At the start of his career William Twining taught for seven years in Sudan and Tanzania . He has maintained an interest in Eastern Africa , and more broadly the Commonwealth, ever since. He has studied and taught in several leading UK and American law schools. A prominent member of the Law in Context movement, he has contributed especially to jurisprudence, evidence and proof, legal method, legal education, and intellectual history.
His recent work explores the implications of “globalisation” for legal scholarship and legal theory. Central themes include the variety and complexity of legal phenomena; that many so-called “global” processes and patterns are sub-global, linked to empires, diasporas, alliances and legal traditions; that diffusion, legal pluralism, and surface law are important topics for both analytical and empirical jurisprudence; that, in a world characterised by profound diversity of beliefs and radical poverty, the discipline of law needs to engage with problems of constructing just and workable supra-national institutions and practices; and that adopting a global perspective challenges some of the main working assumptions of Western traditions of academic law.
William Twining, formerly Quain Professor of Jurisprudence until 1996, has
held chairs in Belfast and Warwick and numerous visiting appointments.
Research Professor Twining is researching in the following areas:
General Jurisprudence
Narrative and Reasoning in Legal Contexts
Analysis of Evidence
Publications
Legal Theory
General Jurisprudence: Understanding Law from a Global Perspective (2009) (Cambridge University Press)
Human Rights: Southern Voices (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
How To Do Things With Rules (with David Miers , 4th edn., 1999; 5 th edn forthcoming 2010)
“Implications of globisation for law as a discipline” in A.Halpin and V. Roeben (eds.) Theorising the Global Order 2009)
“Social Science and Diffusion of Law” Jo. Law and Society, 32: 203-40 (2005)
“The Hutton Inquiry: Some Wider Legal Aspects” in W. G. Runciman (ed.) Hutton and Butler: Lifting the Lid on the Workings of Power (British Academy/ Oxford University Press, 2004)
The Great Juristic Bazaar: Jurists' Texts and Lawyers' Stories (Ashgate, 2003)
Globalisation and Legal Theory (2000)
Karl Llewellyn and the Realist Movement (1973, 1985, 2nd edition, forthcoming 2012, Cambridge University Press)
Evidence and Proof
Analysis of Evidence (2nd edition, with Terence Anderson and David Schum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
Rethinking Evidence (2 nd edition, 2006); and
Evidence and Inference in History and Law (ed. with Iain Hampsher-Monk, Northwestern UP, 2003)
Legal education and legal scholarship
“The Role of Academics in the Legal System” (UK) in P. Cane and M. Tushnet (eds) Oxford Handbook of Legal Studies (OUP,2003) pp.920-29.
Law in Context: Enlarging a Discipline (1997)
Blackstone's Tower: The English Law School, 1994 Hamlyn Lectures.
He is also
Co-editor of the Law in Context and Jurists series.
