Caroline Humfress

Caroline Humfress, (born 1971) is a legal historian who is professor at the University of St Andrews and a co-director of its Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research. In 2020 she was appointed L. Bates Lea Global Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School (Ann Arbor), where she teaches on the history of the Civil Law tradition.

Early life and education Caroline Humfress received her advanced education at the University of Cambridge from where she earned her BA, MA, and PhD, the last for a thesis titled Forensic practice in the development of Roman law and ecclesiastical law in late antiquity, with special reference to the prosecution of heresy (1999).

Career Humfress held a Junior Research Fellowship at Queens' College, Cambridge before being appointed the "Carlyle Research Fellow in the History of Political Thought" at the University of Oxford and Research Fellow at St Catherine's College. She was Assistant Professor in Rhetoric and Law at the University of California, Berkeley, from 2000 to 2005 before moving to Birkbeck College, University of London where she worked for eleven years (becoming Professor of History in 2014). In July 2015 she was appointed Professor of Medieval History and Deputy Director of the University of St Andrews Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research. In 2019/20 she became Director of the Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research. She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Legal Scholars. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2025.

Selected publications Humfress, Caroline, Ibbetson, David and Olivelle, Patrick, eds., (2024) Cambridge Comparative History of Ancient Law (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press). Humfress, Caroline (2024). ‘Legal Pluralism’s Other: Mythologizing Modern Law” Law and History Review 42.1 (at press), First View (Open access): Humfress, Caroline (2023). ‘Out of Time? Eternity, Christology and Justinianic Law’ in John Robertson, ed., Political Thought, Time, And History (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press), 36 - 53 Humfress, Caroline (2022). ‘The Early Church’ in Anders Winroth and John Wei, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Canon Law (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press), 11 - 31 Humfress, Caroline (2021). ‘Beyond the (Byzantine) State: Towards a User Theory of Jurisdiction’ in Nico Krisch, ed.,Entangled Legalities Beyond the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 353 - 375 Humfress, Caroline (2021). ‘Law, Bureaucracy, and the Practice of Government and Rule’ in Peter Bang, Christopher Bayly, and Walter Scheidel, eds., The Oxford World History of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 266 - 287 Humfress, Caroline (2021). ‘Natural Law and Casuistic Reasoning in Roman Jurisprudence’ in Peter Adamson and Christoff Rapp, eds., State and Nature: Essays on Ancient Political Philosophy (Berlin: De Gruyter), 247 - 266 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110730944-012 Humfress, Caroline (2020). ‘ “Cherchez La Femme!” Heresy and Law in Late Antiquity' in Rosamond McKitterick, Charlotte Methuen and Andrew Spicer, eds., The Church and the Law. Studies in Church History Volume 56 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) Humfress, Caroline (2018). ’A New Legal Cosmos: Late Roman Lawyers and the Early Medieval Church', The Medieval World, Linehan, P., Nelson, J. L. & Costambeys, M. (eds.) (London: Routledge) Print