Masters of the Bench

Paul Brand was born in London on Christmas day 1946. He was educated at Hampton Grammar School in Middlesex and at the University of Oxford where he took a degree in History in 1967 and was awarded a doctorate in History in 1974. He was an Assistant Keeper at the Public Record Office in London between 1970 and 1976 and a Lecturer in Law at University College, Dublin between 1976 and 1983. In 1983 he became by choice a private researcher, working and writing on English legal history in London, and in 1993 was appointed a Research Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research in London. In 1997 he was elected a Fellow of All Souls College Oxford, became a Senior Research Fellow of the same college in 1999 and the college’s Senior Dean in 2011. In 2010 he became Professor of English Legal History in the University of Oxford. He was a Visiting Professor at Columbia University Law School in 1995 and 2003 and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Merriam Visiting Professor of Law at Arizona State University in 2000 and in 2013 became a William W. Cook Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan Law School. He has been a member of the Council of the Selden Society, since 1990, and a Vice- President, since 2002; Hon. Treasurer of the Pipe Roll Society since 1992; and a Fellow of the British Academy since 1998. His main Publications include: The Origins of the English Legal Profession, 1992; The Making of the Common Law, 1992; The Earliest English Law Reports, vols. I, II, 1996 and vols. III and IV, 2005 and 2007 ; Kings, Barons and Justices: The Making and Enforcement of Legislation in Thirteenth-Century England, 2003.