Dr Joe Sampson

I am a legal historian with broad interests. Much of what I work on has a comparative component, particularly in weighing the contribution of civilian scholarship against other factors. My first publications, based on my PhD, focused on the influence of Thomist theology on formulations of liability for wrongdoing in early modern natural law. Recent projects include an examination of John Cowell’s efforts to Romanise the common law of wrongs; local efforts to implement plague regulations in 1603; an examination of laws on tree-felling in very ancient legal systems; and chapters on discrete topics in classical Roman private law. My current projects include the emergence of autonomy as a protected interest in medieval and early modern civilian scholarship on delict; and the extent of Romanisation in Visigothic law.

I supervise a range of doctoral projects on legal historical topics. My current supervisees are Eden Smith (medieval debt), Giorgia Bucaria (medieval property), Declan Noble (16th century public law; co-supervised with Neil Jones), Matt Parish (18th century natural law) and Nikita Strukov (18th century agency). I also contribute to graduate supervision in the Faculty of History. I am happy to discuss projects with potential applicants, particularly where there is a comparative dimension. Potential applicants should note, however, that admissions decisions are not made by individual academics, but by the Degree Committee.

I teach of a range of legal historical subjects. My undergraduate Faculty teaching is mostly on the history of obligations in England between the twelfth and the nineteenth centuries, though I provide a small amount of teaching on papers in Roman Law. My postgraduate teaching is split between English and comparative legal history. The latter is a new course that I designed for the LLM, which ran for the first time in 2024-25. Using two focal themes (“codes” as a legal source, and “wrongs” as a legal category), the course uses legal systems from across time and space to examine foundational questions about law over the last 4,000 years. Systems studied so far span ancient Mesopotamia, Anatolia, India, China, ancient and medieval Europe, and the more modern codification movements in Chile, Japan and Germany. Across this varied set of systems, students examine, in relation to “codes”, the relationships between: law and religion; law and political authority; text and practice; text and broader intellectual forces; and in relation to “wrongs”, the balance between conduct, fault, and harm; the role of exculpation; patterns of outcomes (talion, punishment, compensation, etc); and the internal organisation of wrongs.

I am the Tutor for Admissions in Arts & Humanities at Trinity College, and regularly contribute to outreach activities in the Faculty, University, Trinity, and for partner organisations. Details on Trinity’s outreach activities are available here: https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/access/outreach-home/ I am also one of Trinity’s Directors of Studies in Law, and offer supervisions in a range of papers (currently Criminal Law, Tort, and Legal History).

Research centres: Cambridge Private Law Centre (CPLC); Centre for English Legal History (CELH)