INTRODUCTION
The quotation attributed to Socrates that ‘I cannot teach anybody anything; I can only make them think’ comes readily to mind when one turns the pages of Denis Ong’s trusts textbook, Trusts Law in Australia. Denis held strong views on the contentious questions of trusts law, often at variance with received professional and academic opinion. But his primary aim in presenting occasionally iconoclastic analyses of classic trusts law authorities was to encourage students to read (and reread) the cases and statutes carefully for themselves, and then to work out their own answers to the hard questions. To this end, the student was supplied with liberal extracts from judgments and statutory provisions were set out in full. References to secondary literature were scarce. Academic theorising, for example unjust enrichment analyses of equitable doctrine, or contemporary Hohfeld-derived ‘rights’ approaches, was wholly absent. Ironically perhaps, in view of his disdain for secondary sources of law, Denis became in his later years a significant secondary authority, being respected by the judiciary for his lucid and accurate exposition of complex doctrine. Denis Ong was an opinionated scholar, in the best sense of that word …
Michael Bryan, The Role of True and Counterfeit Intentions in Creating Trusts, 34 Bond Law Review 93 (2022), published online 14 November 2022.
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