Highlights
[Upcoming] CLT Seminar: "Why Bulk Discount for Multiple Offenders?" by Associate Professor Peter Chau, University of Hong Kong
Suppose an offender has committed a large number of minor offences--for example, 1000 petty thefts, each at a different time and against a different victim. How should one punish this offender? The simple aggregate approach, which would impose the normal sentence for each count and then just add them up in arriving at the total sentence, is clearly problematic: even if the standard sentence for petty theft is 10 days' imprisonment, a person who is, in essence, a petty thief, would face more than 20 years in jail. Most jurisdictions instead apply the Totality Principle and grant a "bulk discount" to multiple offenders. But although the Totality Principle is intuitive, can it be justified? After critically assessing recent attempts to justify the principle, Assoc Prof Chau offers an original defence.
Understandings of disability in law, particularly those elements focused on adults with cognitive impairments, have been undergoing a seismic shift over the last two decades, catalysed by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2008). In her forthcoming monograph, Polyphonic Legality, Prof Harding builds on eight years of empirical socio-legal research involving cognitively disabled people and those who work with them to explore how law and regulation works in the everyday lives of cognitively disabled adults.
In Contract as Promise, Charles Fried forged a tight connection between contract and promise. Since the publication of that book, much ink has been spilt by contract theorists on the issue of whether key contractual doctrines converge or diverge with the rules that govern promises outside the law. This has led to what is known in the literature as the ‘contract and promise debate’. With one very important exception, very little attention has been given to another claim Fried made in that book, which was that contracts, like promises, invoke trust.
CLT is delighted to host the Oxford Studies in Private Law Theory Workshop at NUS Bukit Timah Campus from 4 to 5 August 2025. The Oxford Studies in Private Law Theory is a biennial forum for some of the best new work in private law theory by scholars from around the world. The series publishes exceptional work exploring the full range of private law domains and doctrines—including contract, property, tort, and fiduciary law, as well as equity, unjust enrichment, and remedies—and employing diverse methodological approaches to individual areas of private law as well as to private law in general.