Uploaded December 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
This lecture was delivered by Professor Ben McFarlane, as part of the Current Legal Problems Lecture Series 2024-25.
Speaker: Professor Ben Mcfarlane (University of Oxford)
Chair: Lord Briggs of Westbourne
About the lecture
In his seminal Yale Law Journal articles, Hohfeld presented his general analysis of legal relations as a means to shed light on the much-discussed question of "the essential nature of trusts and other equitable interests". Over one hundred years later, that question is still fiercely debated, not least because its resolution has important practical effects, as shown by decisions such as Akers v Samba and Byers v Saudi National Bank in the UK Supreme Court and Carter Holt Harvey v Commonwealth of Australia in the High Court of Australia. In this lecture, it will be argued that, whilst significant progress has recently been made, our efforts to understand equitable property have been limited by a focus on three-party examples (as where A holds on trust for B and then transfers the trust property to C) which present a misleadingly simple picture. As Hohfeld noted, the search should be for "the right kind of simplicity" and understanding the power of equitable property requires us to look beyond such examples.
This lecture was delivered by Professor Ben McFarlane, as part of the Current Legal Problems Lecture Series 2024-25.
Speaker: Professor Ben Mcfarlane (University of Oxford)
Chair: Lord Briggs of Westbourne
About the lecture
In his seminal Yale Law Journal articles, Hohfeld presented his general analysis of legal relations as a means to shed light on the much-discussed question of "the essential nature of trusts and other equitable interests". Over one hundred years later, that question is still fiercely debated, not least because its resolution has important practical effects, as shown by decisions such as Akers v Samba and Byers v Saudi National Bank in the UK Supreme Court and Carter Holt Harvey v Commonwealth of Australia in the High Court of Australia. In this lecture, it will be argued that, whilst significant progress has recently been made, our efforts to understand equitable property have been limited by a focus on three-party examples (as where A holds on trust for B and then transfers the trust property to C) which present a misleadingly simple picture. As Hohfeld noted, the search should be for "the right kind of simplicity" and understanding the power of equitable property requires us to look beyond such examples.
