60 Legal historians

Herman Vandenburg Ames was an American legal historian, archivist, and professor of United States constitutional history at the University of Pennsylvania and, from 1907 to 1928, dean of its graduate school. His 1897 monograph, The Proposed Amendments to the Constitution of the United States During the First Century of Its History, was a landmark work in American constitutional history. Other works by Ames included John C. Calhoun and the Secession Movement of 1850, Slavery and the Union 1845–1861, and The X.Y.Z. Letters, the latter of which he authored with John Bach McMaster. Among his notable students were Ezra Pound, John Musser, and Herbert Eugene Bolton.

Sima Avramović is one of the foremost Serbian authorities on comparative law, legal history, law and religion, Roman law, and rhetoric, and served as the Dean of the University of Belgrade's Law School from 2012 until 2018. Avramović is the current President of the University of Belgrade's Senate.

Sir John Hamilton Baker, QC, LLD, FBA, FRHistS is an English legal historian. He was Downing Professor of the Laws of England at the University of Cambridge from 1998 to 2011.

Robert Thomas Barton was a Virginia lawyer and politician, the author of law and historical books and articles, and a president of the Virginia Bar Association.

Mary Frances Berry is an American historian, writer, lawyer, activist and professor who focuses on U.S. constitutional and legal, African-American history. Berry is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought where she teaches American legal history at the Department of History, School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the former chairwoman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Previously, Berry was provost of the College of Behavioral and Social Science at University of Maryland, College Park, and was the first African American chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

György Bónis was a Hungarian jurist, researcher of Hungarian and European legal history.

Timothy James Brook is a Canadian historian, sinologist, and writer specializing in the study of China (sinology). He holds the Republic of China Chair, Department of History, University of British Columbia.

Friedrich Georg von Bunge was a German legal historian. He was the older brother of botanist Alexander Bunge (1803-1890).

Boris Nikolayevich Chicherin was a Russian jurist and political philosopher, who worked out a theory that Russia needed a strong, authoritative government to persevere with liberal reforms. By the time of the Russian Revolution, Chicherin was probably the most reputable legal philosopher and historian in Russia.

Pieter Wilhelm Adrianus Cort van der Linden was a Dutch politician who served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 29 August 1913 to 9 September 1918.

David M. Crowe, Jr. is a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University and Professor Emeritus of History and Law at Elon University. He is a specialist in international criminal law, the Holocaust, the history of the Romani people in Eastern Europe and Russia, and 20th century China. He has served as an expert witness in court cases in the United States and Canada, and testified before the U.S. Congress’ Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the New York City Council’s Committee on Immigration. His numerous books have been translated into six languages.

Augustus Van Dievoet was a Belgian legal historian and Supreme Court advocate. His son, Jules Van Dievoet, also a Supreme Court advocate, married Marguerite Anspach (1852-1934), the daughter of Jules Anspach, who served as burgomaster of Brussels in 1863-1879.

Paul du Plessis is a legal historian with a focus on law and society within the Roman Empire. He is the Professor of Roman Law at the University of Edinburgh and Director of The Centre for Legal History.

Johann Philipp Gustav von Ewers or Evers was a German legal historian and the founder of Russian legal history as a scholarly discipline.

Jaime Eyzaguirre was a Chilean lawyer, essayist and historian. He is variously recognized as a writer of traditionalist or conservative historiography in his country.

Daniel A. Farber is an American author and historian. He is the Sho Sato Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

Julius von Ficker, or Johann Kaspar Julius Ficker von Feldhaus was a Roman Catholic German historian. In 1898 he was awarded the Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts.

Ioan Constantin Filitti was a Romanian historian, diplomat and conservative theorist, best remembered for his contribution to social history, legal history, genealogy and heraldry. A member of the Conservative Party and an assistant of its senior leader Titu Maiorescu, he had aristocratic (boyar) origins and an elitist perspective. Among his diverse contributions, several focus on 19th-century modernization under the Regulamentul Organic regime, during which Romania was ruled upon by the Russian Empire. As a historian, Filitti is noted for his perfectionism, and for constantly revising his own works.

Jeffrey Hackney is a legal academic specialising in property law, law of trusts, and legal history at the University of Oxford. He attended Wadham College, University of Oxford. He retired in 2009 from his position as a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, and is now an Emeritus Fellow and Keeper of the Archives for the College. He was previously a Fellow of St Edmund Hall, and has taught at various universities in North America as a visiting professor. He was Keeper of the Archives of the university from 1987 to 1995, and also chaired various university boards, as well as serving on the editorial board of the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies.

Georg Arnold Heise was an influential German legal scholar. He served as president of the High Appeal Court of the Four Free Cities for more than three decades and is identified in certain academic circles as a leading representative of the 19th century German Historical School of Jurisprudence.

Tamar Herzog is a historian and jurist. She is the Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs at Harvard University, Radcliffe Alumnae Professor, and an Affiliated Faculty Member at the Harvard Law School. She previously taught at Stanford University, University of Chicago and Autonomous University of Madrid. Her work concentrates on early modern European history, colonial Latin American history, imperial history, Atlantic history, and Legal history.

