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Private Law and the Role of Primary Liabilities: Guest Lecture by Ben McFarlane

The Structure of Private Law and the Role of Primary Liabilities

Guest Lecture

by Prof Ben McFarlane

Wednesday, 10th February, 5 pm in Ui Chadhain Theatre, Arts Building


Rules of contract, tort, and property are rightly seen as forming the core of private law. Such rules can be seen as recognising the primary duties that we may come under to each other. The function and justification of those rules may however depend on less prominent doctrines, often equitable in origin, that instead impose primary liabilities. The aim of the lecture is to consider the nature and role of such liabilities, by focussing on the place of unjust enrichment and estoppel in the structure of private law.

Ben McFarlane was appointed to a Chair in Law at UCL in July 2012. He was formerly Reader in Property Law & Trusts at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. He is the author of The Law of Proprietary Estoppel (2014) and The Structure of Property Law (2009), is one of the authors of Land Law: Text, Cases and Materials (1st edn 2010; 2nd edn, 2012), and is one of the editors of Snell’s Equity. He is a Visiting Professor at the Université Panthéon-Assas Paris II. He was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2010.

Booking is not required. For further details, please email lawevent@tcd.ie