Professor Helen Scott

Email

hs835@cam.ac.uk

Regius Professor of Civil Law

BA (Hon) LLB (Cape Town); BCL, MPhil, DPhil (Oxford)

Interests

At the moment I am particularly interested in the theft of money out of bank accounts: in the way in which it is handled across a range of jurisdictions; in the theoretical/normative justification for the law's response; and in the mechanisms which the South African common law in particular has developed in order to the protect the victims of such theft. 'Property | Unjust Enrichment' (October 2024 - details below) deals with the problem in comparative perspective, seeking a doctrinal explanation for Lipkin Gorman v Karpnale in the German law of unjustified enrichment. 'Chasing, Lying and Persuading: D 47.2.52.19 – 24 in Context' (December 2024 - details below) considers the Roman law of theft (and the theft of incorporeals in particular) through the lens of Ulpian's Edictal Commentary.

In November 2024 I gave the WA Wilson Memorial Lecture at Edinburgh Law School ('In Defence of Ignorance').

Danie Visser (UCT) and I are currently writing a note on the recent decision of the South African Constitutional Court in Greater Tzaneen Municipality v Bravospan, handed down in October 2024.

Research centres and interest groups

Cambridge Private Law Centre (CPLC)

CV / Biography

Helen Scott studied classics and law at the University of Cape Town before coming to Oxford to do the BCL in 1999. She completed her DPhil in 2005, taking up a tutorial fellowship at St Catherine's College in the same year.

She then returned to South Africa, spending almost a decade at the University of Cape Town as senior lecturer, associate professor, and (from 2014) full professor. She served as head of the Department of Private Law between 2014 and 2017.

In 2017 she moved back to England, taking up a tutorial fellowship at Lady Margaret Hall as well as a titular professorship in the Oxford Law Faculty. She was elected Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge in 2022.

Her research concerns doctrinal law (mainly English and South African) as well as Roman law and civilian legal history, and spans a wide range of subject matter: not only the law of unjust/unjustified enrichment and tort/delict, but also the wider law of obligations, property and trusts.

She is Chair of Part II Examiners for the Law Tripos and General Editor of the Cambridge Law Journal.