Emeritus Professor Peter Cane FBA FAAL FASSA is one of the most significant common law legal scholars of his generation.
It was never going to be possible to capture the full range of Peter’s scholarly interests and achievements within the covers of a single volume.
A book of essays honouring Emeritus Professor Peter Cane FBA FAAL FASSA has recently been published.
Professor Cane spent 20 years at Corpus Christi College at the University of Oxford before moving to The Australian National University (ANU) in 1997, where he remained until 2016.
The festschrift, Taking Law Seriously: Essays in Honour of Peter Cane(Hart Publishing, 2022), was jointly launched by the Oxford Law Faculty and ANU Centre of International and Public Law at Corpus Christi College on Friday 4 March 2022.
Professor Cane is one of the most significant common law legal scholars of his generation.
As Professor Nicola Lacey (London School of Economics) explains in her forward to the festschrift, Cane’s work is distinguished not only by its depth but also by its remarkable breadth. In addition to being a global thought leader in private and public law, Professor Cane’s research has shed illumination from doctrinal, comparative, historical, theoretical, and empirical perspectives.
Professor Leighton McDonald, director of the ANU Centre for Public and International Law, co-edited the volume with Professor James Goudkamp (Oxford) and Professor Mark Lunney (King’s College London).
“It was never going to be possible to capture the full range of Peter’s scholarly interests and achievements within the covers of a single volume,” Professor McDonald said.
Nevertheless, he added, the contributors’ engagement with a broad range of Professor Cane’s work demonstrates “the unusual combination of clarity and creativity evident in his scholarship and its lasting significance".
Given the reach of Professor Cane’s contributions to the discipline of law, contributors were drawn from across the common law world.
Professor McDonald also emphasises Professor Cane’s enormous contribution to the legal research culture at ANU, the place where much of his outstanding scholarship was produced.
That role was recognised at the book launch by a video of reflections from Professor Cane’s ANU Law colleagues on his institutional influence and his contribution to the scholarship of others, as a supportive yet searching interlocutor.
Purchase your copy of Taking Law Seriously here.