The Property-Contract Interface Historical and Theoretical Perspectives

James Penner, Kwa Geok Choo Professor of Property Law, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore,Irina Sakharova, Assistant Professor in Commercial Law, Durham University,Henry E. Smith, Fessenden Professor of Law, Harvard Law School,Zhong Xing Tan, Associate Professor of Law, National University of Singapore

James Penner is Kwa Geok Choo Professor of Property Law at the National University of Singapore. He formerly taught at Brunel University, the London School of Economics, King's College London, and University College London. He is one of the world's leading scholars in the philosophy of property and the law of trusts, and writes more widely in the areas of private law and the philosophy of law. He has been a visiting professor at a number of universities around the world, most recently the University of Toronto, Harvard University and the Centre for Transnational Legal Studies in London.


Irina Sakharova is an Assistant Professor in Commercial Law at Durham University. Her research is situated in private law and legal philosophy, and most centrally in contract law and contract theory. She has published in these areas, including in such journals as Ratio Juris and the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence. Dr Sakharova earned her MJur degree from the University of Oxford and her PhD at the National University of Singapore. Her PhD thesis, Understanding the Legal Power to Contract, was awarded the Wang Gungwu Medal and Prize for the Best PhD Thesis in the Social Sciences and Humanities.


Henry E. Smith is Fessenden Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he directs the Project on the Foundations of Private Law. Previously, Professor Smith taught at the Northwestern University School of Law and was the Fred A. Johnston Professor of Property and Environmental Law at Yale Law School. He has served as the President of the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics and is the Reporter for the American Law Institute's Fourth Restatement of Property. He has published widely in the areas of property, equity, and private law theory.


Zhong Xing Tan is an Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore, Director of the Sheridan Fellowship Programme, and a member of the Leadership Team at NUS Law. Dr Zhong Xing's research and teaching interests are in contract law, private law and legal theory. His work has been published in general and specialist law journals including the Modern Law Review, Cambridge Law Journal, University of Toronto Law Journal, and the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, and has been cited by apex courts in different jurisdictions. Zhong Xing's awards and recognitions include the Hart Publishing Prize for the best paper by an early career scholar at the Ninth Biennial Conference on the Law of Obligations (2018), and previously, Harvard Law School's Project on the Foundations of Private Law Prize (2017).