April 2009.