Profile
Maksymilian Del Mar is Professor of Legal Theory and Legal Humanities in the Department of Law, Queen Mary University of London.
He studied philosophy, literature, and law at the University of Queensland, Australia (BA Hons / LLB Hons), with an Honours dissertation in philosophy and literature on Italo Calvino (1999-2004). He completed a Doctorate in Philosophy (PhD) at the School of Law, University of Edinburgh, Scotland (2006-2009), and a Doctorate in the Social Sciences (DSS) at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lausanne, Switzerland (2009-2012). Prior to academia, he qualified as a lawyer in Brisbane, Australia, and worked as a Judge’s Associate in the Supreme Court of Queensland. He arrived at Queen Mary in 2011.
Professor Del Mar has broad research interests at the intersection of legal theory and legal humanities. His most recent book is Neil MacCormick: A Life in Politics, Philosophy, and Law (2025), which offers a reading of MacCormick’s philosophy and politics, particularly in its Scottish context. He retains a strong interest in the relations between legal theory and legal history, and in the history and historiography of politics and philosophy. His earlier book, Artefacts of Legal Inquiry: The Value of Imagination in Adjudication (2020), focused on the role and value of imagination in twentieth century common law reasoning, examining fictions, metaphors, figures, and scenarios. Here, too, he remains interested in the theory and history of imagination, emotion, and related language arts. Currently, he is writing on the relevance of the history of the arts of sketching character for legal reasoning and on the reception of Greek rhetoric, literature, and philosophy in eighteenth century Scotland.
Professor Del Mar is committed to building bridges across disciplines, as well as to articulating the essential role and value of the arts and humanities in legal pedagogy and legal scholarship. With that in mind, he has edited or co-edited numerous collections, including: ‘Cognitive Legal Humanities’ (2023); ‘Contextual Legal Pedagogy’ (2022); The Oxford Handbook of Law and Humanities (2020); Virtue, Emotion, and Imagination in Law and Legal Reasoning (2020); Law in Theory and History (2016); Authority in Transnational Legal Theory (2016); Legal Fictions in Theory and Practice (2015); Beyond Text in Legal Education (2013); New Waves in Legal Philosophy (2011); and Law as Institutional Normative Order (2009). Current collaborative projects include work on comedy and pleading in the medieval and early modern, and on the relations between law and poetics.
He edits the Law in Context series at Cambridge University Press; the Cambridge Elements in Legal Humanities; and the Encounters with Books from Other Disciplines series for the International Journal of Law in Context. He serves on the Editorial Board of Law & Literature.
At Queen Mary, he convenes the interdisciplinary research network on ‘Imagination’ at the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. He has previously founded and convened the Cotterrell Lectures in Sociological Jurisprudence (2015-2025) and the Centre for Law and Society in a Global Context (2013-18).
Research
Current Research:
Professor Del Mar has two current research projects. Both are attempts to theorise historically, with both developing an interest in the importance of the classics and their reception for intellectual history, especially the history of law, philosophy, and letters.
The first concerns the relations between character sketching and law making. The project analyses three historically situated practices of character sketching, examining the techniques of sketching character in each, and relating these techniques to their role in the exercise of practical reason. The three practices are: first, character sketching in Ancient Greek philosophical pedagogy, and in particular Theophrastus’s Characters; second, ancient Roman declamations, in particular as described in Seneca the Elder’s Declamations; and third, twentieth century common law reasoning and the many ways common law advocates and judges both make decisions and make law by sketching character. The project's hypothesis that analysing character sketching in the above two classical contexts can help illuminate contemporary practices, such as the common law.
The second concerns the history and historiography of philosophy, with a particular focus on Lucian of Samosata (2nd century CE), including who and how he read, and who and how read him. The project investigates what we might learn from Lucian’s meta-philosophical dialogues – and how they were read in later centuries – about the practice of philosophy and debates over its epistemic, political, and ethical values and limits. The project pays close attention to three historical contexts in which philosophy – and its forms, roles, offices, and personas – were highly contested: 4th century BCE Greece; 2nd century CE Rome; and 18th century Scotland. The more immediate focus of the project is on how David Hume and Adam Smith read Lucian.
Collaborative work in progress includes a special issue of Law & Literature, co-edited with Greg Walker, on Comic Pleading: Law, Comedy, Dialogue (1000-1600), and a project focused on relations between law and poetics (1300-1800).
Past research
Particular threads of past research include:
- The role and value of imagination in twentieth century common law reasoning. Artefacts of Legal Inquiry: The Value of Imagination in Adjudication (484pp, Hart, 2020) draws on a range of theoretical traditions, including rhetoric, the cognitive humanities, literary theory, and the philosophy of mind, to argue for why imagination and related forms of language matter to common law reasoning.
- The life and work of Neil MacCormick, alongside a broader interest in the historiography of philosophy and politics. This long-standing project, which includes a website, containing a timeline, full bibliography, and audio and video resources, has resulted in a monograph entitled Neil MacCormick: A Life in Politics, Philosophy, and Law (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in 2025).
