CPL Seminar: 'Promissory estoppel in public law'

Speaker: Jonathan Morgan, University of Cambridge
Location: Moot Court Room

Lord Hoffmann declared in the Reprotech case (2002) that ‘public law has already absorbed whatever is useful from the moral values which underlie the private law concept of estoppel and the time has come for it to stand upon its own two feet’. Since then the doctrine of (‘substantive’) legitimate expectations—the public law equivalent—has flourished. This paper seeks to question the Reprotech orthodoxy on two grounds. First using fundamental principle: why should a public authority defendant always be immune (as a matter of law) from an estoppel claim which would succeed on the same facts against a private body or individual? Secondly, we suggest that an estoppel claim might have practical advantages over one for disappointment of legitimate expectations—not least over the question of remedies.

Faculty Members and Visitors, PhD students and LLM Public Law students are welcome.

For more information contact Mark Elliott (mce1000@cam.ac.uk)