Sir William Searle Holdsworth was an English legal historian and Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford University, amongst whose works is the 17-volume History of English Law.

Andrew Horn was a fishmonger of Bridge Street, London, lawyer and legal scholar. He served as Chamberlain of the City of London from 1320 until his death in 1328. Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England describe Horn as "one of the most learned lawyers of his day".

Romuald Hube was a Polish law scholar.

Marcus Pløen Ingstad was a Norwegian jurist and educator. He was a legal historian and scholar who was the author of several books on Roman law. He served as a Professor of Jurisprudence and Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Oslo between 1870 and 1918.

Edward Jenks, FBA (1861–1939) was an English jurist, and noted writer on law and its place in history. Born on 20 February 1861 in Lambeth, London, to Robert Jenks, upholsterer, and his wife Frances Sarah, née Jones, he was educated at Dulwich College (1874-77) and King's College, Cambridge, where he was scholar (1886) and, in 1889-95, fellow. He graduated B.A., LL.B. in 1886, and M.A. in 1890. He was awarded the Le Bas Prize and the Thirlwall Prize and was chancellor's medallist. In 1887 he was called to the Bar and for the next two years lectured at Pembroke and Jesus colleges, Cambridge.

Ioan Lazăr Kalinderu was a Wallachian, later Romanian jurist and confidant of King Carol I, who served for thirty years as the administrator of crown domains, and for three years as president of the Romanian Academy. Educated in France, he was the son of a rich and influential Greek-Romanian banker, Lazăr Kalenderoglu, and the brother of physician Nicolae Kalinderu. Like them, he was a sympathizer of the National Liberal Party, with which he debuted in politics in the 1880s.

Konstantin Dmitrievich Kavelin was a Russian historian, jurist, and sociologist, sometimes called the chief architect of early Russian liberalism.

Felix Liebermann was a Jewish German historian, who is celebrated for his scholarly contributions to the study of medieval English history, particularly that of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman law.

William Samuel Lilly was an English barrister and man of letters.

Sir Henry James Sumner Maine,, was a British Whig comparative jurist and historian. He is famous for the thesis outlined in his book Ancient Law that law and society developed "from status to contract." According to the thesis, in the ancient world individuals were tightly bound by status to traditional groups, while in the modern one, in which individuals are viewed as autonomous agents, they are free to make contracts and form associations with whomever they choose. Because of this thesis, Maine can be seen as one of the forefathers of modern legal anthropology, legal history and sociology of law.

Frederic William Maitland was an English historian and lawyer who is regarded as the modern father of English legal history.

Bruce Hartling Mann is an American legal scholar who is the Carl F. Schipper, Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and husband of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren. A legal historian, his research focuses on the relationship among legal, social, and economic change in early United States. He began teaching at Harvard Law School in 2006, after being the Leon Meltzer Professor of Law and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Joseph Gilbert (J.G.) Manning is a professor of History at Yale University. Manning holds the William K. and Marilyn M. Simpson Chair in History & in Classics. He is a Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School, and a Professor in the School of the Environment at Yale. Manning is a specialist in the history of the Mediterranean world in the Hellenistic period with particular focus on the legal and economic history of Ptolemaic Egypt. His current work is situated at the intersection of Paleoclimatology, the history of institutions, and historical change. He is the Principal Investigator of a major National Science Foundation funded project investigating the link between explosive volcanic eruptions, Nile flood behavior, and human responses to climatic change with very broad implications for understanding climatic change across the pre-industrial world. He is currently at work on a major book examining global history since the Neolithic from the viewpoint of Paleoclimatology, environmental history and climatic change.

George Neilson, LL.D., FSAScot, was a Scottish historian, antiquary, and lawyer. Neilson is known for his scholarship relating to Scottish law, archaeology, and literature, with particular emphasis on medieval Scotland.

Konstantin Alekseevich Nevolin (1806–1855) was a Russian legal historian.

Julius Christiaan van Oven was a Dutch jurist and politician of the Labour Party (PvdA).

Nicolae Petrescu-Comnen was a Romanian diplomat, politician and social scientist, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Miron Cristea cabinet. He debuted in France as a public lecturer and author of several books on political history, then returned to Romania as a judge and member of the University of Bucharest faculty. Comnen spent most of World War I in Switzerland, earning respect at home and abroad for his arguments in favor of nationalism, his publicizing of the Greater Romanian cause, and especially for his support of the Romanian community in Dobruja. During the Paris Peace Conference, he was dispatched to Hungary, proposing political settlements that would have made the Treaty of Trianon more palatable to Hungarian conservatives. Also noted as an eccentric who published poetry, he was often ridiculed for his claim to a Byzantine aristocratic descent from the Komnenos.

Theodore Frank Thomas Plucknett was a British legal historian who was the first ever chair of legal history at the London School of Economics.

Sir Frederick Pollock, 3rd Baronet PC, FBA was an English jurist best known for his History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, written with F.W. Maitland, and his lifelong correspondence with US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was a Cambridge Apostle.

