W.G. Hart Workshop 2023: Theorists in Company Law

This workshop explores the development of company regulation by examining the role that theorists played in it. In doing so, it adds to the burgeoning research on the lives and impact of theorists, scholars, academics and litigants. There is a general tendency to overlook this group, certainly in legal scholarship. This is owing to the primacy of legal sources and the emphasis placed upon using good legal authorities, such as legislation and case law. Judges, as the authors of leading judgments, therefore, naturally take centre stage in this body of research. Even within this idea of judicial primacy what matters, particularly in the UK context, is the dicta from individual judgments. The idea that a judicial figure can through a series of judgments and extra-judicial comments craft and shape a branch of law has been largely missing from twentieth and twenty-first century jurisprudence.

The aim of this workshop is threefold. It enables us first to rediscover forgotten and neglected authors. Second, it encourages us to think about the biographical element of an author’s work and to put theoretical work in its social, economic and historical context.Finally, a discussion of the theorists in company law allows further insight into the distinctiveness of Company Law in the United Kingdom as opposed to the Anglo-American or European model. With the growth of the Law and Economics movement in the United States, the right of centre shift in American political thought has also been dominant in several theoretical discourses. There are – and were – other ways of viewing company law.

Draft Programme (pdf)

Workshop Organisers:

Victoria Barnes – Brunel Law School.
Marc Moore – Faculty of Laws, UCL.
Sally Wheeler – Law School, The Australian National University.

Image: The Weaving Shed, Quarry Bank Mill, Photo credit to David Dixon