Latest news from Faculty of Law

CIPIL's Spring Conference 2024 on Data Protection Reform As with many a number of other Research Centres in Cambridge’s Faculty of Law, the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) is well known for the individual scholarship of its academics , their and its support of excellent research students and...

Oxford University Press has published the fourth edition of The Principles of the Law of Restitution by Graham Virgo . The fourth edition of The Principles of the Law of Restitution brings this widely cited and influential volume fully up to date. Substantially rewritten to reflect significant changes in the law of restitution and the expansion in the theoretical and critical commentary on the subject, this book is grounded in its clarity of exposition and analysis. The new edition significantly expands existing chapters on the treatment of the history of unjust enrichment, enrichment, the treatment of legally effective bases for receipt, and compulsion. It further expands existing parts on restitution for wrongs and proprietary restitutionary claims as well as offering completely new chapters dealing with 'at the claimant's expense', 'absence of intent', and the defence of illegality. Focusing primarily on English law, the volume also engages with the law in other common law jurisdictions, notably Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Singapore. It provides a clear exposition of complex areas of law as well as critical analysis of that law. For more information about this book, please refer to the OUP website . For information about other publications by Professor Virgo, please refer to his Faculty profile .

On 9th April 2024 the European Court of Human Rights delivered Grand Chamber rulings in three cases relating to climate change: Carême v France Duarte Agostinho and Others v Portugal and 32 Others Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v Switzerland In this video, Dr Stefan Theil discusses the extent to which the ECHR is prepared to dictate how countries might implement their own climate change policies. Stefan Theil is Assistant Professor in Public Law and a Fellow and Director of Studies at Sidney Sussex College. In Stefan's recent book Towards the Environmental Minimum (Cambridge University Press, 2021) he argues for the recognition of a comprehensive framework that addresses the relationship between human rights and environmental harm. Law in Focus is a series of short videos featuring academics from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty. Law in Focus is available on YouTube , or to subscribe to in iTunes or other podcast platforms.

Bristol University Press has published Low-Paid EU Migrant Workers: The House, The Street, The Town by Catherine Barnard , Fiona Costello and Sarah Fraser Butlin . This book offers an in-depth exploration of the lives of EU migrant workers in the UK following Brexit and COVID-19. Drawing on a longitudinal study, the book...

The Faculty has distributed Volume 15 Number 4 of the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series on SSRN . This issue includes the following articles: Bobby V. Reddy: Getting in a Bind - Comparing Executive Compensation Regulations in the US and the UK ( 5/2024 ) Andreas Samartzis: State Authority and True Political Community: Exploring the Basis of Political Equality ( 6/2024 ) Philip Murray: On the Doctrinal Foundations of Administrative Law ( 7/2024 ) David Erdos: Palestine and the Modern Commonwealth: Past Engagements and Future Membership? ( 8/2024 ) Ahmed Izzidien, Holli Sargeant & Felix Steffek: LLM vs. Lawyers: Identifying a Subset of Summary Judgments in a Large UK Case Law Dataset ( 10/2024 ) Interested readers can browse the Working Paper Series at SSRN , or sign up to subscribe to distributions of the the e-journal.

Hart Publishing, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, has published Law at the Cutting Edge: Essays in Honour of Sarah Worthington edited by Dr Sinéad Agnew and Sir Marcus Smith (Justice of the High Court and President of the Competition Appeals Tribunal). This collection celebrates the immense contribution of Sarah...

The Faculty has learned with sadness of the death of Professor Malcolm A Clarke (Emeritus Fellow, St John's College) last week. Malcolm was Professor Emeritus of Commercial Contract Law. He began his academic career in Cambridge as a Research Fellow at Fitzwilliam College 1966-68, and then took up his university post in...

The Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies (CYELS) was founded by Alan Dashwood and Angela Ward to provide a space for reflection and conversation about the challenges facing Europe and the diverse legal contexts in which those challenges are addressed. To mark this milestone and demonstrate the continuing commitment...

Cambridge University Press has published the second edition of Corporate Tax Law: Structure, Policy and Practice by Professor Peter Harris . This new edition takes account of the substantial developments of the last decade. It considers the Trump US tax reforms of late 2017 and then the Biden reforms of 2022. It recognises the economic rise of China by incorporating its corporate tax system for comparison. This creates increased balance, introducing a second civil law jurisdiction.This edition also incorporates many changes resulting from international tax developments including the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting reports and the current Two Pillar approach. The edition documents how corporate and international tax systems are increasingly integrated. This is particularly the case with minimum taxes, hybrid financial instruments and excessive debt financing. The interface between corporate tax base and financial accounts is another area of particular interest. Countries continue to tinker with the use of corporate losses, corporate tax rates and dividend relief. Other areas of development include corporate tax subjects, buy backs and dividend stripping. Cambridge University users have access to this book via the Cambridge Core subscription . For information about other publications by Professor Harris, please refer to his Faculty profile .

