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Theorists in Company Law – June 29-30 2023

This workshop has three broad objectives. 

  1. It wants to rediscover forgotten and neglected authors of company law theory, for example Alfred F. Topham, Mary Stokes and John Parkinson
  2. It encourages thinking about the biographical element of an author’s work and the placement of their work in its social, economic and historical context.
  3. It aims to cement an account of the distinctiveness of Company Law in the United Kingdom as opposed to the Anglo-American or European model.

Plenary Speakers:- David Cabrelli, Janette Rutherford, Charlotte Villiers.

We welcome papers that incorporate the voices of, inter alia, lawyers, judges, regulators, investors (individual and corporate), academics, educationalists, politicians, economists, employees and trade unions. We hope that papers will draw on a broad range of sources such as diaries, letters, committee records, relevant quantitative data, academic and scholarly texts including drafts and marginalia. The workshop will be interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary in focus. Work anchored in legal studies or a complimentary arts or social science discipline is welcome.

We envisage papers focused on an individual grouped into the following themed panels:- 

- Panel 1.a: Regulating investors, profits and dividends
- Panel 1.b: Texts, guides and reports: writers and their impact
- Panel 2.a: Multinational expansion and decolonialism
- Panel 2.b: Shareholders, stakeholders and the community
- Panel 3.a: The birth and death of a company
- Panel 3.b: Regulating directors: their role and purpose
- Panel 4.a: Business ethics, cultural values and society’s aims 
- Panel 4.b: The role of law and the community in dispute resolution
- Panel 5.a: State-run enterprises, nationalisation and privatisation
- Panel 5.b: Conceptualising the firm and corporation

We intend to divide the papers for publishing between an edited collection entitled ‘Scholars in Company Law’ for which we are in negotiations with a leading publisher and special issues of relevant journals. 

Abstracts of 300 words to seminar.corporatelaw@anu.edu.au by February 14th 2023.

Registration details will follow in due course. We anticipate being able to fund travel and accommodation for a number of Phd and Post Doctoral Researchers. 

In addition, we hope to provide accommodation where required by presenters.

Workshop Organisers:-

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

(please submit any inquiries to seminar.corporatelaw@anu.edu.au)