Speaker: Professor Eva Micheler (LSE)

Abstract: Reliance on agency-theoretic reasoning has led to substantial theoretical and empirical advances in company law scholarship, but the narrow focus on board-level actors and phenomena has disconnected the analysis of the company from the reality of the economic organisation it is meant to enable and support. We follow Oliver Williamson’s call for a ‘law, economics, and organization’ approach, and build on Elinor Ostrom’s ‘institutional analysis and development’ framework to propose a narrative model of the company in terms of nested levels of governance. We argue that our model works as a positive description of the law as it is, and puts us in a stronger position to evaluate the likely consequences of certain normative interventions, which we illustrate with some observations about ongoing debates in corporate governance.

The paper is jointly written by David Gindis and Eva Micheler and can be found at Taylor and Francis Online.

Eva Micheler studied law at the University of Vienna and at the University of Oxford before joining LSE Law School in 2001. She is a Professor of Law at the London School of Economics. Professor Micheler is also on the management committee of the Systemic Risk Centre at LSE. She was a TMR fellow at the Faculty of Law of the University of Oxford and teaches regularly at the University of Vienna and the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg.

3CL runs the 3CL Travers Smith Lunchtime Seminar Series, featuring leading academics from the Faculty, and high-profile practitioners.

For more information see the Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law website:

http://www.3cl.law.cam.ac.uk/

Speaker: Gregory Fox, Wayne State University

Date: Friday Lunchtime Lecture - Friday 24 January 2025

Summary: Does international law place any constraints on a possible Ukraine-Russia peace agreement? While we can only speculate about its contents, two aspects appear certain: Ukraine will be asked to relinquish (at a minimum) territory now occupied by Russia, and it will only contemplate entering into an agreement because Russia invaded its territory. Professor Fox will examine the implications of these and other factors for the validity of an agreement.

Gregory H. Fox is a Professor of Law at Wayne State University School of Law, where he is the Director of the Program for International Legal Studies. Professor Fox is an elected member of the American Law Institute. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan Law School and the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, a Visiting Fellow at the Lauterpacht Research Centre for International Law at Cambridge University, a Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Public International Law and Comparative Public Law in Heidelberg, Germany, and a Fellow at the Schell Center for Human Rights at Yale Law School, among other institutions.

Professor Fox has written widely on a variety of international law topics, including civil war peace agreements, the powers of the UN Security Council, international occupation law, international control of territory, and international efforts to promote democratic governance. His most recent article, Of Looting, Land and Loss: The New International Law of Takings, was published in Volume 65 of the Harvard International Law Journal.

Professor Fox was co-counsel to the State of Eritrea in the Zukar-Hanish arbitration with the Republic of Yemen concerning the status of a group of islands in the southern Red Sea. He has also served as counsel in several human rights cases in US courts.

Professor Fox was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation/Social Science Research Council Fellowship in International Peace and Security. He began his career in the Litigation Department of the firm Hale & Dorr, now WilmerHale. He is a graduate of Bates College and New York University Law School.

Lecture summary: Many political economists, economic historians, and historical sociologists understand the transition from the 1970s to the 1980s as involving a shift from debates about inflation, oil shocks, floating currencies, and the New International Economic Order to neoliberalism's political and ideological breakthrough, first in the industrialized states of the North Atlantic and shortly thereafter in much of the global South. By contrast, among most scholars of international law, the 1980s are remembered chiefly for signalling the effective close of the decolonization era, and with it the struggle to transform and reconstruct international law to meet the demands of 'economic' in addition to 'political' sovereignty. This talk puts these two perspectives into conversation. Drawing mainly from the work of Simon Clarke and Nicos Poulantzas, core figures in the Marxist state-theoretical debates of the 1970s and 1980s, the talk examines changes to prevailing conceptions of economic development and international human rights at the end of the decolonization era in light of broader structural changes in the juridicopolitical architecture of capitalist states.

Umut Özsu is Professor of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University. His research interests lie mainly in public international law, the history and theory of international law, and Marxist critiques of law, rights, and the state. He is the author of Formalizing Displacement: International Law and Population Transfers (OUP, 2015) and Completing Humanity: The International Law of Decolonization, 1960–82 (CUP, 2023). He is also co-editor of the Research Handbook on Law and Marxism (Elgar, 2021) and The Extraterritoriality of Law: History, Theory, Politics (Routledge, 2019), as well as several journal symposia.

On 26 November 2024 Professor Paul Mitchell (University College London) delivered the CELH annual lecture on the topic 'Legal History and Literature: Towards Creative Reciprocity'.

The Centre for English Legal History (CELH) was formally established in 2016 to provide a hub for researchers working in legal history across the University of Cambridge. The Centre holds regular seminars during academic terms, and an annual centrepiece lecture.

To find out more, and download the accompanying presentation, please refer to:

http://www.celh.law.cam.ac.uk/lectures

Speakers: Professors Daniel Monk (Birkbeck University of London) & Rebecca Probert (University of Exeter)

The enactment of the Divorce Reform Act 1969 was a landmark moment in family law. Coming into force in 1971, it had a significant impact on legal practice and was followed by a dramatic increase in divorce rates, reflecting changes in social attitudes.

Fifty Year of the Divorce Reform Act 1969 brought together scholars from law, sociology, history, demography, and film and literature, to reflect on the changes to divorce law and practice over the past 50 years, and the changing impact of divorce on different people in society, particularly women. As such, it presents a 'biography' of this important piece of legislation, moving from its conception and birth, through its reception and development, to its imminent demise. Looking to the future, and to the new law introduced by the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020. It hopes to suggest ways for evaluating what makes a 'good' divorce law.

