Law in Societies

We bring together those with an interest in the rules, both formal and informal, by which social order has been organised at different times, in different cultures and in different contexts.

About the Cluster 

The Law in Societies Cluster provides an opportunity for Fellows of Wolfson, external speakers and a mixed academic and public audience to explore various facets of law and legal phenomena. The Cluster exists to serve everyone interested in the multiple forms in which law emerged, has then been interpreted and exercised across the world and through history.  

The Law in Societies Cluster arranges a variety of events, including one public lecture a term, panel discussions, ‘author meets reader’ sessions, and more.  

The Cluster also sponsors a multidisciplinary graduate students’ discussion group in the College to support students from a variety of fields of knowledge whose projects touch upon socio-legal issues broadly defined. 

The Cluster is co-convened by Dr Marina Kurkchiyan, Supernumerary Fellow of Wolfson College, and Professor Linda Mulcahy, Fellow of the College Governing Body.  

Forthcoming events

Who were the law-givers: a panel discussion

9 May 2025, 2.30pm–5.30pm 

Wolfson College, Levett Room

Please register here: registration form

Wolfson’s Law in Societies research cluster is delighted to invite you to the panel discussion: Who Were the Law-Givers? Four legal experts, who work in very different parts of the world, will discuss the figure of the lawgiver and how this was understood and described in the context of quite different legal systems.

Professor Melissa Lane, Princeton Politics / Oxford Isaiah Berlin Visiting Professor, will focus on the roles played in ancient Greek legal and political culture by lawgivers such as Lycurgus and Solon and the occasional musical setting of their laws, arguing that these embodied both the stable and the revolutionary faces of political life. 

Professor Fernanda Pirie, Oxford CSLS, will present Tibetan texts, which developed the idea of a single semi-mythical lawgiver as founder of the Buddhist civilization.

Dr Dominik Krell, Oxford CSLS, will discuss the Islamic world, in which God was supposed to be the ultimate lawgiver, but the legal scholars and, occasionally, the ruler, could act very much as lawgivers.

Dr Francesca Uberti, Oxford CSLS, will bring us into the contemporary world, where a group of conspiracy theorists constructs a vision of law as originating beyond the state.

The presenters will be encouraged to identify interesting commonalities and differences among their case studies and there will be plenty of time for general discussion.

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Professor Martti Koskenniemi: International Law and the Social: Elements of a Conceptual and Political History

28 May 2025, 17:00-18.30

The Centre for Socio-Legal Studies and the Law in Societies research cluster at Wolfson College are delighted to announce that the annual lecture for 2025 will be delivered by Professor Martti Koskenniemi, one of the world’s most influential scholars of international law. His lecture, titled “International Law and the Social: Elements of a Conceptual and Political History”, will address key themes in the field of international law.

Professor Koskenniemi is Academy Professor of International Law and Director of the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights at the University of Helsinki. A former Finnish diplomat (1978–1994) and member of the United Nations International Law Commission (2002–2006), he has held visiting positions at leading institutions worldwide, including New York University, Columbia University, Cambridge, LSE, and the Universities of Brussels, Melbourne, Paris, and São Paulo.

His research focuses on the history and theory of international law, particularly the relationship between sovereignty and property, and the fragmentation of international law in the 21st century. His seminal works, including From Apology to Utopia (1989/2005), The Gentle Civilizer of Nations (2001), and The Politics of International Law (2011), have profoundly shaped the field. He is currently working on a history of international legal thought from the late medieval period to the 19th century.

The annual lecture will be followed by a drinks reception, to which all attendees are warmly invited.

Please ensure that you register using the provided link.

If you wish to join our mailing list, please let us know by emailing lawinsocieties@wolfson.ox.ac.uk.