The distribution of income and wealth will be the topic of this year’s annual Clive Schmitthoff memorial lecture to be delivered by Professor Neil Brooks from Osgoode Hall Law School in Canada on Monday 6 June.
The lecture, entitled ‘Rising Income and Wealth Inequality: What’s Commercial Law Got to Do with It?’, forms the focal point of Kent Law School’s two-day Graduate Research Conference and will be held in ELT2 on our Canterbury campus at 6pm.
In the abstract to his talk, Professor Brooks says: ‘I will argue that rising inequality is largely the result of political decisions and indecisions and in particular changes in legal rules, including of course commercial law. The presentation will also review conceptual issues that have arisen in the inequality debate, the consequences of inequality, and the possible responses. Recent works by Tony Atkinson, Thomas Piketty and Branko Milanovic will be reviewed.’
Professor Brooks (pictured) has research interests that include tax law and policy, corporate and international tax, and financing the welfare state. He co-authored The Trouble with Billionaires (2010) with Linda McQuaig, published in the UK as The Trouble with Billionaires: How the Super-Rich Hijacked the World (and How We Can Take it Back). He has been a consultant on tax policy and reform issues to the government of Canada, and to the governments of New Zealand, Australia and several Canadian provinces. Over the past few years he has participated in capacity-building projects relating to taxation in a number of low-income countries including Lithuania, Vietnam, China, Mongolia, South Africa, Bangladesh, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and Botswana.
In addition to the Clive Schmitthoff lecture, this year’s Graduate Research Conference on Monday 6 and Tuesday 7 June, features papers from postgraduate research students and Kent LLM students on topics ranging from climate change and the right to water in India, to transgender people’s rights and Cypriot Depositors in the European Court of Justice. The second day of the conference will feature panels of Kent LLM students presenting their plans for their minor dissertations.
A full programme of events is available to view below:
All staff and students are welcome to attend the conference which will be held in Eliot College. Further details are available on the conference’s Facebook page and via the@KLSPGConference Twitter account.