Professor Mark Lunney - 'Living in the shadows of Dixon: Isaac Isaacs contribution to the development of an Australian law of tort'

On 29 September 2015, from 5pm in the Moot Court, Professor Mark Lunney will be talking on "Living in the shadows of Dixon: Isaac Isaacs contribution to the development of an Australian law of tort".

The Centre for Legal History and the Cambridge Private Law Centre are hosting this event on the history of tort law in Australia. It explores the role of judges, both generally and in terms of specific forceful characters, and challenges how we understand the legacy of our law. The abstract reads:

It is widely accepted that Sir Owen Dixon was Australia's most significant judge of the first half of the twentieth century. While not challenging the strengths of Dixon's judicial method, it will be argued in this paper that an earlier member of the High Court, Sir Isaac Isaacs, made a more explicit contribution to the development of at least one aspect of private law, the law of tort, during his time on the bench. Although not as explicit as Sir Samuel Griffith in recognising Australia's differences from England, Isaacs contributed innovative and thoughtful contributions to a common law that was seen as belonging as much to Australia as it did to England.

All very welcome!

Mark is a Professor at the University of New England, and previously of KCL and ANU. He is a leading author on Tort law in Australia and in England (e.g., Lunney and Oliphant's Tort Law: Text and Materials), as well as a legal historian. He has published extensively on all areas of tort. This talk is part of a wider project on Australian Legal History. He's coming back to Cambridge almost 25 years to the day since doing an LLM here.

For further information or queries, please contact Dr Matt Dyson on mnd21@cam.ac.uk or 01223 338520.