Description

The use of agents pervades commercial and even personal relations. We all deal with, or as, agents much of the time. Yet it has been said that “No word is more commonly and constantly abused than the word ‘agent’. A person may be spoken of as an ‘agent’, and no doubt in the proper sense of the word may properly be said to be an ‘agent’, although when it is attempted to suggest that he is an ‘agent’ under such circumstances as create the legal obligations attached to agency that use of the word is only misleading.” This lecture seeks to distinguish full employment of the notion and its legal implications from situations where agency reasoning is invoked for limited purposes only.

About The Speaker
Professor Francis Reynolds D.C.L., F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor of Law in the University of Oxford, a barrister, Honorary Q.C. and Honorary Bencher of the Inner Temple. He is standing consultant on English Law to Ang & Partners, Singapore; Honorary Professor, International Maritime Law Institute of the IMO, Malta; and Titular Member of the Comité Maritime International. He has held visiting professorships at many Commonwealth universities including NUS. He was the writer of Bowstead and Reynolds on Agency (to which he still contributes) between 1968 and 2013, the writer (with Sir Guenter Treitel) of Carver on Bills of Lading, and a contributor to Benjamin’s Sale of Goods, Chitty on Contracts and English Private Law. He was the Editor of the Law Quarterly Review from 1987 to 2013. He will be a Kwa Geok Choo Distinguished Visitor at NUS Law in August 2017 where he will be teaching ‘Law of Agency’.