Comparative and International Trust Law

This course is designed to explore all of the essential aspects of the law of express trusts in an advanced, comparative, and international perspective. The comparator systems will be chosen so that it will not be necessary for students to be able to read any materials except in English. This still provides rich possibilities. First, there is comparison within trust laws that broadly follow the common law tradition. This includes US law, which has diverged in interesting ways from English trust law, and also the laws of many offshore jurisdictions, which have made multiple important statutory modifications in the last decades. It is also possible to study civilian implementations of trusts in English. This can be done through the so-called ‘mixed’ jurisdictions such as Scotland (which has recently passed important trust law legislation), South Africa (where many court decisions and much scholarship are in English), and Quebec (where all legislation, and decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada, are officially bilingual, and where much scholarship is in English). In addition to this, there are materials in English that speak to the French fiducie, the German Treuhand, the Italian experience with trusts governed by non-Italian law, the implementation of trusts in Japan and China, and much more besides. In relation to ‘international’ law as distinct from comparative law, there will be a seminar on the private international law of trusts.

The course will presuppose an understanding of the common law trust. Background reading will be provided for MJur students who are new to this field. 

Assessment is by way of an examination.