Neyers Delivers Bi-Juridical Lecture in Scotland
On June 3, 2019 Professor Neyers delivered a lecture, “Lying and the (Private) Law,” at the Edinburgh Centre for Private Law Lecture Series at Edinburgh Law School. Founded in 2009, the Edinburgh Centre for Private Law continues a long tradition of private law scholarship at the University of Edinburgh and fosters a dialogue between the civilian tradition and the common law. Edinburgh Law School is ranked as one of the top 25 law schools in the world, and, for more than three centuries, has been rooted in the open and interdisciplinary traditions of Scots law.
In his lecture, Professor Neyers compared the elements of the English tort of deceit with the elements of the Scottish delict of fraud and offered an interpretative theory of both civil wrongs. He argued that both actions aim to protect claimants/pursuers from being non-consensually deprived of that which is already theirs, whether or not this deprivation actually leads to any pecuniary loss. Several eminent Scots jurists—Hector MacQueen, Elspeth Reid, George Gretton, and Head of School Martin Hogg (pictured)—attended Professor Neyers’ lecture.
While in the United Kingdom, Professor Neyers also served as a panel chair at The Place of Restitution in the Modern Law workshop hosted by Duncan Sheehan at the University of Leeds. The workshop celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of the revised edition of Peter Birks’ An Introduction to the Law of Restitution. The workshop explored the place of restitution in English law as well as offering a comparison with other jurisdictions such as Scotland, South Africa, and Canada. The workshop was attended by a number of leading restitution scholars, including Lionel Smith (McGill); Rachel Leow (NUS); Steve Hedley (University College Cork); Martin Hogg (Edinburgh); Jacques du Plessis (Stellenbosch); and Helen Scott, Robert Stevens, Andrew Burrows, and William Swadling (all from Oxford).
