STL LHSS: Common v. Civil Law - ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’
Date & Time: June 5, 2024
Speaker: Holger Spamann, Lawrence R. Grove Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Moderator: Prof. Norman P. Ho, Peking University School of Transnational Law
Lecture Summary: The common/civil law distinction is clothed in fantastic tales. Common and civil lawyers ostensibly 'think differently.' Many even still believe that common law is characterized by case law, civil law by its absence. Such essentializations are baseless: there is no evidence supporting them, and no reason to expect them to be true.
Speaker's bio:
Holger Spamann is the Lawrence R. Grove Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches corporate law and corporate finance. His research focuses on the law and economics of corporate governance and financial markets, judicial behavior, and comparative law. Before embarking on his academic career, he practiced with Debevoise & Plimpton in New York and clerked for two years in Europe. He holds too many degrees, among them a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He is a member of the bar of New York and qualified for the German bar.
