Matthew Dyson

Professor of Civil and Criminal Law

Biography

I specialise in the criminal law, tort law, and the relationship between the two. My work is often historical and comparative. My publications are available in chronological order under the Publications tab of this website, but available more accessibly under the "Interests" tab. My most recent large work was a monograph, Explaining Tort and Crime, published with CUP in late 2022: https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/law/private-law/explaining-tort-and-crime-legal-development-across-laws-and-legal-systems-18502020?format=HB

I came to the Faculty and to Corpus Christi in 2016, and in 2021 became Professor of Civil and Criminal Law. I was previously a Fellow in Law and Director of Studies at Trinity College, Cambridge (2011-2016) and Jesus College, Cambridge (2008-11). I'm also: an associate member of 6KBW College Hill, Chambers specialising in criminal law and related areas of public and civil law; a Research Fellow of the Utrecht Centre for Accountability and Liability Law and President of the European Society for Comparative Legal History. I have held visiting positions at institutions including the Universities of Paris-Dauphine, Cape Town, Iowa, Sao Paulo, Göttingen, Sydney, Notre Dame in London, and the Max Planck Institute for International and Comparative Private Law, Hamburg.

If you're looking for information on publishing scholarly works, I can help with comparative legal history, private law and criminal law. I am currently on the advisory boards of Comparative Legal History, GLOSSAE and the Utrecht Law Review and the international advisory boards of the Zeitschrift für Europäisches PrivatrechtZeitschrift für Internationale Strafrechtsdogmatik, Criminal Law Forum and theRevista Electrónica de Ciencia Penal y Criminología. Please do get in touch if you would like to discuss any aspects of them (broadly, comparative legal history, legal history, private law and criminal law).

Everyone with the necessary application, reasoning ability and communication skills should feel that Oxford is the kind of place they could study law, if they want. If you are a potential applicant, I might be fortunate enough to meet you around the country or in Oxford at an access or admissions event. To find out more about such activities in Oxford, there are more details on the Faculty's access pages, available here, and on Corpus Christi College's law pages, available here.

 

 

Publications

Research Interests

The core research interest of Matt's work has been the relationship between criminal law and tort law since around 1850 in around 10 legal systems.

He welcomes research proposals on criminal law, tort law, legal history and comparative law.

Publications

Monographs

       [2022] Explaining Tort and Crime: Legal Development Across Laws and Legal Systems, 1850-2020 (CUP, 2022).

Edited Books

[2020] Blackstone’s Statutes on Criminal Law 2019-20 (OUP) (and earlier edition, since 2016-2017)

[2018] (with B Vogel) The Limits of Criminal Law (Intersentia)

[2018] Regulating Risk through Private Law (Intersentia)

[2016] (with J. Lee & S. Wilson Stark) Fifty Years of the Law Commissions: The Dynamics of Law Reform (Hart).

[2015] Comparing Tort and Crime (CUP).

[2014] Unravelling Tort and Crime (CUP).

[2013] (with D. Ibbetson) Law and Legal Process: Substantive Law and Procedure in English Legal History (CUP).

 

Articles

[2018] "Principals without distinction" [2018] Crim LR 293-320.

[2017] “Ever working in practice, but never in theory? The new English law of criminal complicity” [2017] Zeitschrift für die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft 232-263.

[2016] “If the present were the past” [2016] American Journal of Legal History 41-52.

[2015] “Might Alone Does Not Make Right: Justifying Secondary Liability” [2015] Criminal Law Review 967-985.

[2015] “La Respuesta del Derecho Civil a Sentencias Penales en Inglaterra y España” InDret 3/2015, 1-53.

[2015] “The future of joint-up thinking: living in a post-accessory liability world” (2015) 79 Journal of Criminal law 181-197.

[2015] with John Randall QC, “Criminal Convictions and the Civil Courts” [2015] CLJ 78-108.

(2012) “Civil Law Responses to Criminal Judgments in England and Spain” (2012) 3 Journal of European Tort Law 308-345.

[2012] “The Timing of Tortious and Criminal Actions for the Same Wrong” [2012] CLJ 85-116.

[2009] Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies 247-288: “Connecting Tort and Crime: Comparative Legal History in England and Spain since 1850”.

 

Book Chapters

[2002] S. Taylor, M. Dyson, D. Farigrieve “Regards comparatifs sur les projets de réforme français et belge. La perspective du droit anglais” , in B. Dubuisson (ed) La réforme de la responsabilité civile en France et en Belgique. Regards croisés et aspects de droit comparé (Belgium: Bruylant, 2020), 133-152.

[2020] “Beyond anecdote and synecdoche” in W Ernst and B Häcker (eds) Collective Judging in Comparative Perspective (Intesentia).

[2020] “Unavoidable procedural questions about tort and crime” in CE Pianovski and N Rosenvald (eds) Novas Fronteiras da responsabilidade civil: direito comparado (Foco).

[2020] “The Queen v C, D and E: In the Supreme Court of Ruritania” in B Krebs (ed) Accessorial Liability after Jogee (Hart).

[2019] “Comparative Legal History: Methodology for Morphology” in Olivier Moréteau et al (eds) Edward Elgar Handbook of Comparative Legal History

[2018] “Overlap, Separation and Hybridity Across Tort and Crime” in Dyson and Vogel (eds) The Limits of Criminal Law (Intersentia), 79-105.

