Dr James Thornton

Role

Dr James Thornton is Associate Professor of Law, Criminal Justice and Ethics and member of the Centre for Rights and Justice.

His chief area of interest is criminal law, which he teaches on the LLB, PGDL and LLM courses. He also teaches criminology and criminal justice to final year LLB students. He carries out research projects on criminal law and criminal justice issues and supervises undergraduate, masters and doctoral student research projects.

He is also available on a consultancy basis.

Potential doctoral students (PhD or Prof Doc) are very welcome to get in touch to discuss ideas. He would be especially interested in any student projects analysing the working practices of practitioners in legal settings (lawyers, judges, probation etc.) and how these are influenced (e.g. by internal or external pressures). Projects concerning the criminal justice system, courts, sentencing, access to justice and legal aid more broadly would also be very interesting.

Career overview

James read Law at University of Southampton, graduating with 1st class honours. He was then awarded a Vice Chancellor/Presidential Scholarship in order to research his PhD there. At Southampton, he also worked as a Research Assistant for criminal justice and medical law projects, taught criminal law and equity & trusts, and was co-manager of the Law School’s housing and employment pro bono legal advice service.

He joined Nottingham Law School as a Lecturer, before being promoted to Senior Lecturer (during which time he was also a Course Leader) and then Associate Professor. He has also been Visiting Scholar at KU Leuven in Belgium. His research has been published in world leading international legal journals, cited in Parliament and used by Government to inform policy change (e.g. Criminal Legal Aid Review and House of Commons Justice Select Committee). He also led the research review of the Sentencing Council's domestic abuse sentencing guideline.

External activity

James occasionally works in the criminal courts, sits on a Nottinghamshire Police panel scrutinising out of court disposals (police cautions etc.) and on a Crown Prosecution Service panel scrutinising disproportionality in joint enterprise cases. He was also non-executive director of a sports charity for several years (British Student Taekwondo Federation).

He was a Visiting Scholar at the Faculty of Law and Criminology, KU Leuven, Belgium in 2024.

Outside of academia, he holds a black belt in Taekwondo and is a former British National and British Student National sparring champion. Although he does continue to fight nationally (and sometimes internationally) in competitions, he is beginning to accept that his knees might be getting a bit old for it.

Sponsors and collaborators

James led a project for the Sentencing Council (Ministry of Justice), reviewing sentencing guidelines for domestic abuse offending.

James also worked on projects funded by the British Academy, Leverhulme Trust and ESRC, examining trust of AI by practitioners and service users in mental healthcare, with Dr Caroline Jones (Swansea University, Law), Prof Age Chapman (Southampton University, Computer Science), Prof Jeremy Wyatt (Southampton University, Medicine) and the mental healthcare charity Adferiad Recovery.