Randall Lesaffer


Randall Christoph Herman Lesaffer is a Belgian historian of international law. He has been professor of legal history at KU Leuven since 1998 and at Tilburg University since 1999, where he also served as dean of Tilburg Law School from 2008 to 2012. He currently serves as the head of the Department of Roman Law and Legal History at the Faculty of Law and Criminology at KU Leuven. His work focuses on the Early Modern Age.

Career

Lesaffer was born in 1968 in Bruges, the town where he continues to live. He studied law as well as history at the universities of Ghent and Leuven, both in Belgium. In 1998, he obtained his PhD in law from the Leuven on a study on early-modern and Cold War peace and alliance treaties. Since 1998 he has been part-time professor of legal history at KU leuven, and full-time since 2019, where he also serves as the head of the Department of Roman Law and Legal History. He is also professor of legal history at Tilburg University, since 1999.
Lesaffer's work on the history as well as recent developments of international law, in the context of international relations and policy. He is currently involved, with writing a political history of international law at the end of the Cold War.
He also publishes on general European legal history and constitutional history. He is among others author of European Legal History: A Political and Cultural Perspective by Cambridge University Press.
Lesaffer has published extensively in the field of the history of international law, particularly in early-modern Europe. Lesaffer is
  • the editor of the Oxford Historical Treaties, a digitisation of historical treaties,
  • general editor of the book series Studies in the History of International Law,
  • editor of the Global Law Series,
  • editor of the Journal of the History of International Law,
  • president of the Grotiana foundation,
  • general editor of the Cambridge History of International Law.
Lesaffer was dean of Tilburg Law School from 2008 to 2012. During his term the school launched an English-taught Bachelor in Law on ‘Global Law’ and made globalisation the core of its strategy. Lesaffer co-founded the Law Schools Global League in 2012 and was one of its two founding presidents. The League is an association of about 25 law schools from all over the world to work around globalisation. He is also visiting professor at the Católica Global Law School in Lisbon.
He has been actively involved in local politics in Bruges since the 1990s. He was chairman of the VLD in Bruges from 1993 to 2001 and served as a member of the city-council for CD&V in 2011-2012. He was a member and vice-president of the Port Authority of the harbour of Bruges-Zeebruges from 1999 till 2014.

Publications

His main publications are:Peace treaties and international law in European history. From the Late Middle Ages to World War One, Cambridge University Press, 2008European Legal History: A Cultural and Political Perspective, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009, a textbook on legal history in general.Moet vrede rechtvaardig zijn? Het vredesconcept in de historische ontwikkeling van het internationaal recht, Inaugural lecture in occasion of the acceptance of the Chair of Legal History at Tilburg University, Tilburg University Press, 1999 Europa: een zoektocht naar vrede? Het klassieke statensysteem in vredes- en alliantieverdragen , Leuven University Press, 1999 Inleiding tot de Europese Rechtsgeschiedenis, Leuven, University Press, 2004, 2de herziene uitgave 2008.

Literature