In-Person | Against Normative Damages

Speaker: Prof. Eric Descheemaeker (University of Melbourne)
Chair: The Hon. Mr Justice Tugendhat

**Change of Date - this CLP will now take place on Thursday, 10th November**

About the Lecture

This lecture examines an idea which has made some headway into legal scholarship and case-law, namely, that the violation of a right ought to sound in substantial (compensatory) damages in and by itself, i.e. independently of any – factual – loss caused to the claimant. This doctrine of “normative damages” (i.e. damages for a loss that is itself normative or abstract) was recently rejected by the High Court of Australia in Lewis v ACT [2020] HCA 26. However, although the doctrine was unanimously, and rightly, rejected, the clarity of that rejection was undermined by the fact that the issue of normative damages was intertwined in that case with considerations of causal counterfactuals, which analytically are distinct.

This lecture will step back from Lewis and argue that normative damages are wrong as a matter of principle. Not only do they contradict ancient and foundational principles of the law of damages, they effectively amount to considering the same injury twice.

About the Speaker

Eric Descheemaeker is a Professor of Law at Melbourne Law School. Before moving to Australia in 2017, he was Reader in European Private Law at the University of Edinburgh. He was educated at the Sorbonne, LSE and the University of Oxford, where he was also a fellow of St Catherine’s College from 2004-09. His DPhil dissertation was published as The Division of Wrongs (OUP 2009). Since then, he has published widely on torts, remedies and comparative legal history.

About Current Legal Problems

The Current Legal Problems (CLP) lecture series and annual volume was established over fifty five years ago at the Faculty of Laws, University College London and is recognised as a major reference point for legal scholarship.

Book your place