{"id":8048,"date":"2024-09-27T14:17:37","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T13:17:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/law-news\/?p=8048"},"modified":"2024-09-27T14:17:37","modified_gmt":"2024-09-27T13:17:37","slug":"critical-trusts-law-reading-roger-cotterrell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/law-news\/critical-trusts-law-reading-roger-cotterrell\/","title":{"rendered":"Critical Trusts Law: Reading Roger Cotterrell"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new book, edited by Senior Lecturer Nick Pi\u0161ka<\/a> and Dr Hayley Gibson <\/a>at Kent Law School<\/a>, has been published by Counterpress.<\/p>\n

As Nick and Hayley explain ‘In May 2016 a group of trust lawyers and activists met at The Shard, London, to discuss the relationship between pension trusts and global corporate capitalism. During a break, standing at the large glass windows looking down at the City of London, Nick Pi\u0161ka and Adam Gearey reflected on the paucity of critical trusts scholarship given the role of trusts in the global financial crisis and rising wealth inequality. \"\"<\/a>The conversation naturally turned to the work of Roger Cotterrell on trusts,[1]<\/a>\u00a0one of the few theoretical-doctrinal interventions to have linked trusts to questions of power and inequality, and the seed of an idea for a symposium revisiting themes in Cotterrell\u2019s work on trusts was sown. In 2017, 30 years since the publication of his first in a trilogy of articles on trusts law, we hosted that\u00a0symposium<\/a>\u00a0in Canterbury.<\/p>\n

This edited collection brings together a number of the papers presented at that symposium. Themes explored in the chapters include ideology and the (in)visibility of power; the abuse of trusts; the gendering of trusts; and the implications of trusts regimes for tax, finance and banking. Some set out new agendas for trusts scholarship. Many turn to developments in trusts practice since the publication of Cotterrell\u2019s articles (for example developments in asset protection trusts) attest to the continued prescience of Cotterrell\u2019s critique.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The collection will be of interest to trusts students and researchers looking for critical reflections on trusts law, theory and practice. At Kent Law School we have been setting Cotterrell\u2019s articles on trusts as \u2018core reading\u2019 on our undergraduate Equity & Trusts module for many years. Introducing trusts to undergraduate students might appear daunting enough, but introducing the trust idea, trust doctrine, and a critique of the trust form simultaneously has been challenging and exhilarating in (almost) equal measure. Each year we find different nuances and different points to emphasize in Cotterrell\u2019s works as the legal, social, economic and theoretical milieu has shifted\u2014and each year our students bring different questions and ideas to the seminars and assessments.<\/p>\n

The collection consists of 13 chapters, including an introduction to and overview of critical trusts scholarship by Nick Pi\u0161ka and an afterword from Roger Cotterrell.<\/p>\n

Preface<\/em>: Nick Pi\u0161ka and Hayley Gibson<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0An Introduction to Critical Trusts Law<\/em>: Nick Pi\u0161ka<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0The Power of the Settlor<\/em>: Jonathan Garton<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0Trusts Law and the Problem of Moral Distance<\/em>: Michael Bryan<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0The Reproduction of Property through the Production of Personhood: The Family Trust and the Power of Things<\/em>: Johanna Jacques<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0The Myth of the Powerless Beneficiary and Twenty-First Century Trusts<\/em>: Carla Spivack<\/p>\n

6.\u00a0\u2018The More He Argued, The More Technical He Became\u2019: Trusts and Surplus Value<\/em>: Adam Gearey<\/p>\n

7.\u00a0Subversion as an Agenda for Critical Trusts Law Scholarship<\/em>: Mark Bennett and Adam Hofri-Winogradow<\/p>\n

8.\u00a0Tax Justice and the Abuse of Trusts<\/em>: Andres Knobel<\/p>\n

9.\u00a0Trusts Law and Structural Power<\/em>: T.T. Arvind and Ruth Stirton<\/p>\n

10.\u00a0Charity and Ideology<\/em>: Henry Jones<\/p>\n

11.\u00a0The Gendered Trust<\/em>: Lisa Sarmas<\/p>\n

12.\u00a0The Bank of England\u2019s Directors as Trustees in Walter Bagehot\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>Lombard Street: Iain Frame<\/p>\n

13.\u00a0Afterword: Trust and Critique after Three Decades<\/em>: Roger Cotterrell<\/p>\n

These chapters provide a snapshot of an emerging body of critical scholarship on trusts. Each of the chapters is oriented, in one way or another, towards social justice. As the chapters in this collection are oriented around the work of Roger Cotterrell, there is an inevitable continuity with Cotterrell\u2019s themes, methods and conceptual framing. There are of course many alternative critical accounts of trusts to be written, using different theoretical frameworks and asking different questions\u2014and we hope the collection inspires them.’<\/p>\n

The book can be purchased in print copy or downloaded as a PDF on a \u2018pay what you can\u2019 basis here:\u00a0https:\/\/counterpress.org.uk\/publications\/critical-trusts-law\/.<\/a><\/p>\n

This blog post has been repurposed, with kind permission, from Critical Trusts Law: Reading Roger Cotterrell (criticallegalthinking.com)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a>\u00a0See Roger Cotterrell, \u2018Power, Property and the Law of Trusts: A Partial Agenda for Critical Legal Scholarship,\u2019\u00a0Journal of Law and Society\u00a0<\/em>14 (1987); Roger Cotterrell, \u2018Some Sociological Aspects of the Controversy Around the Legal Validity of Private Purpose Trusts,\u2019 in\u00a0Equity and Contemporary Legal Developments\u00a0<\/em>ed. Stephen Goldstein (1992); Roger Cotterrell, \u2018Trusting in Law: Legal and Moral Concepts of Trust,<\/em>\u2019\u00a0Current Law Problems\u00a0<\/em>46 (1993).<\/p>\n