Professor John W. Cairns

Professor of Civil Law

LL.B., Ph.D., LL.D. (h.c.), F.R.S.E.

Office hours:

On Research Leave

Tel: +44 (0)131-650-2065

Email: john.cairns@ed.ac.uk

View my publications

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.

Current Research Interests

He welcomes inquiries about postgraduate research in Scottish legal history, European legal history, eighteenth-century legal studies, and slavery and law.