Congratulations to the Cambridge team: Wanting Guo (Queens’), Zofia Halbersztat (Trinity), Zheng Yu Chow (Emmanuel), Ben Mays (Trinity), Julian Poon (Wolfson), Sarah Hair (Christ's), Sam Pearce (Churchill), Jonathan Saunders (Selwyn) for their achievements in the Vis Moot International Commercial Arbitration Competition , one of the most prestigious international commercial law competitions. In the first of the season of pre-moots leading up to the final rounds of the Vis Moot in Vienna, the Cambridge Team (Sam Pearce, Julian Poon and Jonathan Saunders won the DLA Piper Vis Pre-moot in Stockholm. The team came second to Gray’s Inn in the White & Case Pre-Moot, with Sam Pearce awarded runner-up as best speaker. Cambridge were then Semi-Finalists in the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators Pre-Moot, coming second in the marked rankings after the first round. Cambridge were then Quarter Finalists in the ICC Pre-Moot in Paris (ending the competition 5th from 44 teams). In the Final Rounds in Vienna, the Cambridge team comfortably reached the final 64 (out of 373 university teams from around the world). (Cambridge and LSE were the only English teams to reach the Round of 64). The team also received Honourable Mention for Best Team Orals (Eric Bergsten Award). In other competitions happening concurrently, Sam Pearce won the BPP Advocate of the Year Competition and team member Zheng Yu Chow won the Landmark Chambers Property Law Moot Competition.

Dr Mohamed Moussa , Lecturer in Law at Murray Edwards College Cambridge, has been selected for the CRASSH Early Career Fellowship Lent 2025. During the fellowship, Dr Moussa will finalise a monograph investigating the distribution of powers within federal and supranational constitutional systems. In particular, he will...

Oxford University Press has published More Equal Than Others: Humans and the Rights of Other Animals by Raffael Fasel . Unprecedented demands have recently arrived at the doorstep of courts and parliaments the world over: nonhuman animals should receive some of the rights that have so far been reserved to human beings. This development has raised fundamental questions about the nature of legal rights, and who should have them. More Equal Than Others: Humans and the Rights of Other Animals provides a sustained analysis of the fundamental rights of human and nonhuman animals to explore the issue of whether conferring fundamental legal rights to animals would undermine the equal status and rights of humans. For more information about this book, please refer to the OUP website . For information about other publications by Dr Fasel, please refer to his Faculty profile .

Image: Eugene Shevchuk Last week, the Programme in European Private Law for Postgraduates (PEPP) visited the Faculty of Law. Twenty-three PhD students came to Cambridge from our partner universities in Genoa, Hamburg, Katowice, Leuven, Maribor, Münster, Valencia and Zagreb to discuss their research, attend lectures and...

The Faculty has distributed Volume 15 Number 3 of the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series on SSRN . This issue includes the following articles: Eyal Benvenisti: When Solange I Met Neubauer: National Courts Protecting Global Interests When Reviewing Decisions of International Organizations ( 31/2023 ) Fiona Costello & Catherine Barnard: The Darker Side of the Internal Market Ideal: EU Migrant Workers Living in a Coastal Town ( 32/2023 ) Bobby V. Reddy: Going Dutch? Comparing Regulatory and Contracting Policy Paradigms Via Amsterdam and London SPAC Experiences ( 1/2024 ) Matthew H. Kramer: There is no such thing as the separability thesis ( 2/2024 ) Surabhi Ranganathan: The Seabed and the South: From Stock Stories to New Histories of International Lawmaking ( 4/2024 ) Interested readers can browse the Working Paper Series at SSRN , or sign up to subscribe to distributions of the the e-journal.

The Lauterpacht Centre for International Law is pleased to invite applications for the Brandon Research Fellowship 2024-2025, funded by generous gifts by Mr Michael Brandon MA, LLB, LLM (Cantab), MA (Yale) (1923–2012) and by Mr Christopher Brandon. The Lauterpacht Centre provides a base for research in Cambridge for legal...

The Faculty has distributed Volume 15 Number 2 of the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series on SSRN . This issue includes the following articles: Sarah Nouwen: Peacemaking ( 23/2023 ) Jane Stapleton: Unnecessary and Insufficient Factual Causes ( 24/2023 ) Rumiana Yotova: Anticipatory Duties under the Human Right to Science and International Biomedical Law ( 28/2023 ) Narine Lalafaryan: Private Credit: The Evolution of Corporate Finance and The Firm ( 25/2023 ) Eyal Benvenisti: Power and Passion in International Organizations: A Call to Rethink the Law ( 30/2023 ) Interested readers can browse the Working Paper Series at SSRN , or sign up to subscribe to distributions of the the e-journal.

