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Professor Maksymilian Del Mar, BA LLB (Qld), PhD (Edinburgh), DSS (Lausanne), Solicitor (Qld)

Maksymilian

Professor of Legal Theory and Legal Humanities

Email: m.delmar@qmul.ac.uk
Room Number: Mile End

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’s research has had two main branches: first, he has developed an account of legal reasoning that grounds it in affective and embodied simulation of imagination-triggering language (‘artefacts’), especially by reference to fictions, metaphors, figures, and scenarios, as these are interactively and collectively imagined over time; second, he has sought to relate legal theory and jurisprudence closely and generatively to historical research, most especially with regard to the intellectual history of Scottish legal thought, but also more generally with respect to the relations between law and the history of the language arts (esp. rhetoric) and a variety of narrative forms and genres (e.g., exemplary stories, dialogues, comedy).

Professor Del Mar’s publications include two monographs: Artefacts of Legal Inquiry: The Value of Imagination in Adjudication (2020); and Neil MacCormick: A Life in Politics, Philosophy, and Law (2025); and a number of edited volumes: ‘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).

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). 

Undergraduate Teaching

  • LAW5115: Speaking Truth to Power: Rhetoric, Comedy, Advocacy
  • LAW6021: Jurisprudence and Legal Theory
  • LAW5000U: Law and Slavery

Postgraduate Teaching

Research

The current focus of Professor Del Mar’s research is on early modern philosophy, literature, and law (1500-1800). He is especially interested in varieties of serious play in this period, in particular via comic genres (e.g., satire, parody, farce) and devices (e.g., wordplay, comic dialogue, paradox, absurdity, hyperbole, nonsense). This includes a strong interest in forms of seriously playful pedagogy, e.g., the moots in the Inns of Court. The focus at present is on the reception of Greek sophistic thought in early modern Europe, and especially Lucian of Samosata (2nd century CE) in sixteenth century England (Erasmus, More, Heywood, Nashe, Jonson) and eighteenth century Scotland (Hume, Smith). The overall inquiry is into the playful dimensions of early modern thought and how these often feature, in often surprising ways, in serious discourses, especially law.

More generally, Professor Del Mar continues to be interested in the theory and history of imagination; in the role and value of reasoning with imaginary characters in law, philosophy, literature, and rhetoric; in kinesic and emotional aspects of legal reasoning; in the neglected legacy of Scottish jurisprudence; and in many intersections of law with the language arts (rhetoric, grammar, and dialectic).

A recently completed collaborative project is 'Comic Pleading 1000-1600: Law, Comedy, Dialogue'. This was co-organised with Professor Greg Walker (Edinburgh) and involved a a workshop on 28-29 April 2026, resulting in a special issue of Law & Literature (forthcoming). Professor Del Mar's paper for that issue is on the medieval Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolf. 

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 (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, for example, 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 808KB]

Select publications

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:

  1. The theory and history of common law reasoning, especially its links to aesthetics, rhetoric, and poetics.
  2. Relations between law and cultural theory and history (including literature and the visual arts).
  3. The history and historiography of legal philosophy, and the importance of, and prospects for, historical jurisprudence.
  4. The theory and history of law in a global context.
  5. The tradition of Scottish jurisprudence, especially in and since the 18th century. 

Professor Del Mar is currently supervising:

  • 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:

  • 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, 2021-2025.
  • 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
  • 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

Public Engagement

Current:

Past:

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