John Baker (legal historian)
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Sir John (Hamilton) Baker, LLB PhD London MA LLD Cambridge LLD honoris causa Chicago Barrister-at-Law Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn Honorary Bencher Inner Temple QC FBA FBS FRHistS, Downing Professor of the Laws of England from 1998, English legal historian.
Baker was born 10 April 1944 in Sheffield, the son of Kenneth Lee Vincent Baker, and Marjorie Baker (nee Bagshaw). He was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford, and University College London. He was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1966 (and was elected an Honorary Bencher in 1988).
He married, firstly (in 1968), Veronica Margaret Lloyd, with whom he had two daughters. They were divorced in 1997, and in 2002 he married Fiona Rosalind Holdsworth (nee Cantley), who died in 2005.
The first academic position the newly rising legal historian held was as an Assistant Lecturer in Law at University College London, in 1965. In 1967 he was promoted to Lecturer, and in 1971 moved to the University of Cambridge. There he was Librarian of the Squire Law Library until 1973, and remains a Fellow of St Catharine's College. In 1973 he became a Lecturer in Law at Cambridge.
He was appointed Reader in English Legal History, at the University of Cambridge in 1983. In 1988 he was promoted to Professor of English Legal History. From 1998 he has been Downing Professor of the Laws of England, Cambridge.
Sir John is author of Introduction to English Legal History (1971), The Reports of Sir John Spelman (1977), Manual of Law French (1979), The Order of Serjeants at Law (1984), English Legal MSS in the USA (Part I) (1985), The Legal Profession and the Common Law (1987), Sources of English Legal History (with S. F. C. Milsom) (1986), The Notebook of Sir John Port (1987), Readings and Moots at the Inns of Court (1990), English Legal MSS in the USA (Part II) (1990), Cases from the Lost Notebooks of Sir James Dyer (1994), Catalogue of English Legal MSS in Cambridge University Library (1996), Spelman’s Reading on Quo Warranto (1997), Monuments of Endless Labours (1998), Caryll's Reports (1999), The English Legal Tradition (2000), The Law's Two Bodies (2001), Readers and Readings (2001), Oxford History of the Laws of England (Vol. VI) 2003, Reports from the Time of Henry VIII (2003–04), An Inner Temple Miscellany (2004).
He is President of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and Literary Director of the Selden Society (jointly 1981-199-, sole since 1991).
Appointments have included Visiting Professor, New York University School of Law since 1988, Visiting Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford in 1995, Honorary Fellow, Society for Advanced Legal Studies 1998, Corresponding Fellow, American Society for Legal History 1992, and Honorary Foreign Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2001. He has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 1984.
Baker was appointed a Fellow of University College London in 1991, made an honorary LLD of the University of Chicago in 1991, and received the Yorke Prize (University of Cambridge) 1975, and the Ames Prize (Harvard Law School) in 1985. He was knighted in 2003.
Baker continues to lecture in legal history at Cambridge, where he enjoys a considerable fan-base, and is widely appreciated as being the embodiment of legal history.
