Alice Horn co-authors for LMCLQ on unjust enrichment in the Commercial Court

9th January 2024

3PB commercial and arbitration pupil barrister Alice HornAlice HornCall: 2022, pictured here, has co-authored an article on unjust enrichment with High Court Commercial and Admiralty Judge, Sir Andrew Baker and Serena Lee which has just been published in Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly (LMCLQ).

The article explores the extent and nature of, and reasons for, the influence of academic writing on the law of unjust enrichment and follows a paper presented to the Commercial Court webinar in June last year. This was prompted by a request by Foxton J to examine why English judges do not make more use in their judgments of the academic writing in the field of unjust enrichment.

The article concludes that:
• The work and perspective of academics is and deserves to be respected by judges in our decision-making.
• Through reliance on and reference to academic work, judges generally do affirm the use of academic commentary as a significant tool to aid in the evaluation of arguments, and long may that continue.
• the judicial conclusion may be to agree with the commentary, to disagree with it, or a bit of both. That does not diminish the value of the contribution.
• the use of academic sources, or a lack thereof, can be symptomatic of a prior inclination as to how to characterise an issue.

The review of how academic writing has been influential in this article might help legal practitioners to identify, and accordingly to cite, academic sources likely to help their tribunal. For academics, the authors hope that this not only reaffirms the growing understanding of the important role and contribution of legal scholarship to the rule of law, but that it might also provide insight as to how academic work might best be presented so as to contribute to that shared aim of judges and jurists, the creation of a system of law in which, to quote Lord Reed, the “legal rights … are determined by rules of law which are ascertainable and consistently applied”.

To read the full article, please click here.

To instruct Alice, or see about her availability from April 2024, please contact her clerk Tom Cox via email or by calling him on 0117 928 1520.