Prof Paul Davies

Biography

Paul was appointed to the Chair in Commercial Law in September 2017. He was previously a Fellow at St Catherine’s College, Oxford,and before that a Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Paul has also worked in the Property and Trust Law Team at the Law Commission. He initially read Oriental Studies (Japanese) before studying Law at Downing College, Cambridge, and spent a year in Poitiers studying French Law.

Paul is interested in all areas of commercial law, and has written widely on private law more generally. He is the author of Accessory Liability (Hart Publishing, 2015; revised paperback edition, 2017), which won the main Inner Temple Book Prize in 2018, and was the joint second prize winner of the 2015 Society of Legal Scholars Peter Birks Book Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship. Paul is also a co-author of Equity and Trusts: Text, Cases and Materials (3rd ed, OUP, 2019 (with Graham Virgo)), the author of JC Smith’s The Law of Contract (3rd ed,OUP, 2021) and is a contributing editor to both Chitty on Contracts and Snell’s Equity. 

Paul has edited a number of books, including The Jurisprudence of Lord Hoffmann (Hart, 2015) (with Justine Pila); Equity,Trusts and Commerce (Hart, 2017) (with James Penner); Defences in Equity (Hart, 2018) (with Simon Douglas and James Goudkamp); Pensions:Law, Policy and Practice (Hart, 2020) (with Sinead Agnew and Charles Mitchell); Commercial Contracts: Terms Affecting Freedoms (Hart, 2020) (with Magda Raczynska) and Intermediaries in Commercial Law (Hart, 2022) (with Tan Cheng-Han).

More than twenty different publications by Paul have been cited judicially, including by appellate courts in England and Wales, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Singapore. He is a tenant at Essex Court Chambers (where a more accessible list of publications can be found) and an Academic Member of the Chancery Bar Association.

In 2020 Paul was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in Law, which "recognises the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising".