Christopher L. Tomlins
Christopher Lawrence Tomlins is currently Chancellor's Professor of Law at the University of California Irvine School of Law, on leave from his position as a Research Professor with a full-time appointment on the research faculty of the American Bar Foundation. Before joining the American Bar Foundation in 1992, he was Reader in Legal Studies at La Trobe University, Melbourne (Australia). He has a Ph.D. in History (Johns Hopkins) and a fine collection of Masters’ Degrees – in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (Oxford), in American Studies (University of Sussex), and in History (Johns Hopkins).
Chris Tomlins is well known as a legal historian whose interests and research are cast very broadly – from sixteenth century England to twentieth century America; from the legal culture of work and labor to the interrelations of law and literature; from the jurisprudence of Francisco de Vitoria of Salamanca to the revolutionary Marxism of Walter Benjamin. Since beginning his academic career in 1980, Tomlins has written or edited seven books, of which the most recent is Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865 (2010) (also available here).
Other recent books include the multi-volume Cambridge History of Law in America (published in April 2008, co-edited with Michael Grossberg of Indiana University) and The United States Supreme Court: The Pursuit of Justice (2005). Earlier books include The Many Legalities of Early America (2000), Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic (1993), Labor Law in America (1992), and The State and the Unions (1985)
Tomlins has also published more than a hundred chapters, articles, working papers and other bits and pieces. From 1995 until 2004, he was editor of the Law and History Review. Since 2005 he has been first co-editor (with Jack Heinz) then sole editor of Law & Social Inquiry. He also edits the Cambridge University Press book series Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society. His publications have been awarded the Surrency prize of the American Society for Legal History, the Littleton-Griswold prize of the American Historical Association and the J. Willard Hurst prize of the Law and Society Association.
Current research addresses (a) "republican law" 1776-1832; (b) the historiography of legal history "after" Critical Legal History; (c) the concept of government in Anglo-American law and politics; and (d) Walter Benjamin's historical materialism. Current interests also include The Southampton Slave Insurrection of 1831.
In his spare time he likes to sleep.