Sandy Steel receives a Leverhulme Major Award

Sandy Steel, Professor of Law and Philosophy of Law, has recently been awarded a Leverhulme Major Award. This will help to provide funding that will enable him to work for the next three years on his project – A Theory of State Liability.  

In describing the questions he wants to answer in his research he says “What principles should determine the existence and scope of state liability to compensate, make restitution, be subject to punitive money awards and injunctive relief, at the suit of private individuals? Much ink has already been spilled on this subject, but my aim is to examine the issues from a more philosophical and theoretical perspective.”

Throughout the project Sandy will examine a series of issues. He will analyse to what extent ordinary principles of private law apply without modification to public authorities? He will explore whether is there is a non-instrumentalist basis for any immunities from liability of public authorities and, the basis is instrumentalist, what is the appropriate normative resolution of empirical uncertainty about the basis of such immunities? He will also discuss the extent to which public officials should be personally liable for wrongs and the extent to which the state should be liable for non-wrongs and should itself should be able bring private law claims.

The Leverhulme Award will enable Sandy to give time to research these questions systematically to provide a general normative, philosophically grounded, theory of state liability in respect of official action.