Today's Scholar Spotlight features Catharine MacMillan, King's College London. We noted earlier in this series that only three of the fifty contributors to the recently published Oxford Handbook of European Legal History were women. Like Women Also Know History, this interview series aims to showcase female scholars and their work. Its special focus is scholars of European legal history.
Catharine
MacMillan is a Professor of Private Law at the Dickson Poon School of Law,
King’s College London. She lives in London, England.
Alma
maters: BA (History, University of Victoria), LLB (Queen’s University, Canada,
LLM (University of Cambridge)
Fields of
interest: intellectual and doctrinal legal history, legal biography, legal
history of the British Empire, English contract law
Describe
your career path. What led you to where
you are today?: A fortunate stroke of serendipity took me to legal
academia. From early childhood I had
wanted to be a lawyer. When I graduated from high school in Canada, I chose
history as my first degree subject at the University of Victoria. History as a subject was all-encompassing, in
my view, and thus ideal for a curious teenager.
This was followed by law at Queen’s University. I returned to my home province and clerked
for the Chief Justice of British Columbia, completed my articles at Davis and
Company in Vancouver and was duly called to the Bar of British Columbia. I then had an opportunity to undertake an LLM
at the University of Cambridge (Gonville and Caius College); having received my
degree I returned to my firm and a practice in commercial litigation. It did not last for long as family reasons
brought me back to England. In London I
took up what began as a short term position in the law school at Queen Mary
University of London. I discovered a
love of academic life and spent over two decades at Queen Mary before taking up
a position at the University of Reading as a Professor of Law and Legal
History. I came to the Dickson Poon
School of Law at King’s College London in 2016.
What do you
like the most about where you live and work?
I love living in London – every day is different. The Dickson Poon School of Law is at Somerset
House on the Strand, right in the very heart of London It is a wonderful place to examine the
richness, diversity and complexity of the human condition. And there are the added benefits of
libraries, museums, galleries, theatre, and music all within an easy walk. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, one never
tires of its attractions.
What
projects are you currently working on? I
have two large projects that I have been working on. The first is a legal
biography of the life of Judah Benjamin, one-time Louisiana senator,
Confederate Secretary of State and ultimately, a leading QC in London. I am curious not only about Benjamin’s life
but the unique contributions he brought to legal development. The second is a consideration of the
functioning of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as an imperial
court. I also have a number of smaller,
discrete projects which are ongoing. At
present these include examinations of the contractual doctrines of frustration,
and of mistake and on modern non-disclosure agreements.
How have
your interests evolved since finishing your studies? Because my studies were directed at becoming
a practising lawyer in one sense my interests have changed enormously. In another sense they have not changed at
all. I took the view early in law school
that legal materials, institutions and actors were fragments from which an
historical explanation of the law could be created. An academic career allows me to gather
together these fragments and to try to construct explanations.
What’s the
most fascinating thing you’ve ever found at the archives? This is a really hard question
to answer. The document that I have found
that has probably had the most profound impact upon me was one I found
accidentally in the search for something else: a contract by which an enslaved person was sold by one party to
another. It brought home to me something
of the painful and brutal reality of slavery.
Is there an
article, book, film, website, etc. that you would recommend to LHB readers? I recommend Garrow’s Law, a legal period
drama based loosely around the eighteenth century barrister, William
Garrow. It draws neatly upon various
legal history sources to bring the subject matter alive for students (and other
viewers!).
What have you
found to be the most surprising thing about academic life? I have been amazed
by all of the wonderful and engaging people I’ve met from around the world.
Photo caption: Catharine MacMillan at Judah Benjamin's grave in Paris.
