Professor Wim Decock
Trained as a classicist and lawyer in Leuven, Ghent, and Rome, my primary research interest lies in the civilian legal tradition, broadly understood. My work brings together Roman law, canon law, legal history, comparative law, theology, and the history of economic and political thought.
My research draws primarily on juridical and theological sources from the early modern period (c. 1500–1700), written in Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and Dutch. I am particularly interested in how jurists and scholastic theologians reinterpreted Roman law—especially in its medieval form, the ius commune—in response to new societal challenges, including the discovery of the New World, the rise of global trade and financial networks, and changing relations between the Church of Rome and monarchs aspiring to absolute power.
Before moving to Oxford, I was Professor of Roman Law, Legal History and Comparative Law at the Université catholique de Louvain and the University of Liège, with both of which I remain affiliated. I also taught at KULeuven, Tilburg University and at various universities across the globe as a Visiting Professor (e.g. EHESS Paris, ECUPL Shanghai, Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
Selected Publications
Oxford, OUP, 2025, xiv + 209p.
(Legal History Library, 9), Leiden/Boston, Brill/Nijhoff, 2013 (paperback: 2023), xix + 723p.
Revue Internationale des Droits de l’Antiquité, 70 (2023), 27-52
(Handbuch zur Geschichte der Konfliktlösung in Europa, 3) (ed.), Berlin, Springer, 2021, xxxiv + 730p.
(methodica – Einführungen in die rechtshistorische Forschung, 1), Berlin, De Gruyter/Oldenbourg, 2016, xii + 135p.
(Law and Religion in the Early Modern Period, 9), Leiden/Boston, Brill/Schöningh, 2026, 390p.