School of Law

Profile of Prof Thomas Glyn Watkin

Name:

Professor Thomas Glyn Watkin

Position:

Honorary Professor

Email:

Location:

Phone:

01248 383781

Professor Thomas Glyn Watkin was born in the village of Cwmparc in the Rhondda in 1952. He was educated at the Rhondda County Grammar School for Boys in Porth, before studying Law at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he was Oades and Stafford Scholar (1971-1974). He obtained the degrees of BA (1974), BCL (1975) and MA (1977) from the University of Oxford and was called to the bar by the Middle Temple (1976). From 1975 until 2004, he was successively lecturer, senior lecturer, reader and professor in the Law School at the University of Wales, Cardiff, as well as acting as Legal Assistant to the Governing Body of the Church in Wales from 1981 until 1998, with responsibility for drafting bilingual bills and amendments to the Church’s constitution. He was appointed foundation Professor of Law at Bangor in 2004.

Professor Watkin’s principal interests are in the history of law in England, Wales and Europe, including the history of Roman law. He has published several books and numerous articles on these areas in leading journals both in Britain and overseas. His work on English legal history has won recognition in his election to the Council of the Selden Society, the principal society dedicated to advancing knowledge of the history of English law. His work on continental legal systems, and in particular Italian law, led to his election to the Academy of Private Lawyers of Milan and Pavia. In the year 2000, together with other academics, judges and practising lawyers, he founded the Welsh Legal History Society, and he has edited the first three volumes of essays published by the Society, of which he is also secretary and treasurer. He is also a member of Scotland’s Stair Society, the Irish Legal History Society and the American Society of Legal History. As a teacher, he has been particularly associated with the development of degrees in law with languages, and he was responsible while at Cardiff and in founding Bangor Law School with developing Welsh-medium legal education. His most recent work has focussed on the history of law in Wales, and his book The Legal History of Wales, the first comprehensive history of law in Wales from the Roman invasion to devolution, was published by the University of Wales Press in March 2007.

In April 2007, he returned to Cardiff to become First Welsh Legislative Counsel, the legal officer principally responsible for drafting the legislative programme of the Welsh Assembly Government under the new powers conferred upon the National Assembly of Wales by the Government of Wales Act 2006. He has since been appointed an Honorary Professor at Bangor Law School.

An ordained priest within the Church in Wales, he is married with one daughter.