Dr Achas Burin

Achas teaches medical law and tort law.

She also assists with the CLOCK programme, supporting students who themselves assist litigants to navigate the court process.

Her doctoral thesis examined cases where civil law and criminal law come apart in their treatment of property. One such case is R v Hinks. The defendant in Hinks was the carer of a man who gave her a large sum of money and a television set. He was of lower-than-average intelligence but competent to make gifts. It was accepted in court that the gift was valid as a matter of civil law. At civil law, the accused was the owner of the property. Nevertheless, she was convicted for stealing ‘property belonging to another’. Hinks is not an outlier case. Problems repeatedly arise in case-law involving property and wrongdoing. The scholarship to date tends to discuss individual cases, such as Hinks, and individual doctrines, such as ex turpi causa. Save for her thesis, there has not been a sustained exploration of the influence that both criminal and private law, together, bring to bear on the reasoning and outcomes of cases that involve property and wrongdoing. 

Achas' first publication, in 2012, concerning free speech was cited by the highest Australian court in Monis v the Queen [2013] HCA 4.

Before arriving at Brookes, Achas was the Lord and Lady McNair Lecturer in Law at Somerville College, University of Oxford (2018-2022). She has a BCL (masters) degree and DPhil (PhD) from the University of Oxford. She has also lectured at the University of Leeds (2011-2012).

At Somerville, Achas taught jurisprudence (the philosophy of law), tort, and constitutional law on the undergraduate law course. She also taught a new postgraduate module, called Politics Law and Philosophy, centring on issues in analytic philosophy which raise questions of interest to feminists. 

Along with a colleague, she established and convened Alternative Curricula, a postcolonial and decolonial reading group.

Achas is a practising barrister at 12 King's Bench Walk Chambers in London, where she practises in tort and public law.

Among her notable cases are: 

• X v Kuoni [2019] UKSC 37, including before the Court of Justice of the European Union (C578/19);  
• Coventry v Lawrence (No. 3) [2015] UKSC 50;  
• The Public Inquiry into Undercover Policing;  
• The Infected Blood Inquiry; 
• The Kenya Emergency Group Litigation (various citations, High Court). 

A detailed professional CV can be found on her chambers website.

Achas is training for a qualification in cycle mechanics (Cytech level 2) with the Broken Spoke Bike Co-op, a charity that promotes women, trans* and non-binary folk within cycling.