Events hosted by the Institute of Commercial Law Studies.
All welcome.
Our events are open to anyone interested in commercial law. If you are a student or academic from the University of Sheffield or another institution you are welcome to attend and take part. Also as a modern law school we are committed to the long term training and support of people in practice. We also recognise and value the knowledge and experience that practitioners bring to the latest discussions on commercial law.
If you would like to know more about any of our events contact us
Workshop.
9 July 2013
10:30-12:30, followed by lunch
Room DB13, Bartolomé House, Winter St, Sheffield
This event is free and everyone is welcome to register here
Seminars.
ICLS organises an annual seminar series with presentations from a wide range of speakers, including internationally renowned academics and Sheffield PhD students. Various topics are explored in the series with the purpose being to stimulate debate and explore different approaches to commercial law.
The Many Faces of Good Faith in International Sales
Guest Seminar by Dr Camilla Baasch Anderson and Dr Sean Thomas, University of Leicester
7 November 2012
17:00-18:00
Moot Court, School of Law, Bartolome House
This seminar is free and everyone is welcome to attend.
Abstract
The concept of good faith is a disputed one in various contexts of international trade law. The presentation aims to illustrate the problems by presenting two extreme positions – for and against – and hopefully sparking discussion on the utility of this term in modern commercial transactions.
Taking Seriously the Proprietary Nature of Intellectual Property Rights
Guest seminar by Dr Emily Hudson, University of Oxford
13 February
16:00-17:00
Moot Court, School of Law, Bartolome House
Unframing Legal Reasoning: Intersection of Legal History and Legal Theory
Guest seminar by Dr. Larry A. DiMatteo, Huber Hurst Professor, University of Florida, Warrington College of Business Administration
16 April 2013
12:00-13:00
Moot Court, School of Law, Bartolome House
This seminar is free and everyone is welcome to attend.
Abtsract
This presentation explores how legal history provides insights into the 20th and 21st centuries debates on legal thought and reasoning. It will briefly discuss the two theories of legal development: progressive (Henry Sumner Maine) and cyclical (Nathan Isaacs). I will then assert that different versions of legal reasoning and interpretive methodologies have and will continue to play important roles in how we think as lawyers. The debates of the last century, which continue to replicate themselves--equitable contract (early to mid-19thcentury); formalism (late 19th century to 1920s); realism 1930a to present), neo-formalism (1990s to present) , have been debates over pseudo-dichotomies.
In summation, if law is cyclical then the methods of reasoning are also cyclical in nature. As such, reasoning is best described as existing between a series of poles and that through the different eras of legal thought they simply gravitate towards one of the poles. The differences in English and American common law on issues of contextual interpretation of contracts and the implied duty of good faith are worth exploring in this context.
Key Words: Legal Reasoning, Legal Development; Interpretive Methodologies; Contract Law: Formalism; Realism; Contextualism
Tax, Quacks and Bureaucratic Law Making
Guest seminar by Professor Chantal Stebbings, University of Exeter. This seminar is a joint seminar with the Sheffield Institute of Biotechnology, Law and Ethics
24 April 2013
16:00-17:00
Moot Court, School of Law, Bartolome House
This seminar is free and everyone is welcome to attend.
Abstract
Within the English legal system, the law expressed in Parliament’s statutes has the highest status, the role of the judiciary being merely to interpret it. In practice, however, the interpretation of legislation for use in a practical and day to day context was historically very often in the hands of civil servants, and nowhere more so than in the field of tax law. Statutory interpretation by tax officials involved a dynamic intersection of formal legislation, a framework of bureaucratic application and the demands of the taxpayers’ field of activity. The nature of this process, and the problems of authority which emerged from it, are clearly illustrated by the administration of the medicine stamp duty in nineteenth century England. The tax was introduced in 1783 primarily to raise urgently needed public revenue, but with an ancillary regulatory objective to control an extensive and undesirable trade in quack medicines. It was abolished only in 1941. The medicine stamp duty legislation was financially and legally chaotic. It was entirely controlled in its implementation by the revenue boards and became dominated by their informal practice. It was the Stamp Commissioners, later the Inland Revenue Commissioners, and their officers who decided whether a product was a medicine to be taxed or not. Their decisions were potentially inconsistent, sometimes chemically and medically flawed, and yet endured until overturned by the courts. This paper explores the reasons for, and the process of, statutory interpretation by civil servants in the context of this particular tax. It assesses how far pragmatic imperatives led to a practice of taxation by administrative act that was constitutionally unsound, threatened the integrity of the authority of the law, and which resulted in a body of law directly applicable to chemists and druggists and yet vague and essentially inaccessible to them.