Philosophical Foundations of the Law of Express Trusts

The trust is a highly popular mode of property-holding and one of the most important innovations in the law of equity. It presents the jurist with numerous conceptual, doctrinal, and ethical challenges. In addition to being used towards the pursuit of good, trusts have also been used for ill, and the interaction of trust law with other laws agitates received principles of justice, efficiency, and coherence in the law. Trust law remains, nevertheless, under-theorized. While its technical and doctrinal aspects have been studied intensively, the foundational questions to which they give rise have remained largely unexamined. This volume takes an important step towards filling this gap.

The chapters in this book explore some of these quandaries with a view to initiating and encouraging further engagement and learning. They identify different challenges and adopt a variety of methodological approaches and perspectives towards their resolution, ranging from conceptual questions about what is ’the trust’ and ’trusts law’, chapters analysing the legal and/or moral statuses of each of the settlor, trustee, and beneficiary, to chapters questioning the moral foundations of different trusts and range of pursuits towards which parties have deployed them.

Simone Degeling, Professor of Law at UNSW Law, Australia, UNSW Law, Australia, Jessica Hudson, Associate Professor in Law at UNSW Law, Australia, UNSW Law, Australia, Irit Samet, Professor in The Dickson Poon School of Law, Kingâs College London, Dickson Poon School of Law, Kingâs College London

Simone Degeling is a Professor of Law at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Her main research interests are in private law specialising in equity & trusts, private law theory, remedies, the law of restitution and unjust enrichment, and the intersection of civil procedure and private law doctrine. Simone is a Fellow of The Australian Academy of Law and the General Editor of the Journal of Equity.

Jessica Hudson is an Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales, Australia, teaching and researching in private law with particular interest in equity and trusts, powers, restitution, and private law theory.

Irit Samet is a Professor in The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London, which she joined in 2008 after teaching in Oxford and Essex. Irit’s main research interests lie in the areas of equity, property law, theory of private law, and ethics. Her monograph on the normative foundations of the law of equity was published by OUP in 2018. Irit has also published numerous papers in peer review journals, as well as in edited collections including Philosophical Foundations of Fiduciary Law (2014) and Philosophical Foundations of Property Law (2013).