A public seminar to mark the publication of Standing in Private Law (OUP 2023) by Timothy Liau

Timothy Liau is an Assistant Professor of Law at LSE.  He is a private lawyer who is particularly interested in remedies, restitution, and contracts. His research cuts across the laws of obligations and property. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS), and Stipendiary Lecturer in Law at Merton College, Oxford.  Timothy holds an LLB from NUS where he was Lee Kuan Yew Gold Medallist. He also holds a BCL, MPhil, and DPhil from the University of Oxford where he was a Clarendon Scholar and Graduate Prize Scholar at Merton College.

Assistant Professor, Dr Timothy Liau, Standing in Private Law (OUP 2023)

Standing in Private Law: Powers of Enforcement in the Law of Obligations and Trusts develops the idea that we should attend more to ‘standing’, conceived as a power to hold another accountable before a court as a distinct private law concept. Prominent lawyers have claimed that private law does not have or need standing rules, yet this seems implausible. If private law is obligation-imposing, we need rules about who can sue on these obligations to hold their bearers accountable. This book argues that a reason why standing has been relatively overlooked and under-conceptualized, receiving meagre attention from private lawyers, is because it has been obscured from plain sight: it has been swallowed up by the more dominant and capacious concept of a ‘right’. However, standing is a distinct and separable private law concept that can and should be distinguished more clearly from ‘right’. Doing so is necessary for the continued rational development of private law doctrine. It is also necessary for a deeper theoretical understanding of standing’s significance, and its place within the remedial apparatus of private law. This book argues that an implicit standing rule exists across the law of obligations. It examines its justifiability, and the justifiability of exceptions to the rule. It also shows how and why recognising standing’s distinctiveness can help us to interpret, develop, and resolve debates within different areas of private law, including the laws of contract, torts, unjust enrichments, and relatedly, the law of trusts.

Published: 21 July 2023  368 Pages  ISBN: 9780192869661

Speakers: 

• Professor Dame Sarah Worthington FBA, KC (Hon) (LSE), Emeritus Downing Professor of the Laws of England, Trinity College, University of Cambridge.
• Associate Professor, Dr Nick Sage (LSE)
• Professor Lionel Smith, LLD, DCL (University of Cambridge) Downing Professor of the Laws of England and a fellow of Gonville and Caius College and Director of the Cambridge Private Law Centre.

Chair: Lord Leggatt, Justice of the Supreme Court

This Event will be on a first-come, first-serve basis.

This event will be followed by a drinks reception.