Thesis Title

'The reporting of nisi prius cases: origins and effects'

Supervisors

Professor Michael Lobban and Professor Neil Duxbury

Research Interests

Legal History

Paul Newman is a PhD Candidate in Law at LSE. He holds an MA in Law from Cambridge University and an LLM from Harvard Law School. He has been a barrister at Wilberforce Chambers in London for over 30 years, specialising in pensions, trusts and professional negligence. He was appointed Queen's Counsel in 2009. He has had numerous articles on pensions, regulatory and procedural law topics published in academic and practitioner journals and is a contributor to a leading textbook on corporate insolvency.

His research concerns the commencement of the regular reporting of nisi prius cases at the turn of the 19th century, having been almost totally neglected by law reporters for the previous 500 years. His thesis will consider the reasons for this, the extent to which reported nisi prius cases were treated as authorities by subsequent judges, and what influence those cases have had on the development of English common law.