Arthur William Cairns, 2nd Earl Cairns, was a British aristocrat, succeeding to the title on the death of his father, the first Earl Cairns, on 2 April 1885.

Hugh McCalmont Cairns, 1st Earl Cairns was an Anglo-Irish statesman who served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain during the first two ministries of Benjamin Disraeli. He was one of the most prominent Conservative statesmen in the House of Lords during this period of Victorian politics. He served as the seventeenth Chancellor of the University of Dublin between 1867 and 1885.