- Normativity and social theory: with a specific interest in second-personal, dialogical, and interactionist accounts of normativity and social life.
- The role and value of the arts in legal education, e.g., in the Beyond Text in Legal Education project.
Global and transnational legal theory: with a special interest in legal reasoning in a global context, transnational authority, and the theory and history of international law.
Publications
View Professor Maks Del Mar's full CV [PDF 423KB]
Select publications
- 'Ludic Legal Pedagogy: Mooting in Early Modern England’, in S. Mukherji & D. Roberts (eds.), Literature and the Legal Imaginary: Knowing Justice, Palgrave, 2025, 197-215
- ‘Kinesic Intelligence in Common Law Reasoning’, in G. Bolens (ed.), Kinesic Intelligence in the Humanities, Routledge, 2024, 111-132
- ‘Animating the Past: History-Making, Memory-Making, Law-Making’ (2023) 16(3) Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History 297-316
- ‘Cognitive Legal Humanities’, co-edited with Simon Stern (2023) 10(1) CAL: Critical Analysis of Law 1-115
- ‘Enthymising‘ (2023) 43(1) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 202-220
- ‘The Confluence of Rhetoric and Emotion: How the History of Rhetoric Illuminates the Theoretical Importance of Emotion’ (2022) Law & Literature 1-29
- ‘Contextual Legal Pedagogy’, co-edited with Kenneth Armstrong and Sally Sheldon, (2022) International Journal of Law in Context 365-460
- Artefacts of Legal Inquiry: The Value of Imagination in Adjudication (Hart / Bloomsbury, 2020)
- Virtue, Emotion and Imagination in Legal Reasoning, co-edited with Amalia Amaya, Hart Publishing, 2020
- ‘Philosophical Analysis and Historical Inquiry: Theorising Normativity, Law and Legal Thought‘, in Markus Dubber and Christopher Tomlins (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Legal Historical Research, Oxford University Press, 2018, 3-22
- ‘Metaphor in International Law: Language, Imagination and Normative Inquiry‘ (2017) 86(2) Nordic Journal of International Law 170-195
- ‘Imagining by Feeling: A Case for Compassion in Legal Reasoning‘ (2017) 13(2) International Journal of Law in Context 143-157
- ‘Legal Reasoning in Pluralist Jurisprudence: The Practice of the Relational Imagination‘, in Andrew Halpin and Nicole Roughan (eds.), In Pursuit of Pluralist Jurisprudence, Cambridge University Press, 40-63, 2017
- Law in Theory and History: New Essays on a Neglected Dialogue, co-edited with Michael Lobban, Hart Publishing, 2016
- Authority in Transnational Legal Theory: Theorising Across Disciplinary Borders, co-edited with Roger Cotterrell, Edward Elgar, 2016
- ‘Learning How to Read a Case: Resources and Activities from the Visual and Dramatic Arts‘, in B. von Klink and B. de Vries (eds.), Academic Learning in Law: Theoretical Positions, Teaching Experiments and Learning Experiences, Edward Elgar, 2016, 244-266
- Legal Fictions in Theory and Practice, co-edited with William Twining, Springer, 2015
- ‘Legal Fictions and Legal Change in the Common Law Tradition‘, in Del Mar and Twining (eds.), Legal Fictions in Theory and Practice, Springer , 2015, 225-254
- ‘Exemplarity and Narrativity in the Common Law Tradition‘ (2013) 25(3) Law & Literature 390- 427
Supervision
Professor Del Mar welcomes proposals for supervision in legal theory and legal humanities. He is willing to consider any proposal in these fields, but is likely to be most helpful as a supervisor if the proposal falls within his main areas of research. Proposals in the following broad areas would be especially welcome:
- The theory and history of common law reasoning, especially its links to aesthetics, rhetoric, and poetics.
- Relations between law and cultural theory and history (including literature and the visual arts).
- The history and historiography of legal philosophy, and the importance of, and prospects for, historical jurisprudence.
- The theory and history of law in a global context.
- The tradition of Scottish jurisprudence, especially in and since the 18th century.
Professor Del Mar is currently supervising:
- Luiza Tavares da Motta, It’s Alive!’: The Emotional Experience of Time and the Legitimation of Judge-Made Law in the Nineteenth Century, with Dr Tanzil Chowdhury, Law, 2021-
- Isa Bellati, The Field of Senses and the Senses over the Field: Rethinking Lawscapes for Constitutional Land-Disputes in Brazil, with Dr Elsa Noterman (Geography), 2024-
Recently completed students:
- Ms Adela Halo, Ending the French Revolution: Germaine de Staël and the Birth of Liberalism in France, with Gareth Stedman-Jones, Schools of Law and History, 2015-2020
- Gabrielle Schwarzmann, Trauma, Pain and Shame: Recovering the Experiences of Non-Elite Women in Late Medieval English Legal Culture, with Professor Miri Rubin, 2021-2024
