The Private Law Consortium

The foundational point of the collaboration is six great law faculties. The point is to gather together diverse colleagues from a small number of faculties from around the world to build links that will be fruitful and abiding. According to QS World University rankings for law in 2015, Harvard (1), McGill (25) and Penn (29) are among the very best law schools in the world. Bar Ilan, Oslo and Trento are leading law schools in their own right in their own countries. In all of these cases these faculties are highly regarded for the substance of their programs and the general quality of their professors and students. All are renowned for private law and comparative law. Moreover, it is valuable that two of the schools are common law faculties (Penn, Harvard), two are civil law faculties (Trento, Oslo), while two come from mixed common-civil traditions (McGill, Bar Ilan). The point of only having six schools is to develop profound and meaningful intellectual relationships. This simply cannot be done in a larger format; with only six schools, everyone gets to present over a rotation of a few years. The goal of this Consortium is to meet regularly, once a year, with host schools bearing the financial burden. So far we have maintained this tradition, despite the costs of international travel. Having the conference annually, with such a small groups accelerates other forms of contact during the rest of the year. The quality of the schools ensures a uniformly high level of work from both students and professors. Oslo 2016: This is the fourth year of the collaboration. Former meeting were held at Bar Ilan (2013), University of Pennsylvania (2014), McGill will host in 2015 and Trento in 2017. The conference is the format of a workshop, where leading scholars in their fields present and discuss cutting edge research papers in progress.