Edinburgh Legal Theory Research Group
The Edinburgh Legal Theory Research Group (ELTRG) organises a variety of events throughout the year, including a seminar series where guest speakers present and discuss their work, work-in-progress sessions at which PhD candidates and staff in legal theory present work to the legal theory community, a reading group that meets on an ad hoc basis during term-time to discuss important papers and books on legal theory and related areas, and a series of Spring workshops organised by research students and providing an excellent forum for tackling key contemporary issues in conjunction with leading academics.
The ELTRG usually works in tandem with the Edinburgh Centre for Legal Theory and is kindly sponsored by Bloomsbury Publishing.
For questions about the work of the ELTRG or to join our mailing list, please contact us at convenor.legaltheory@ed.ac.uk
Legal theory has a long tradition in Edinburgh. In 2007, we marked the Tercentenary of the Regius Chair of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations. This Chair was held for over thirty years by Professor Sir Neil MacCormick (1941-2009), whose publications include Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory (1978), An Institutional Theory of Law: New Approaches to Legal Positivism (1986; co-authored with Ota Weinberger), Questioning Sovereignty: Law, State and Nation in the European Commonwealth (1999), Rhetoric and the Rule of Law (2005), Institutions of Law (2007) and most recently Practical Reason in Law and Morality (2009). The Chair is currently held by Professor Neil Walker.
Learn more about the Legal Theory research area at Edinburgh Law School
Convenors
The current convenors of the Group are Juan Pablo Andrade and Wang Lin, and they may be contacted at convenor.legaltheory@ed.ac.uk.
The post was previously held by:
2025-2026: Holly Hayes and Juan Pablo Andrade
2024-2025: Aytaç Kağan Cura and Holly Hayes
2023-2024: George Dick and Sara Canduzzi
2022-2023: Inês Gomes, George Dick, Yunqing Liu
2021-2022: Maria Bessomi and Tsampika Taralli
2020-2021: J.P. Fassnidge and Ismael Martínez Torres
2019 (Autumn): Joaquín Reyes and J.P. Fassnidge
2019 (Spring): Joaquín Reyes
2018 (Autumn): Richard Latta and Joaquín Reyes
2018 (Spring): Richard Latta
2017 (Spring) - 2018 (Autumn): Paul Burgess and Richard Latta
2016-2017 (Summer): Paul Burgess
2016 (Autumn): Lucas Miotto and Paul Burgess
2015 (Autumn) - 2016 (Summer): Lucas Miotto
2015- 2015 (Summer): Martin Kelly and Lucas Miotto
2013-14: Martin Kelly
2012-13: Felipe Oliveira de Sousa and Alexander Latham
2011-12: Wendy van der Neut and Luiz Fernando C. Silveira
2010-11: Paolo Sandro
2009-10: Francisco Saffie Gatica
2008-09: Haris Psarras
2006-08: Maksymilian Del Mar
Staff in Legal Theory
Neil Walker, Regius Professor of Public Law & the Law of Nature and Nations
Claudio Michelon, Professor of the Philosophy of Law
Euan MacDonald, Senior Lecturer in Jurisprudence
Luis Duarte d’Almeida, Professor of Jurisprudence
Zenon Bankowski, Emeritus Professor of Legal Theory
Burkhard Schäfer, Professor of Computational Legal Theory
Sharon Cowan, Professor of Feminist and Queer Legal Studies
Cormac Mac Amhlaigh, Lecturer in Public Law
Amalia Amaya Navarro, British Academy Global Professor
Edinburgh Alumni in Legal Theory
There have been some outstanding PhDs in legal theory at Edinburgh. Three out of the six European Awards for the best PhD thesis in Legal Theory have been written at Edinburgh (by Emilios Christodoulidis, Fernando Atria and Scott Veitch). A list of our Alumni can be found on our People page
The Edinburgh Legal Theory Research Group organises a wide range of event throughout year.
View the Edinburgh Centre for Legal Theory events page for full details