Professor William Lucy

William studied law, jurisprudence and political philosophy as an undergraduate and postgraduate at the Universities of Leeds and Manchester. He taught law at the Universities of Essex, Hull, Keele and Cardiff before arriving at Manchester in 2006. He has been a visiting professor at a number of Universities, including the Law Faculties at McGill University, Montreal (winter 2005) and the University of Auckland (winter 2009). In the summer of 2007 he was a visiting fellow at the John Fleming Centre for the Advancement of Legal Research at the College of Law, Australian National University, Canberra.

These lie in the fields of jurisprudence and private law (contract, tort, restitution and property) and the various overlaps and disjunctions between them. He is happy to supervise research students in these broad areas. William has supervised three successful research students in the School, two as main supervisor and one as co-supervisor.

These include a study of the ‘formal’ legal virtues, including the rule of law and its components like impartiality, equality and certainty (or predictability); an analysis of accounts of adjudication and the idea of judgement; and a critical analysis of private law’s conceptions of responsibility and causality.

Mainly contract and jurisprudence.

Publications Database

These include:

 

A. Essays

‘Private Law: Between Visionaries and Bricoleurs’, ch. 8 of P. Cane and J. Gardner (eds.), Relating to Responsibility (Oxford: Hart Publishing 2002), 187-218.

‘Adjudication’, ch. 6 of J. Coleman and S. Shapiro (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press 2002), 206-267.

‘Philosophy and Contract Law’ (Review Essay) (2004) 54 University of Toronto Law Journal, 75-108.

‘The Possibility of Impartiality’ (2005) 25 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 3-31.

'Ragione e Impartialita in Aggiudicazione' in M. La Torre (ed.), Diritti, Procedure, Virtu (Giappichelli: Turin 2006).

'Method and Fit: Two Problems for Contemporary Philosophies of Tort Law', (2007) 52 McGill Law Journal, pp. 605-656.

'Judges, Distinguished' in P. Cane and J. Conaghan (eds.), The New Oxford Companion to Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press 2008).

'Abstraction and the Rule of Law' (2009) 29 (3) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 481-589.

'What's Private About Private Law?', ch. 3 of A. Robertson and Hang Wu Tang (eds.), The Goals of Private Law (Hart Publishing 2009).

'Persons in Law' (2009) 29 (4) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 787-804.

'Equality and Abstraction', forthcoming (2009) Current Legal Problems.

 

B. Books

Understanding and Explaining Adjudication (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1999), 386 pp.

Philosophy of Private Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press 2007), 438 pp.

 

C. Work-in-progress

'Recalibrating Law's Judgement' (this has life only as a seminar paper at present)

'Private Law and Distributive Justice' (ditto)

'Equal Under and Before the Law' (ditto)

Media Availability

Yes, within my areas of expertise.