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Lionel Smith elected a Visiting Fellow at Oxford's All Souls

Published: 28 April 2011

Professor Lionel Smith, Director of the QRCPCL, has been elected a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Professor Smith has been a professor at McGill since 2000, was awarded a James McGill Chair in 2004, and became the Director of the QRCPCL in 2007.

Professor Smith teaches corporate and commercial law, equity and trusts, advanced obligations, and the law of unjust enrichment. His research focuses on comparative approaches to fundamental private law, particularly the law of trusts, the law relating to obligations of loyalty and the law of unjust enrichment.

During his visiting fellowship, Lionel Smith will be focusing on the legal tie known to the common law tradition as the "fiduciary relationship". In this relationship, one person is subjected to extremely strict obligations of loyalty towards another person, including duties to avoid conflicts of interest. The justification and scope of these strict obligations have been controversial in legal scholarship for many years, even while the range of situations in which the courts have imposed such duties continues to expand. Professor Smith will explore these questions with insights not only from trust law and corporate law, but also from comparative law, legal history and the philosophy of law.

Visiting Fellowships at All Souls College are awarded to a small number of distinguished scholars in all disciplines from all over the world.  They enable their holders to carry out study and research in Oxford and to participate in the academic life of the University. Professor Smith will be on sabbatical leave from July to December 2011.

 

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