Highlights
Torts Day 2025
This PLDG Conference will feature speakers from Hong Kong University and the National University of Singapore discussing their current research projects, which span important areas of modern tort law. Papers will be delivered on the important torts/doctrines of negligence and vicarious liability, including a paper on the nascent topic of procuring torts.
PLDG-CLT Seminar: The Idea of Equity by Professor Matthew Harding
In recent years, a number of scholars have offered theoretical perspectives on equity that seek to identify its character and purpose as a distinctive element of the legal system. In this paper, I take stock of this recent work, asking what about equity it illuminates and what it leaves unexplored. I then assess the prospects of building on recent theoretical work to set out a general account of equity that both describes the practice in all its dimensions and shows the practice to be normatively desirable in light of political and moral ideals. I suggest that such a general account is likely to show that the idea of equity departs in profound ways from the usual preoccupations of private law.
[Blog post] Corporate Liability and Systems Theory
Current models of the company derived from agency theory and its off-shoot team production theory are not satisfactory in thinking through liability problems. Agency theory is not satisfactory because it is reductionist and sees the company as a nexus of contracts centred upon the shareholder-manager relationship. Team production theory is not satisfactory because it sees the company’s internal hierarchy as having the main task of resolving intra-corporate disputes (that is, among input providers). The theory has no purpose when there are no such disputes and is not concerned with external claims.
The Property Contract Interface Workshop (16-18 December 2024)
The Property Contract Interface is a 3-day conference that brings together leading scholars in private law as contributors to an Oxford University Press collection of essays, The Property-Contract Interface: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives. The organisers and editors are James Penner (NUS Law), Irina Sakharova (Durham), Tan Zhong-Xing (NUS Law) and Henry Smith (Harvard).