William Twining

It is with great sadness that we have to report the death of Professor William Twining, who passed away peacefully at home on 9 October 2025, aged 91.

He joined Warwick Law School in 1972 and was the inspiration behind Warwick’s renowned Law in Context approach to study. Former colleague and Head of School, Professor Roger Burridge shares his personal memories and profound respect for William.

William Twining, when being interviewed to join Warwick Law School in 1972, was asked what subject he was going to broaden in the Warwick Way. Understanding that this reflected a dissatisfaction with the narrow conceptions of academic law that pervaded at the time, he wanted to set out afresh with something he had never taught. He chose Evidence being somewhat familiar with Jeremy Bentham’s work. It was not his first choice but became his main academic project for the next twenty years and settled the direction of his scholarship for what was an illustrious and discipline defining career.

William was a global citizen. He was born in Uganda and spent his early childhood in Mauritius. He was an Oxford graduate when Herbert Hart would have been busy writing The Concept of Law. His first job was as a lecturer in Sudan followed by a post at the University of Dar Es Salaam.Before joining Warwick, he had been a Professor at Queens University Belfast since 1966. Throughout his career he held appointments and visiting consultancies in the US and Europe as well as maintaining his involvement in African law schools.

The Warwick approach with its emphasis upon the social, economic and cultural environment of legal interventions soon emerged as Law in Context. William was the inspiration for the Law in Context series of “innovative monographs and texts that treat law and legal phenomena critically in their cultural, social, political, technological, environmental and economic contexts”.How to Do Things with Rules written with David Miers epitomising much of this approach was published in 1976.Many of the books in the series are the work of colleagues who taught at Warwick Law School.

Jurisprudence with a strong historical bent had been his focus before joining Warwick. His foray into Evidence law revealed a huge history that he felt had rarely been touched on by legal scholars. His daughter’s school O level project on The Murder of Herodes and the ensuing trial in Athens, piqued a study of Aristotle’s rhetoric and logic. This led William via Jeremy Bentham to Wigmore, the dominant figure in the development of the modern laws of evidence and principles of judicial proof in the early twentieth century – in the common law world.

Whilst Wigmore’s analyses of the laws of evidence were much respected, his work on the principles of proof were largely derided and ignored until William met Terry Anderson, a US lawyer and David Schum, a psychologist, soon after he joined Warwick. This collaboration along with David Schom produced Analysis of Evidence: How to Do Things with Facts.

In 1983 William was appointed the Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at UCL where he embarked upon a series of research projects and teaching exploring the implications of globalisation for legal scholarship and legal theory. UCL was an appropriate home for him. Jeremy Bentham’s fully clothed skeleton has been preserved in a corridor since his death in 1832. At UCL William continued to be a prolific author and key-note speaker beyond his official retirement in 2004. His contributions to the Law in Context series include Globalisation and Legal Theory, (2000), Rethinking Evidence, (2006) and General Jurisprudence: Understanding Law from a Global Perspective (2009).

Jurist in Context (2019) was his final contribution to the series that he had nurtured and led. Nicola Lacey’s review of the volume of his memories in the International Journal of Law in Context acknowledges William’s “remarkable career (that) has witnessed a transformation of legal education and of the scholarly world of the legal academy that has been, in its own way, quietly revolutionary to no less a degree than the political revolutions amid which his professional life opened”.

William Twining’s influence on our understanding of the phenomenon of law was immense as his body of scholarship confirms. But his register of published books, chapters and articles is inadequate alone to measure his significance. In his academic endeavours he extolled qualities and practices often overlooked in tables and bibliographies counted as indicators of excellence. He recognised the necessity of collaboration in unravelling our understanding and the immensity and diversity of legal cultures where laws lurk. He assembled colleagues and students alike to broaden his and our learning. Legal education was as important to him as the theories and behaviours that laws manifest.

William’s significance has been honoured in his various official accolades as a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), a Fellow of the Academy of Social Scjences (FASS), and a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) and an Honorary QC. In 2016 was awarded the 2016 Halsbury Legal Award for Academic Achievement.

Warwick Law School would like to send its deepest condolences to William’s family and friends. He will be dearly remembered and sorely missed.

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Professor Twining Appreciation: 'The Inspiration behind Warwick's Law in Context' by Professor Abdul Paliwala 

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If you would like to contribute your own memories to this page, please send them through to our Communications Officer Sara Hiorns at s.e.prestleton@warwick.ac.uk

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