Research Bio

Laurent Mayali is a legal scholar whose research focuses on comparative law, legal history, and law and religion. He is best known for studies of customary law, legal pluralism, and the historical development of legal institutions in Europe and Africa. Mayali’s work integrates legal history, anthropology, and comparative analysis to explore how law operates across different cultural and religious contexts. He has published widely on topics including medieval law, colonial legal systems, and the comparative study of property and family law.

He is the Distinguished Loyd M. Robbins Professor of Law at UC Berkeley and Director of the Robbins Collection Research Center, which holds one of the world’s premier collections in legal history of the Civil Law and religious Law. He also directs the Comparative Legal Studies Program and the Korea Law Center. Mayali has held visiting professorships at leading universities worldwide. His contributions have been recognized with awards and honors for advancing the study of legal history and comparative jurisprudence. At Berkeley, he teaches courses in comparative law and legal history, Roman law and  and mentors students pursuing interdisciplinary legal scholarship.

Research Expertise and Interest

European legal history, comparative law, medieval jurisprudence, customary law