Commercial Court 125th Anniversary Seminar Series: October – December 2020
As part of its 125th anniversary celebrations, the Commercial Court is holding a series of virtual seminars linking judges, practitioners and academics on a range of “hot topics” within commercial law.
The series comprises the following events:
Seminar 1: Arbitration and the Courts: A Constructive symbiosis
Wednesday 7 October 2020, 5-6.30pm
Chair: Flaux LJ.
Panel: Cockerill J, Professor Rob Merkin QC (Professor of Law at the Universities of Exeter and Reading; Special Counsel Duncan Cotterill) and Duncan Matthews QC (Twenty Essex Chambers).
Topics (see event flyer below):
The scope and availability of court powers in aid of arbitration under sections 44 and 67-70 of the Arbitration Act 1996;
When injunctive relief will be granted;
The shifting approach to determining the proper law of an arbitration agreement;
Whether it is time to review the test for appeals on points of law;
Jurisdictional challenges: how is jurisdiction defined; can jurisdiction be separated from substance; is full rehearing the correct approach?
Seminar 2: State Immunity and Commercial Law: An ever-decreasing sphere?
Tuesday 17 November 2020, 5-6.30pm
Chair: Males LJ.
Panel: Butcher J, Professor Dapo Akande (Co-Director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict; Professor of Public International Law at the University of Oxford and Essex Court Chambers) and Professor Philippa Webb (Twenty Essex Chambers and King’s College London).
Topics: Sovereign immunity and the Commercial Court; non-justiciability, act of state, immunity and exceptions to immunity.
Seminar 3: Commercial Contracts: A thing apart?
Wednesday 2 December 2020, 5-6.30pm
Chair: Lord Leggatt.
Panel: Foxton J, Professor Louise Gullifer QC (Hon) FBA (Rouse Ball Professor of English Law at the University of Cambridge) and Philippa Hopkins QC (Essex Court Chambers).
Topics: the continuing status of special rules of construction of exemption clauses, the interpretation of standard forms and implied terms and good faith in relational contracts.
The series is supported by Thomson Reuters, and registration is now open online (external link).