ACT Transformative Private Law Lecture Series – Past Editions and Annual Themes
3 July 2026
An ecological consciousness is emerging in contemporary law and legal thought. Driven by the subversion of the subject/object distinction, this consciousness signals a renewed and potentially transformative legal paradigm that underscores the inherent interconnectedness of modern society and the blurring boundaries between humans and non-humans. Our Annual Theme for the 2022–2023 Lecture Series examines the place and role of private law within this emerging legal paradigm. Through a sequence of lectures focused on key private law institutions and practices, we seek to identify, understand, and assess how private law interacts with its diverse ecosystems and contributes to shaping socio-economic and political relations among...
Private law has often been conceived as a timeless, universal project — a project whose appeal stems from its stability. Yet, since the Industrial Revolution, grand socio-economic transformations have drawn private law into the whirl of time. As the legal framework of socio-economic activities, private law shapes the socio-economic, cultural, and ecological environments in which these activities unfold and is at the same time shaped by such realities.
Since the social function of private law is in flux, so too are its basic notions, doctrines and institutions in continuous need of justification. The 2023–2024 ACT Lecture Series asks how...
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The question of value(s) is high up on the agenda, not least in private law. In times of significant technological, social, ecological, and geopolitical shifts, established conceptions of value and values as an appealing terrain of orientation are being challenged, reasserted, or transformed. The 2024–2025 ACT Lecture Series reflects upon the place and role of private law in these shifting scenarios. It asks whether and how private law norms, doctrines, and institutions are both driving and responding to emerging conflicts among different value(s). What can or should be seen as the value(s) of private law? Is a monistic conception of value tenable in pluralistic societies, and how can pluralistic conceptions of value hold in times of polarisation? ...
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This lecture series explores the evolving frontiers of private law through the lens of interfacing — as both a metaphor and a method. Private law today no longer operates in isolation as a self-contained normative system; it is continuously shaped by its encounters with adjacent domains. These include not only other legal fields but also the broader social, technological, and economic environments, where private law intersects with digital infrastructures, social movements, climate exigencies, financial architectures or circular economy imperatives. The concept of interfacing, originally drawn from textile production where an 'interface' denotes the inner layer used to join and give form to separate fabrics, foregrounds these seams of connection. It invites scholars...
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