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This blog post was published under the same name in the latest edition of the Newsletter of the Trinity Law Association. The subject of this post is dealt with in much greater detail in a manuscript on rights and powers in commercial law that I’ve been working on over the past year at Trinity under the supervision … Continue reading Have we forgotten about Hohfeld? “Absolute Contractual Rights” or Non-Discretionary Powers

It looks increasingly like Australia will legislate an antipodean equivalent of the Modern Slavery Act following the tabling, earlier today, of the interim report of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. You can find my previous writing on this topic in the Melbourne Journal of International Lawhere and my submission to the inquiry here. The … Continue reading A Modern Slavery Act for Australia

The Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade of the Australian Parliament recently invited me to make a submission to the Inquiry into establishing a Modern Slavery Act in Australia. So, while sitting the Bar Transfer Test (BTT) to qualify as a barrister in England and Wales, I wrote the following submission principally on … Continue reading Submission to Inquiry into establishing a Modern Slavery Act in Australia

Edit: an extended version of this blog post has been published as ‘Re-writing the laws of company law and equity’ (2017) 38(7) Company Lawyer 219-24. Occasionally, one reads a judgment and is struck by the peculiarity of it. The recent judgment of Judge Purle in Re BW Estates Ltd (No 2) [2016] BCC 814, [2016] EWHC 2156 (Ch) (BW … Continue reading Counting de facto directors for the purpose of quorum? Beneficiaries consenting for the purpose of Re Duomatic? The curious case of BW Estates Ltd (No 2) [2016] BCC 814

On Wednesday evening (2 November), the former Archbishop of Canterbury and now Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, Dr Rowan Williams, lectured on the subject “Can capitalism be ethical?” at Murray Edwards College. I had the benefit of asking Dr Williams a question after his lecture and then continuing the discussion of capitalism over dinner with … Continue reading Ethical consumerism and the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (UK)

I recently made a submission to the corporate governance inquiry being conducted by the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee of the House of Commons. The terms of reference include directors’ duties, executive pay and the composition of boards and my submission addressed the question: “Should Government regulate or rely on guidance and professional bodies to ensure that Directors … Continue reading A Public Enforcement Model for Directors’ Duties – Reforming English Law

It’s an exciting time to be a corporate lawyer; committees of the House of Commons are holding multiple inquiries into business entities and the Prime Minister, Theresa May MP, appears committed to reforming company law, even if only in small ways. The state has many different regulatory tools that it is able to deploy in … Continue reading Extraterritorial company law – asserting jurisdiction over the foreign subsidiaries of an English company

On 26 June 2014, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution to establish a working group to “elaborate an internationally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises” (the ‘Working Group’). The Working Group held its first session on 6-10 July 2015 and … Continue reading A Treaty on Business and Human Rights – Models from investment law