William Hubbs Rehnquist was an American lawyer and jurist who served on the Supreme Court of the United States for 33 years, as an associate justice from 1972 to 1986 and as Chief Justice from 1986 until his death in 2005. Considered a conservative, Rehnquist favored a conception of federalism that emphasized the Tenth Amendment's reservation of powers to the states. Under this view of federalism, the court, for the first time since the 1930s, struck down an act of Congress as exceeding its power under the Commerce Clause.

Alan Ferguson Rodger, Baron Rodger of Earlsferry was a Scottish academic, lawyer, and Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

Radu Rosetti was a Moldavian, later Romanian, politician, historian, and novelist, father of General Radu R. Rosetti, and a prominent member of the Rosetti family. From beginnings in traditionalist conservatism, he adopted progressive agrarian stances, and experimented with modernizing his estate in Căiuți. A Moldavian regionalist sitting on the left of the Conservative Party, he collaborated more or less formally with the National Liberal opposition during his tenure as prefect of Roman, Brăila, and Bacău. Also serving two terms in the Assembly of Deputies and briefly employed as general director of prisons, Rosetti adopted an anti-elitist and reformist discourse. This pitted him against Conservative chiefs such as Nicolae Filipescu and Titu Maiorescu, but he was protected by Lascăr Catargiu and, later, by Petre P. Carp.

Dmitry Yakovlevich Samokvasov was a Russian archaeologist and legal historian who excavated the Black Grave in Chernigov and several other sites important for the history of Kievan Rus. He graduated from the St. Petersburg University in 1868 and worked in the Warsaw University, administering its law faculty and becoming its dean in 1891. Three years later, he moved to the Moscow University. He was instrumental in establishing the Moscow Archaeological Institute (1907). His last years were spent sorting out historical archives in Moscow. In 1891, Samokvasov donated his sizable collection of archaeological artifacts to the State Historical Museum. He was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

Karl Schildener was a German lawyer, legal historian and university lecturer.

Johann Friedrich von Schulte was a German legal historian and professor of canon law who was born in Winterberg, Westphalia. He was a leading authority on Catholic canon law.

William David Hamilton Sellar, MVO, MA, LLB, FRHistS, FSA (Scot) served as Lord Lyon King of Arms from 2008 to 2014. He was married, with three adult sons and a step-son.

Oleksandr Oksentiyovych Shevchenko was a Ukrainian scientist, jurist, politician, and doctor of legal sciences.

Gotthold Julius Rudolph Sohm was a German jurist and Church historian as well as a theologian. He published works concerning Roman and German law, Canon law and Church History.

Professor Obrad Stanojević was an Emeritus professor and former dean of the University of Belgrade's Law School, Serbia. He was a renowned expert in Roman law, comparative law, civil law and international law, and has written extensively in these fields. Stanojević was a member of the International Advisory Board of the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law and has been associated with this law school since 1990 when he visited it as a Fulbright Scholar. He has also taught at the Loyola College of Law as a visiting professor from 1994 to 1996, and he has taught in Loyola's summer programs in Hungary, Mexico, and Russia. He has lectured widely at leading European universities. Together with Professor Sima Avramović, he was the organizer of the prestigious Belgrade Competition in Oratory. Additionally, Stanojević was the only representative from Eastern Europe of the international review Revue internationale des droits de l’Antiquité – Brussels.

Joseph Tartakovsky is an American lawyer, writer, and historian, and the former Deputy Solicitor General of Nevada. Tartakovsky is presently an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California in San Francisco.

John Randolph Tucker was an American lawyer, author, and politician from Virginia. From a distinguished family, he was elected Virginia's attorney general in 1857 and after re-election served during the American Civil War. After a pardon and Congressional Reconstruction, Tucker was elected as U.S. Congressman (1875-1887), and later served as the first dean of the Washington and Lee University Law School.

Mark Victor Tushnet specializes in constitutional law and theory, including comparative constitutional law, and is currently the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Tushnet is identified with the critical legal studies movement,

Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee FRSE was a Scottish advocate, judge, writer and historian who served as Professor of Universal History, and Greek and Roman Antiquities at the University of Edinburgh.

Mykola Prokopovych Vasylenko was a Ukrainian academician historian and law professor, important public and political figure. He was a temporary Otaman of Council of Ministers, minister of Education, and director of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.

Sir Paul Gavrilovitch Vinogradoff, FBA was a Russian and British historian and medievalist.

Bogumil Vošnjak, also known as Bogomil Vošnjak, was a Slovene and Yugoslav jurist, politician, diplomat, author, and legal historian. He often wrote under the pseudonym Illyricus.

W. Alan J. Watson was a Scottish legal historian, regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on Roman law, comparative law, legal history, and law and religion. He is credited for coining the term "legal transplants".

Friedrich Emil Welti was a Swiss business manager and legal historian; one of the most influential figures in the Swiss insurance industry. His father was the Federal Councilor, Emil Welti and his first wife was Lydia Escher, a major patron of the arts.

John Witte Jr. is a Canadian-American academic. He is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of law and a McDonald Distinguished Professor at Emory University School of Law in Atlanta, Georgia, and is director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion there.