The Faculty is delighted that Dr Andrew Sanger has been awarded a University of Cambridge Pilkington Prize for Excellence in Teaching . Dr Sanger is Associate Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law where he teaches and supervises international law and global governance, including human rights, political economy, technology and the law, and corporate responsibility. He also served as Academic Secretary to the Faculty for 2020-2022. Dr Sanger’s contribution was recognised in the Cambridge Students Union Student-Led Teaching Awards in 2022, where he was the winner of the 'Small-Group Teaching (Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences)' award. He was a finalist for the Oxford University Press Law Teacher of the Year Award in 2023. Dr Sanger’s citation for the Pilkington Prize captures the range and quality of his contributions to education in the Faculty of Law: "This nomination focuses on three aspects of his approach that underpin his position as a truly outstanding teacher: (i) the way in which he combines world-class, research-led teaching with a remarkable level of care for his students and attentiveness to their individual needs and circumstances; (ii) his exceptional contributions to inclusivity and curriculum diversification; and (iii) the exemplary level and quality of his institutional engagements, which have contributed invaluably to the quality of teaching in the Faculty of Law and to an inclusive College environment that is supportive of Law students." Responding to his award, Andrew said: "I am delighted and enormously grateful, not least because I know that there are so many brilliant colleagues who are more deserving of recognition. Teaching is a great pleasure and privilege, and I am so very fortunate to work with such incredibly kind, talented, and committed students and colleagues. Thank you so very much to everyone."

The Council of Europe’s Steering Committee for Human Rights in the fields of Biomedicine and Health (CDBIO) issued a report on Human Rights Based Approaches in Healthcare, prepared by Dr Rumiana Yotova , Assistant Professor in International Law and Fellow in Law at Gonville & Caius College. The report provides an overview of the international human rights standards applicable to health care. The focus of this report is on the relevance of human rights for health care and on how international human rights standards can inform domestic patients’ rights. The report was prepared on the basis of the replies to the questionnaire on patients’ rights legislation .

The Faculty has distributed Volume 15 Number 1 of the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series on SSRN . This issue includes the following articles: Mark Elliott & Nicholas Kilford: Nothing To See Here? Allister in the Supreme Court ( 20/2023 ) Ahmed Izzidien: Using the Interest Theory of Rights and Hohfeldian Taxonomy to Address a Gap in Machine Learning Methods for Legal Document Analysis ( 21/2023 ) Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan: Does IP improve the world? Technology and its impact on our planet ( 22/2023 ) Rumiana Yotova: Article 27 of the VCLT: Internal law and observance of treaties ( 27/2023 ) Eyal Benvenisti: How the Power of the Idea Disempowered the Law: Understanding the Resilience of the Law of International Organisations ( 29/2023 ) David Erdos: Data Protection Reform via the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Repeal) Act and the Data Protection (Fundamental Rights and Freedoms) (Amendment) Regulations 2023/1417: Arguably Partially Unlawful and Liable to Undercut the UK’s Council of Europe Commitments ( 3/2024 ) Interested readers can browse the Working Paper Series at SSRN , or sign up to subscribe to distributions of the the e-journal.

On 23 February Professor Lusina Ho (University of Hong Kong) delivered the 2024 Cambridge Freshfields Lecture entitled 'Re-imagining the Express Trust'. In recent years, there has been growing concern about the use of express trusts to perpetuate wealth inequality and the need to transform trust law to accommodate ESG. To address these challenges, this lecture presents a theory of express trusts that articulates their distinct ability to protect the stewardship of assets for long-term goals while shielding those goals from erosion by settlors, managers, and beneficiaries. In particular, the lecture challenges the notion that only beneficiaries with the right to hold trustees accountable for benefits due to them can enforce the trust. This theory can help to define the legitimate limits of express trusts, including ‘massively discretionary trusts’, and to devise innovative trust structures that surpass the corporate form in organising businesses for impact investing. Lusina Ho is Harold Hsiao-Wo Lee Professor in Trust and Equity at the Faculty of Law, the University of Hong Kong. While pursuing her teaching and research in Trust, Restitution, and Comparative Trust Law (in particular Chinese Trust Law), she has been consulted by the Government of the People’s Republic of China on the enactment of the Chinese Trust Law and the Government of the Hong Kong SAR on the reform of the Trustee Ordinance. In 2019, she has successfully convinced the Hong Kong SAR Government to launch a trust service for special needs individuals in the territory. The Cambridge Freshfields Lecture is an annual address delivered by a guest of the Cambridge Private Law Centre , and the event is sponsored by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer . More information about this lecture, including other recorded formats, the slides, and photographs from the event, is available from the Private Law Centre website .