Cambridge Family Law Centre member Brian Sloan hosted a small conference on Landmark Cases in Succession Law at Robinson College on 11 and 12 September 2018.
The conference brought together leading international scholars to analyse 19 fundamental decided cases on Succession Law, dating from 1720 to 2017, from an interdisciplinary perspective. Topics covered included testamentary capacity, claims by family members, solicitors' liability to beneficiaries, funeral directions and Aboriginal Succession Law. While the paper presenters were mainly legal scholars, discussants with backgrounds including history, social anthropology and legal practice discussed the draft papers in considerable depth. The conference was generously supported by the Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme.
The papers presented at the conference will be published as a volume in Hart Publishing’s Landmark Cases series, edited by Dr Sloan. The series seeks to highlight the historical antecedents of what are widely considered to be the leading cases in particular fields. These volumes feature original and possibly archival research by eminent scholars in each field, intending to provide a context, or contexts, in which better to understand how and why certain cases came to be regarded as the 'Landmark' cases in any given field. It is hoped that the Succession Law volume will be a valuable addition to the series.