William Twining


William Lawrence Twining was a British legal scholar. He was the Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at the Faculty of Laws, University College London, having held the post until 1996. He was a leading member of the Law in Context movement, and contributed especially to jurisprudence, evidence and proof, legal method, legal education, and intellectual history. Twining's work also focused on "globalization" and legal theory.

Life and career

Twining was born on 22 September 1934.
Central themes of Twining's contributions to legal matters include the variety and complexity of legal phenomena; the proposition that many so-called “global” processes and patterns are sub-global, linked to empires, diasporas, alliances, and legal traditions; that diffusion, legal pluralism, and surface law are important topics for both analytical and empirical jurisprudence; that, in a world characterized by profound diversity of beliefs and radical poverty, the discipline of law needs to engage with problems of constructing just and workable supra-national institutions and practices; and that adopting a global perspective challenges some of the main working assumptions of Western traditions of academic law.
At the start of his career, Twining taught for seven years in Sudan and Tanzania. He has maintained an interest in Eastern Africa, and more broadly the Commonwealth. He has studied and taught in several leading UK and American law schools as well.
Twining held chairs in Belfast and Warwick. He died on 9 October 2025, at the age of 91.

Publications

  • Twining, William General Jurisprudence: Understanding Law from a Global Perspective, Cambridge University Press
  • Twining, William Human Rights: Southern Voices Cambridge University Press
  • Twining, William How To Do Things With Rules
  • Twining, William “Implications of globalisation for law as a discipline” in A.Halpin and V. Roeben Theorising the Global Order
  • “Social Science and Diffusion of Law” Jo. Law and Society, 32: 203-40
  • “The Hutton Inquiry: Some Wider Legal Aspects” in W. G. Runciman Hutton and Butler: Lifting the Lid on the Workings of Power
  • The Great Juristic Bazaar: Jurists' Texts and Lawyers' Stories
  • Globalisation and Legal Theory
  • Karl Llewellyn and the Realist Movement
  • Analysis of Evidence
  • Rethinking Evidence
  • Evidence and Inference in History and Law
  • * Legal education and legal scholarship
  • “The Role of Academics in the Legal System” in P. Cane and M. Tushnet Oxford Handbook of Legal Studies pp. 920–29.
  • Law in Context: Enlarging a Discipline
  • Blackstone's Tower: The English Law School, 1994 Hamlyn Lectures.