
Faculty Contact Details
Room: G10
Rouse Ball Professor of English Law; Chair of the Faculty Board
Research centres and interest groups
CV / Biography
Professor Louise Gullifer KC (Hon) FBA is Rouse Ball Professor of English Law at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. She is an associate member of 3VB, where she practiced for a number of years, and a Bencher of Gray’s Inn.
She teaches and writes extensively in all areas of commercial and financial law, especially secured transactions and financial collateral, intermediated securities, set-off and personal property. She is the editor of Goode and Gullifer on Legal Problems of Credit and Security and has co-authored a number of books on commercial law and debt financing, including two co-edited volumes on intermediated securities She is currently co-director of a project on digital assets, and is writing and editing a series of books on secured transactions law and reform around the world, of which the most recent is a volume on Asia. She has acted as an expert witness in cases concerning set-off, intermediated securities and insolvency law.
She was the founding director of the Commercial Law Centre at Harris Manchester College and executive director of the Secured Transaction Law Reform Project, as well as the Oxford academic lead of the Cape Town Convention Academic Project. She was the UK delegate to both UNCITRAL (working group VI) during its work on secured transactions, and is one of the UK delegates to the UNIDROIT conferences on the Cape Town Convention, as well as a member of a number of UNIDROIT working groups. She is a member of of the International Insolvency Institute and the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law.
Selected publications
Books
Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (ed), 2025)
Corporate Finance law: Principles and Policy (with Jennifer Payne), 2025) 4th Edition

The Law of Security and Title-Based Financing (ed), 2024) 4th Edition
Goode and Gullifer on Legal Problems of Credit and Security (with Roy Goode) (eds), 2022) 7th Edition
The Law of Personal Property (with Professor Michael Bridge, Professor Gerard McMeel & Professor Kelvin F.K Low), 2021) 3rd Edition

Secured Transactions Law in Asia (with D Neo) (eds), 2021)

Corporate Finance Law : Principles and Policy (with Jennifer Payne), 2020) 3rd Edition

Secured Transactions Law Reform in Africa (with Marek Dubovec), 2019)

Intermedation and beyond (with Jennifer Payne (co-editor) and contributors) (eds), 2019)

The Law of Security and Title-based Financing (with Hugh Beale, Michael Bridge, Eva Lomnicka) (eds), 2018) 3rd Edition

Secured Transactions Law Reform: Principles, Policies and Practice (ed), 2016)

English and European Perspectives on Contract and Commercial law: Essays in honour of Hugh Beale (with Stefan Vogenauer (co-editor) and contributors) (eds), 2014)

Set-off in arbitration and commercial transactions (with Pascal Pichonnaz) (eds), 2014)

Intermediated Securities: Legal Problems and Practical Issues (with Jennifer Payne (co-editor) and contributors) (eds), 2010)
Current Issues in European Financial and Insolvency Law (with Philippe Thery and Wolf-Georg Ringe (co-editors) and contributors) (eds), 2009)
Articles
"Proprietary Rights and Digital Assets: a "Modest Proposal" from a Transnational Law Perspective" (2025) 87 Law and Contemporary Problems 211-232
"The UNCITRAL Model Law and Secured Transactions Law Reform" (2023) 17 Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial and Commercial Law 97
"Secured Transactions reform: lessons from Asia" (2021) 4 JIBFL 256
"Interpretation of Market Standard Form Contracts" (2021) JBL 227
"How final is final? Settlement finality, blockchains and DLT" (2020) 1 Journal of International Banking and Financial Law 8
"'A comparison of the position of buyers under the Cape Town Convention, the three existing Protocols and the draft MAC Protocol"
"Crypto-claimants and Bitcoin Bankruptcy: Challenges for Recognition and Realisation" (2019) 28 International Insolvency Review 233
"'A global tug of war: a topography of micro-business financing" (2017) Law and Contemporary Problems 109
"Sales’ on Retention of Title terms: is the English law analysis broken?" (2017) 133 Law Quarterly Review 244
"'Financing Micro-businesses and the UNCITRAL Model Law on Secured Transactions" (2017) Uniform Law Review 642
"'A Case for Interfering with Freedom of Contract? An Empirically-Informed Study of Bans on Assignment'" [2016] Journal of Business Law 203
"'Ban on Assignment Clauses: Views from the Coalface" (2015) 30 Butterworths Journal of International Banking and Financial Law 463
"'Should clauses prohibiting assignment be overridden by statute?" (2015) 4 Penn State Journal of Law and International Affairs 47
"'The interpretation of retention of title clauses: Wilson v Holt generates some difficulties." (2014) Lloyds Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly 564
"Bills of Sale: Ripe for Reform?" (2013) 11 Butterworths Journal of International Banking and Financial Law 685
"The reform of the English law of secured transactions" (2012) 213 Droit et patrimoine (Kluwer) 72
"What should we do about Financial Collateral?" (2012) 65 Current Legal Problems 377
"'Personal Property Security Law: Where Next? Parts 1 and 2" (2012) Butterworths Journal of International Banking and Financial Law 465 and 541
"The Australian PPS reforms: what will the new system look like?" (2010) 4 Law and Financial Markets Review 394
"'The reforms of the Enterprise Act 2002 and the Floating Charge as a security device" (2008) 46 Canadian Business Law Journal 399
"'The Law Commission’s Proposals: a critique" (2004) 15 European Business Law Review 81
"Will the Law Commission Sink the Floating Charge?" (2003) Lloyds Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly 125
"'Constructive possession after the Sale of Goods (Amendment) Act 1995 " 1999) Lloyds Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly 93
Book Chapters
"The Role of Policy in the Creation of Transnational Commercial Private Law Instruments" in J. Gardner, A. Goymour, J. O'Sullivan, S. Worthington (ed(s)), Politics, Policy and Private Law Volume II: Contract, Commercial and Company Law, 2025)
"Proprietary Rights in Digital Assets" in Matthias Lehmann and Christian Koller (ed(s)), Digital Assets in Enforcement and Insolvency, 2025)
"The Cape Town Convention 20 years on" in Ben Kohler (ed(s)), Elgar Companion to UNIDROIT, 2024)
"Who can sue the obligor when receivables are financed?" in E. Peel and R. Probert (ed(s)), Shaping the Law of Obligations, 2023)
"The nature and function of default rules in commercial law" in B. Hacker and J. Ungerer (ed(s)), Default Rules in Private Law), forthcoming
"Intermediated Securities: the European Perspective" (with J.Payne) in J-H Binder and P. Saguato (ed(s)), Financial Infrastructures: Law and Regulation , 2022)
"The Vanishing Scope of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 in the Twenty-first Century" in C. Mitchell and S. Watterson (ed(s)), The World of Maritime and Commercial Law: Essays in Honour of Francis Rose , 2020)

"The boundaries of a borrower’s freedom to act: negative covenants in loan agreements" in P. Davies and M. Raczynska (ed(s)), The Contents of Commercial Contracts: Terms Affecting Freedoms , 2020)
"The Financing of Micro-businesses in the United Kingdom: The Current Position and the Way Forward" in O. Akseli and J. Linarelli (ed(s)), The Future of Commercial Law: Ways Forward for Change and Reform, 2020)
"'National Report for England " (with H Anderson and C Cook), Treatment of Contracts in Insolvency , 2020)
"Two consequences of the intermediated holding of debt securities: examining discharge of debt and set-off ", Intermediation and beyond , 2019)
"Secured Transactions" (with M Raczynska), McKnight, Paterson and Zakrzewski on the Law of International Finance , 2017)
"Flawed Assets", Commercial Remedies: Resolving Controversies , 2017)
