Congratulations to Professor Andreas Televantos (Hanbury Fellow and Tutorial Fellow in Law) who has been awarded the Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship for his book, Capitalism before Corporations. The annual prize is awarded by the Society of Legal Scholars for outstanding published books by scholars in their early careers.
Capitalism before Corporations considers to what degree English law facilitated trade before the advent of general incorporation and modern securities law. It examines the extent to which legal institutions of the Regency period, especially Lord Eldon's Chancellorship, were sympathetic to the needs of merchants and willing to accommodate their changing practices and demands within established legal doctrinal frameworks and contemporary political economic thought. In so doing, this book probes at the heart of modern debates about equity, trusts, insolvency, and the justifiability of corporate privileges.