Professor Dr. Joe Sampson

Biography

Joe Sampson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Cambridge's Faculty of Law, focusing on legal history. He has a wide range of interests in comparative legal studies, particularly the contributions of civilian scholarship. His notable work includes a PhD dissertation that explored the influence of Thomist theology on notions of liability and wrongdoing in early modern natural law. Among his recent projects are investigations into John Cowell’s efforts to Romanize common law wrongs and the application of plague regulations in 1603. He supervises a variety of doctoral students engaged in legal historical topics and contributes to graduate supervision in the Faculty of History. Sampson's teaching includes a new LLM course designed for 2024-25 that examines foundational legal questions over 4,000 years across various legal systems, from ancient Mesopotamia to modern codification movements in Chile, Japan, and Germany. His academic journey includes a BA in Law and an MPhil in Medieval History from Trinity College, Cambridge, and a PhD supervised by Professor David Ibbetson. Sampson has published works such as 'Historical Foundations of Grotius's Analysis of Delict' (Brill, 2017), and he previously held a position as Associate Professor at Oxford's Magdalen College before returning to Trinity in October 2022.

Research Interests