[2018] (with B Vogel) Introduction, eight comparative conclusions and “Reflections on Criminal Law in England and Germany” in Dyson and Vogel (eds) The Limits of Criminal Law (Intersentia).

[2018] (with Sandy Steel), “Risk and English Tort Law” in M Dyson (ed) Regulating Risk Through Private Law (Intersentia), 23-54.

[2018] “What does risk-reasoning do in Tort law” in M Dyson (ed) Regulating Risk Through Private Law (Intersentia), 455-512.

[2017] (with Aniceto Masferrer), “The Lawyers’ Reality: Wrongdoing in Spain in the Era of Codification” in A. Sinclair & S. Llano (eds) Writing Wrongdoing, 19-33.

[2017] (with Paul Jarvis) “Remedies of the Criminal Courts” in G. Virgo and S. Worthington (eds), Commercial Remedies: Resolving Controversies (CUP).

[2017] “The State’s obligation to provide a coherent system of remedies across crime and tort” in A. du Bois-Pedain et al. (ed) Criminal Law and the Authority of the State (Hart).

[2017] “R v. Hancock and Shankland” in P. Handler, H. Mares and I. Williams (eds), Landmark Cases in the Criminal Law (Hart).

[2017] “Frederick Pollock, The Law of Torts” in Serge Dauchy et al. (eds), The Formation and Transmission of Western Legal Culture: 150 Books that made the law in the Age of Printing (Springer).

[2016] “Precariousness as rhetoric: the role of the state in private and public expressions of justice” in C. Lageot & N. Papineau (eds), Approches franco-britanniques de la précarité: principe(s), droit(s), pratique(s) (LGDJ).

[2016] “Judicial Decision-making in England Today” in J. Basedow, H. Fleischer & R. Zimmermann (eds) Legislators, Judges, and Professors (Mohr Siebeck)

[2015] “Tort and Crime” in Mauro Bussani & Antony Sebok (eds), Comparative Tort Law: Global Perspectives (Edward Elgar) 93-121.

[2015] Introduction, in M Dyson (ed), Comparing Tort and Crime (CUP) 1-17.

[2015] with John Randall QC, “England’s Splendid Isolation”, in M Dyson (ed), Comparing Tort and Crime (CUP) 18-72.

[2015] “Tortious Apples and Criminal Oranges” in M Dyson (ed), Comparing Tort and Crime (CUP) 416-475.

[2014] “Disentangling and Organising Tort and Crime” in Dyson (ed), Unravelling Tort and Crime (CUP) 389-421.

[2014] with Sarah Green, “The Properties of the Law: Restoring Personal Property through Crime and Tort” in Dyson (ed), Unravelling Tort and Crime (CUP).

[2014] “Divide and Conquer: Using Legal Domains in Comparative Legal Studies” in Helleringer & Purnhagen (eds), Towards a European Legal Culture (Hart, Beck Nomos).

[2013] “Challenging the Orthodoxy of Crime's Precedence over Tort: Suspending a Tort Claim Where a Crime May Exist” in Chamberlain, Neyers & Pitel (eds), Challenging Orthodoxy in Tort Law (Hart).

 

Shorter Articles

[2017] ‘The smallest fault in manslaughter’ [2017] Archbold Review, vol 6, 4-6

[2016] Letter to the editor [2016] Crim LR 638-642.

[2015] with Kourosh Saeb-Parsy et al. “Transplanting suboptimal organs: medicolegal implications” Lancet 2015, 386: 369-371.

[2014] Criminal Law Review “Scrapping Khan? The Court of Appeal and intending all you attempt” [2014] Crim LR 445-450.

[2013] “Symposium on Legal Domains and Comparative Law. Wheels Within Wheels: Using Legal Domains for Domestic Comparative Law” (2013) 17(3) The Edinburgh Law Review 420-424, symposium ends 430.

(2010) “Public Order on the Internet” (2010) 2 Archbold Review 6-9.

(2007) “R. v Rahman [2007] EWCA Crim 342: Fundamental Similarity in Secondary Liability” (2007) 4 Archbold News 4-6.

 

Case Notes

[2018 (with P. Jarvis) Ivey v. Genting (2018) 134 LQR 198

[2016] CLJ 196-199 R. v. Jogee; Ruddock v The Queen [2016] UKSC 8; UKPC 7.

[2010] CLJ 425-428, R. v. Thompson and Mendez [2010] EWCA Crim 516.

[2006] CLJ 10-13, R. v. Rimmington; R. v. Goldstein [2005] UKHL 63.

 

Book Reviews

(2011) ICLQ 1096-1098, Paula Giliker Vicarious Liability in Tort: A Comparative Perspective, CUP, 2010.

[2010] CLJ 678, M. Dougan & S. Currie (eds) 50 Years of the European Treaties Looking Back and Thinking Forward, Hart, 2009.

[2008] CLJ 215-216, D. Beyleveld & R. Brownsword Consent in the Law, OUP, 2007.

[2007] CLJ 237-238, Mark van Hoecke (ed.) Epistemology and Methodology of Comparative Law, Hart, 2004.

[2005] CLJ 503-504, Martin Loughlin The Idea of Public Law, OUP, 2003.

(2005) 1 Cambridge Student Law Review 74-78, Legrand & Munday (eds) Comparative Legal Studies: Traditions and Transitions, CUP, 2003.