Rebecca Probert’s research focuses on the law and history of marriage, bigamy, divorce and cohabitation. She is currently working on a history of bigamy from 1604 to the present day. Daniel Monk’s research has research has explored a wide range of issues relating to families, children, education and sexuality. His current research is about law and friendship and how to make family law visual.

Daniel Monk’s research has research has explored a wide range of issues relating to families, children, education and sexuality. His current research is about law and friendship and how to make family law visual.

This seminar was co-hosted by the Cambridge Socio-Legal Group, an interdisciplinary discussion forum promoting debate on topical socio-legal issues and empirical research methodology, and the Cambridge Family Law Centre.

The CSLG organises and supports events and publications relating to socio-legal research, drawing participants from within the University of Cambridge and around the world. A donation would be instrumental in allowing the Cambridge Socio-Legal Group to continue its cross-disciplinary work:

https://www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-cambridge/the-cambridge-socio-legal-group

Speaker: Dr Andriani Kalintiri, King’s College London

Abstract: Is EU antitrust law resilient in the face of change? This question has acquired prominence amidst the many crises and disruptions of recent times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and digitalisation. Attempts to answer it though have been rather narrow in scope and tend to employ the language of resilience casually. This article contributes to knowledge (a) by developing a conceptual framework for understanding and assessing legal resilience in administrative enforcement systems and (b) by applying it to Articles 101 and 102 TFEU with a view to investigating its ability to respond to change in a systematic manner. The analysis reveals that the current regime exhibits several design features that enable decisionmakers to make resilience choices as needed, and the resilience choices that have been made on various occasions are prima facie justifiable given the nature of the problem the European Commission and/or the EU Courts were faced with. However, certain aspects of the existing legal framework may weaken or limit EU antitrust law’s ability to deal with certain problems, in particular (very) complex ones, whereas some of the resilience choices that have been made have had implications for legal certainty, coherence and legitimacy that may not have been sufficiently appreciated so far. The article highlights the added value of a legal resilience perspective for effectively using EU antitrust law as a tool for tackling problems in an ever-changing world and demonstrates that, albeit not a panacea, such a perspective may reinforce the quality of enforcement and public’s trust in it.

3CL runs the 3CL Travers Smith Lunchtime Seminar Series, featuring leading academics from the Faculty, and high-profile practitioners: https://www.3cl.law.cam.ac.uk/centre-activities

For more information about CELS see: https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/weekly-seminar-series

Lecture summary: In this talk Sharifah Sekalala examines this critical moment in the making of Global Health Law, with two treaty making processes: the newly finalised revisions of the International Health Regulations and ongoing negotiations by the Intergovernmental Negotiation Body for a possible pandemic Accord or Instrument, as we well as soft-law proposals for the World Health Organization proposal for a medical countermeasures platform.

The lecture will illustrate that despite the laudable objectives of creating a new system of international law that attempts to redress previous inequalities in accessing vaccines and countermeasures, they are unlikely to meet these broader objectives. The lecture will argue that this is because, despite being a public good, Global Health Law has always been underpinned by capitalist and post-colonial rationales which privilege trade. In order to make lasting changes, the current system of Global Health Law must focus on broader questions of ‘reparations’ that will achieve greater equity.

Sharifah is a Professor of Global Health Law at the University of Warwick and the Director of the Warwick Global Health Centre. She is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work is at the intersection of international law, public policy and global health. Professor Sekalala is particularly focused on the role of human rights frameworks in addressing global health inequalities. Her research has focused on health crises in Sub-Saharan Africa, international financing institutions and the rise of non-communicable diseases and she has published in leading legal, international relations and public health journals.

Prof Sekalala is currently the PI on a Wellcome-Trust-funded project on digital health apps in Sub-Saharan Africa. Professor Sekalala is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FaSS) and she has consulted on human rights and health in many developing countries and worked for international organisations such as UNAIDS, the WHO and the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Her research has also been funded by the Wellcome Trust, GCRF, ESRC, Open Society Foundation and international organisations including the International Labour Organisation and the WHO. Sharifah also sits on the Strategic Advisory Network of the ESRC.

Sharifah holds a PhD in Law (Warwick, 2012), an LLM in Public International Law (Distinction in research, Nottingham, 2006) and an LLB Honours (Makerere University, Uganda 2004). She was called to the Ugandan Bar in 2005.

Speaker: Professor Christopher Nicholls (University of Western Ontario)

In 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, the Yale Law School and Harvard Business School launched an innovative joint program: the “Law-Business Course”. The program’s principal architect was Yale law professor William O. Douglas, best remembered today as the longest serving member of the US Supreme Court and one of the most provocative. For a short time, this remarkable academic initiative brought together professional schools at America’s two foremost universities, foreshadowing the interdisciplinary approach to law and business education that animate modern JD/MBA programs. The creation and short life of this unique academic collaboration provide a fascinating glimpse into the intellectual dynamism of early twentieth century business law education and the politics and practical exigencies facing academic pioneers of that important era. The story of this forward-thinking interdisciplinary perspective also offers important insights into current approaches to business law and, in particular, the pivotal role of modern finance theory in the development of the study, practice, and theory of corporate law today.

3CL runs the 3CL Travers Smith Lunchtime Seminar Series, featuring leading academics from the Faculty, and high-profile practitioners.

For more information see the Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law website:

http://www.3cl.law.cam.ac.uk/