James Lee is Professor of English Law at The Dickson Poon School of Law, where he teaches several private law subjects. He is an Academic Bencher of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, and an academic member of the Property Litigation Association, Chancery Bar Association and the Property Bar Association. He regularly lectures on tort for the Judicial College of England and Wales. James is one of the General Editors of Legal Studies, the flagship journal of the Society of Legal Scholars. In recent years, his work has been cited by courts in England, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada and Australia.

During his career, James has held visiting research positions at several institutions, including as Professor Sir Neil MacCormick Fellow at the University of Edinburgh (2014); Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales (2018); Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford (2022); Beaufort Visiting Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (2023); and Lee Kong Chian Visiting Professor at Singapore Management University (2022/23).

With Jamie Glister, James is Co-Editor of the best-selling Trusts textbook, Hanbury and Martin: Modern Equity, the 23^rd edition of which is due to be published in 2024. James has won teaching awards at the University of Birmingham and at King’s. The School’s Teaching Excellence Awards, and in 2017 he was elected a Founding Fellow of the King’s Academy of Educators. He has been a Visiting Professor in Contract Law at the Católica Global School of Law, Universidade Católica Portuguesa (2016) and a Visiting Professor in Equity & Trusts at Hong Kong University (2018). James previously served as The School’s Vice-Dean (Education) from 2019-2022.

Research interests

James’ principal research interests are in private law, law reform and judicial reasoning in appellate courts. In particular, he has examined how adjudicative structures bear on substantive decision-making, with a focus on the United Kingdom Supreme Court. In July 2015, James co-organised a major international conference on the 50th anniversary of the Law Commissions at the UK Supreme Court, which led to an edited collection. Modern Equity has been cited in the English High Court, the Singapore High Court, the Alberta Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada. James was The School's PC Woo Research Fellow 2016-17. James is founding Co-Editor (with Erin Delaney and Andrew Lynch) of the book series Hart Studies on Judging and the Courts.

James’ current main project explores the interrelationship between legal institutions and legal change.

James has supervised several doctorates to completion and is happy to discuss proposals falling within his research interests with prospective PhD applicants.

Selected publications

• ‘Different Views of Nuisance’ (2023) 129 (Oct) Law Quarterly Review 535-541
• ‘“Not Time to Make a Change”? Reviewing the Rhetoric of Law Reform’ Current Legal Problems (2023) Advance Access (Open Access) https://academic.oup.com/clp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/clp/cuad004/7190492
• ‘Pragmatic modernisation? Judicial directions in trusts and wealth management’ in R Nolan, HW Tang & M Yip (eds) Trusts and Private Wealth Management: Developments and Directions (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
• Hanbury & Martin: Modern Equity (with Jamie Glister) (22^nd edition, Sweet & Maxwell, 2022)
• ‘Against All Odds: Numbers Sitting in the UK Supreme Court and Really, Really Important Cases’ in P Daly (ed), Apex Courts and the Common Law (University of Toronto Press, 2019)
• ‘Trends in Tort Law: Bad Form and Addictive Substance?’ in A Robertson and J Goudkamp (eds), Form and Substance in the Law of Obligations (Hart, 2019)
• ‘The Commercialisation of Equity’ (with Man Yip), (2017) 37(4) Legal Studies 647-671.
• ‘The Judicial Individuality of Lord Sumption’, (2017) 40(2) University of New South Wales Law Journal 862-896.
• Co-Editor (with Matthew Dyson and Shona Wilson Stark), Fifty Years of the Law Commissions – the Dynamics of Law Reform (Hart, 2016)