Cambridge Freshfields Annual Law Lecture 2018

to be delivered by Professor Stephen Smith, McGill University

"Rights, Wrongs, and Injustices: Taking Remedies Seriously"

The relationship between remedial and substantive law is poorly understood. The typical starting point is an assumption that remedies somehow confirm or rubber-stamp substantive rights. We then struggle to explain perceived shortcomings in achieving that end. This lecture focuses on the characteristic common law approaches to private law disputes, and suggests that we would understand these approaches better if we discarded completely our misconceived starting assumption and focused on identifying the distinctive general principles that unite the entirety of remedial law (including the rules governing both ‘legal’ and ‘equitable’ remedies).

Stephen Smith is the James McGill Professor, Faculty of Law, McGill University. He teaches and researches common law and civil law obligations and legal theory. A former law clerk to Chief Justice Brian Dickson, Professor Smith is the author of Contract Theory (2004) and Atiyah’s Introduction to the Law of Contract, 6th ed (2005). He is in Cambridge for the Easter Term as a Herbert Smith Freehills Visitor to the Faculty and a British Academy Visiting Fellow.

The Cambridge Private Law Centre warmly invites you to the lecture and the drinks reception which follows it.

Cambridge Freshfields Annual Lecture 2018