Category Archives: Legal History
Peter Cane, ‘PS Atiyah: An Academic Autobiography by PS Atiyah (ed James Goudkamp)’
ABSTRACT PS Atiyah: An Academic Autobiography is an unusual book. Autobiographical writing by academics is rare, if only because academic lives are seldom of interest to anyone except, perhaps, the author’s family and other scholars. It appears that Atiyah wrote his autobiography soon after he retired in 1988. Its story ends in 1991. He offered […]
William Moon, ‘The Laws of Corporations’
ABSTRACT This Review Essay engages Matteo Gatti’s Corporate Power and the Politics of Change, which documents the growing role of corporations in performing functions traditionally associated with government. After situating Gatti’s book within the burgeoning literature on corporate political governance, it argues that corporations increasingly create and administer bodies of rules that structure important aspects […]
Florian Stautemas Baele, ‘A Breath of Determinism: Free Will and Tort Law in Fin de Siècle Legal Scholarship’
ABSTRACT This article situates Franco-Belgian tort law scholarship at the fin de siècle within the broader debate on free will, moral responsibility, and determinism. While positivism’s impact on penal law is well-documented, its influence on private law has been notably overlooked. It is argued that the emergence of risk theory was not merely a pragmatic […]
Katy Barnett, ‘An Excellent Genealogy of the Core Concepts of Indian Contract Law: A Review of Dr Shivprasad Swaminathan’s A Historical Introduction to Indian Contract Law (Routledge 2025)’
ABSTRACT This review discusses Dr Shivprasad Swaminathan’s new book, A Historical Introduction to Indian Contract Law, including his discussion of the history of Indian contract law, formation of contracts, contractual consideration, privity, contractual vitiating factors, frustration, damages and stipulated sums, and unjustified enrichment. As noted in the last chapter of Dr Swaminathan’s book, the discussion […]
Muhammad Saad Aman, ‘The Evolution of Misrepresentation: A Comparative Analysis of the Contract Act 1872 and English Contract Law’
ABSTRACT This paper comparatively examines the doctrine of misrepresentation under Pakistan’s Contract Act 1872 and English contract law. Although the doctrine of misrepresentation in both jurisdictions has common historical roots, the doctrine has developed differently in each jurisdiction. In contrast to the English law, which particularly after the enactment of the Misrepresentation Act 1872 distinguishes […]
‘When Marriage goes Wrong: Breach of Promise in Fifteenth-Century England’
Historians of marriage have done much to redeem the ‘institution’ for medieval England in the past thirty years. Where once it was assumed that all marriages were loveless business arrangements, dominated by financial considerations, and imposed on daughters against their will, now, especially thanks to historians like Shannon McSheffrey, a much more complicated and nuanced […]
Ryan Hanley, ‘Human Flourishing and the Wealth of Nations: Adam Smith on Character Development and Institutional Design’
ABSTRACT Students of Adam Smith’s views on virtue typically look to The Theory of Moral Sentiments. But in fact, the Wealth of Nations contains a strikingly robust theory of the relationship between virtues and institutions, one centered on the question of how the incentive systems created by various institutional structures encourage or impede the moral […]
George Leggatt, ‘Chitty at 200’
It is a pleasure to be asked to introduce this special bi-bicentenary event, marking 200 years since the start of both Chitty on Contracts and UCL. We are here today to talk about contract law. But I should like to say something first about the foundation of UCL and its law school. The great name […]
Mark Skousen, ‘The Genius of Adam Smith’
ABSTRACT Published to mark the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, this IEA Discussion Paper by Mark Skousen argues that Smith’s central insight, that individuals pursuing their own self-interest can be channelled through a ‘system of natural liberty’ to promote the public good, remains one of the most consequential […]
Michael Wolf, ‘Property Law as History’
ABSTRACT Because property law and history are so inextricably intertwined, it has become even more important for law professors to share with students and colleagues the ways in which knowledge of history unlocks difficult concepts, suggests workable solutions to contemporary puzzles, and makes very dry concepts – destructible contingent remainders, running covenants, privity, and the […]