Lionel Smith appointed Professor of Comparative Law

The Faculty is delighted to announce that Lionel Smith has been appointed to the Professorship of Comparative Law. He will be joining the Faculty in October, and will be a fellow of Brasenose College.

The Professorship was founded in 1948, and was the first permanent chair of comparative law in the United Kingdom. The previous holders of the position are FH Lawson, Otto Kahn-Freund, Barry Nicholas, Bernard Rudden, Stefan Vogenauer, and Birke Häcker.

Professor Smith joins us from Cambridge University where he is Downing Professor of the Laws of England and Director of the Cambridge Private Law Centre. This appointment marks a return to Oxford, as he was a member of the Oxford Law Faculty and a Fellow of St. Hugh’s College during 1996-2000.

Prior to his tenure in Cambridge, Professor Smith spent 22 years at McGill University’s Faculty of Law, where he was Sir William C Macdonald Professor and, before that, James McGill Professor and Director of the Paul-André Crépeau Centre for Private and Comparative Law. He holds degrees from the Universities of Toronto, Western Ontario, Cambridge, Oxford and Montreal. In 2021, he was awarded a Doctorate of Civil Law from the University of Oxford. 

Professor Smith’s interests encompass all aspects of fundamental comparative private law. His comparative work focuses particularly on trusts, succession, restitution, and the philosophical foundations of private law.

He is the editor or co-editor of, and contributor to, many books and special issues of law journals, including Commercial Trusts in European Private Law (CUP 2005; paperback 2009); Re-imagining the Trust: Trusts in Civil Law (CUP 2012; Chinese translation, Law Press China 2021); The Worlds of the Trust (CUP 2013); La fiducie en droit civil (a special issue ((2013) 58:4) of the McGill Law Journal); Les intraduisibles en droit civil (Les Éditions Thémis 2014) (with Alexandra Popovici and Régine Tremblay); and Comparative Property Law: Global Perspectives (Edward Elgar, 2017) (with Michele Graziadei). His most recent monograph is The Law of Loyalty (OUP 2023).

He says of his appointment:

I am deeply honoured to be elected to the Chair of Comparative Law in succession to such distinguished predecessors. I am very excited to be coming back to Oxford’s Faculty of Law, and I look forward to contributing to the Faculty’s global leadership in teaching and research in comparative law.

The Dean of the Faculty, Professor John Armour, said

Professor Smith is a wonderful addition to our Faculty. He brings enormous expertise in comparative law and in private law. I look forward to his contribution to our diverse community of students and academics.