Lauren Benton (historian)

Lauren Benton is an American legal and world historian specializing in the history of empires, legal pluralism, and globalization. She is currently the Nelson O. Tyrone, Jr. Professor of History and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University.

Benton's research explores the legal and political complexities of historical empires, particularly focusing on the ways that multiple legal systems and authorities coexisted and interacted within imperial contexts. Her work challenges traditional views of empires as monolithic and centrally controlled, highlighting instead the diverse and often contested legal landscapes that characterized colonial rule. She examines how legal practices, jurisdictional disputes, and legal ideologies shaped the experiences of various groups within empires, including indigenous populations, merchants, and imperial officials.

Her publications include Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400-1900 (2002), which examines the development of legal pluralism in a global context, and A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900 (2010), which won the J. Russell Major Prize from the American Historical Association. She is also the co-author (with Lisa Ford) of Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law (2016), exploring the relationship between British imperial expansion and the development of international legal thought.

Benton received her Ph.D. in History from Johns Hopkins University. She has held positions at Rutgers University and New York University. Her work has been influential in shaping the fields of world history, legal history, and imperial history.