research

interests

My interests lie at the intersection of doctrinal private law, comparative law theory, jurisprudence and critical legal studies: namely, the necessary and contingent interactions between legal logic and material social conditions.

I work primarily on the English and Japanese laws of obligations and property (especially contract and trusts), and secondarily on public law and socio-legal topics (principally in Japan).

output

sole-authored monographs

  • Contract Law in England & Wales (Kluwer, 2018)
  • Making Trusts Civilised [in preparation]

peer-reviewed chapters in edited collections

  • ‘Trusts as legal transplants: Lessons from Japan’ in Ben McFarlane and Sinéad Agnew (eds), Modern Studies in Property Law: Volume 10 (2019, Hart Publishing)
  • ‘The quasi-Constitutionality of non-statutory norms: executive Constitutional interpretation in Japanese law’ in Richard Albert and Joel Colon-Rios (eds), Quasi-Constitutionality and Constitutional Statutes: Forms, Functions, Applications (2019, Routledge)
  • ‘Pirates, Giants and the State: Legal Authority in Manga and Anime’ in Ashley Pearson et al. (eds), Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture (2018, Routledge)
  • ‘Rethinking the rules for the proprietary effect of freehold covenants’ in Robin Hickey and Heather Conway (eds), Modern Studies in Property Law: Volume 9 (2017, Hart Publishing)

articles in academic journals

book reviews

  • Colin P.A. Jones and Frank S. Ravitch, The Japanese Legal System (2021) 51 Journal of Japanese Law 329
  • Douglas Howland, International Law and Japanese Sovereignty: The Emerging Global Order in the 19th Century (2017) 44 Journal of Japanese Law 308
  • Alastair Hudson, Equity and Trusts (2017) 51 The Law Teacher 104
  • Hiroyuki Kihara, Tort Law in Japan (2016) 41 Journal of Japanese Law 260

presentations at international academic conferences

before now

  • “The civilisation of English law: Illegality as a defence in tort”
    • Obligations Group Conference, Melbourne Law School (Australia), 2018
  • “Public policy in private law: The ‘Civilisation’ of English law”
    • Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law, Kyūshū University, 2018
  • “Against rights? Navigating the Left critique of human rights law for the 21 st Century”
    • Building a 21 st Century Bill of Rights, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, 2018
  • “Trusts as legal transplants: Lessons from the trust in Japan”
    • Modern Studies in Property Law, University College London, 2018
  • “The Trust as Trojan Horse: Quiet Revolution in the Japanese Law of Property and Succession”
    • Wealth Transfer Law in International and Comparative Perspective, University of Iowa, 2017
  • “Administrative Law in Japan: Politics, Culture and the Rule of Virtuous Men”
    • Law, Society and Administration in a Changing World, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, 2017
  • “England’s experiments in the attribution of illegal acts”
    • Recent Developments in Corporate and Financial Law, University of Tokyo, 2016
  • “Making trusts civilised: War, revolution and the English trust in Japan”
    • Obligations XIII, University of Cambridge, 2016
  • “Two Quasi-Constitutional Norms in Japan”
    • International Symposium on Quasi-Constitutionality, Victoria University Wellington, 2016
  • “New rules for the ‘in rem’ effect of freehold covenants”
    • Modern Studies in Property Law, Queen’s University Belfast, 2016
  • “Changing criminal justice: the ‘cultural defence’ and the jurisprudence of multiculturalism”
    • Law and Culture Conference , St Mary’s University, 2015
  • “The rights of foreigners in Japan”
    • East Asian Law & Society Conference, Waseda University, 2015
  • “Morality in cultural defence cases: Insights from a Dworkinian analysis”
    • Law Student Colloquium, Trinity College Dublin, 2013

still to come

  • “The (incomplete) civilisation of English law: the illegality rule, inside and out”
    • Obligations X, Harvard Law School [Cancelled due to COVID-19]
  • “Trusting in Ideals? Legal logic, social forces and the evolution of the (Japanese) trust”
    • Asian Trust & Succession Law Workshop, Shanghai Jiao Tong University [Cancelled due to COVID-19]