New Publication: "Scholars of Contract Law"
Professor of the Law of Obligations, James Goudkamp, and Professor of Private Law, Donal Nolan, have released the edited collection, Scholars of Contract Law.
Scholars of Contract Law (Hart Publishing 2022) provides a counter-balance to the traditional focus on judicial decisions by exploring the contribution of legal scholars to the development of private law. In the book the work of a selection of leading scholars of contract law from across the common law world, ranging from Sir Jeffrey Gilbert (1674–1726) to Professor Brian Coote (1929–2019), is addressed by legal historians and current scholars in the field. The focus is on the nature of the work produced by the scholars in question, important influences on their work, and the impact which that work in turn had on thinking about contract law. The book also includes an introductory chapter and an afterword by Professor William Twining that explore connections between the scholars and recurrent themes. The process of subjecting contract law scholarship to sustained analysis provides new insights into the intellectual development of contract law and reveals the central role played by scholars in that process. And by focusing attention on the work of influential contract scholars, the book serves to emphasise the importance of legal scholarship to the development of the common law more generally.
The contributors and their essays are as follows:
1. Scholars of Contract Law: Individuals and Themes by James Goudkamp and Donal Nolan
2. Sir Jeffrey Gilbert (1674–1726) by Michael Lobban
3. Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1765–1837) by Joanna McCunn
4. Stephen Martin Leake (1826–1893) by Catharine MacMillan
5. Professor Sir William Anson (1843–1914) by Robert Stevens
6. Professor Sir Frederick Pollock (1845–1937) by James Gordley
7. Professor Samuel Williston (1861–1963) by Todd D Rakoff
8. Professor Arthur Linton Corbin (1874–1967) by Gregory Klass
9. Professor Geoffrey Cheshire (1886–1978) and Cecil Fifoot (1899–1975) by Warren Swain
10. Professor Friedrich Kessler (1901–1998) by Hugh Collins
11. Professor Sir Guenter Treitel (1928–2019) by Andrew Burrows
12. Professor Ian Roderick Macneil (1929–2010) by Jonathan Morgan
13. Brian Coote (1929–2019) by Stephen Waddams
14. Professor Patrick Atiyah (1931–2018) by James Goudkamp
15. Afterword: Understanding Contracts – A Realist Perspective by William Twining