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Prof Prince Saprai
Professor of Law
Faculty of Laws
UCL SLASH
- Joined UCL
- 1st Sep 2009
Research summary
Prince’s main research interest is in the philosophy of contract law. He has written extensively on philosophical puzzles relating to a variety of doctrines in the field.
Prince also works on broader questions about transnational private law, the ethics of markets, and the regulation of new technologies.
He is co-editor of the volume Philosophical Foundations of Contract Law (OUP Oxford hbk 2014 pbk 2016).
His book Contract Law Without Foundations: Toward a Republican Theory of Contract Law (OUP Oxford 2019) was shortlisted for the Society of Legal Scholars Peter Birks Book Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship (2019). It attempts to break new ground in the philosophy of contract law by upending the orthodox picture of the field. The book claims that traditional theories of contract law which argue either that contract law reflects or mirrors the morality of promise, or instead that it pursues its own distinct ends or goals, such as economic efficiency, both seriously mishandle legal doctrine by ignoring or underplaying the irreducible plurality of values that shape contract law. The book defends the role of this multiplicity of values in forging contract doctrine, by developing from the ground-up a radical and distinctly republican re-interpreation of the field.
Teaching summary
Teaching Awards
Excellence Award for Legal Teaching, LLB, Faculty of Laws, UCL (2016)
LLB
Contract Law
Jurisprudence and Legal Theory
PhD Supervision
Prince welcomes approaches for supervision from prospective PhD students.
Education
- Other Postgraduate qualification (including professional), ATQ02 - Recognised by the HEA as an Associate Fellow |
- Other Postgraduate qualification (including professional), ATQ01 - Successfully completed an institutional provision in teaching in the HE sector |
- University College London
- Other Postgraduate qualification (including professional), Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education | 2011
- Mansfield College, Oxford
- Doctorate, Doctor of Philosophy | 2009
- Mansfield College, Oxford
- Other higher degree, Master of Philosophy | 2004
- Mansfield College, Oxford
- First Degree, Bachelor of Civil Law | 2002
- King's College London
- First Degree, Bachelor of Laws | 2000
Biography
Prince joined UCL as a Lecturer in 2009. Prior to this, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick (2008-2009), and had worked as a Stipendiary Lecturer at Merton College, Oxford (2007-2008). He completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford (2009).
In 2013, he was a Visiting Scholar at Georgetown Law, and in 2020-2021 a Visiting Professor at The Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University.
Prince is keen to engage with non-academic audiences and has given lectures on contract law to City solicitors and to the senior judiciary under the auspices of the Judicial College.