Professor Laura Macgregor delivers Ben Beinart Memorial Lecture at the University of Cape Town

On 18 September, Professor Laura Macgregor, Professor of Commercial Contract Law at the Edinburgh Law School, gave a guest lecture at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. The lecture formed part of the Ben Beinart Memorial Lecture series, inaugurated by the UCT in 2003.

Prof Macgregor's lecture explored the concept of a partnership having a separate legal personality, comparing Scots law and South African law. The lecture proposed that, although the two legal systems adopt a differing stance on the existence of legal personality, there is more common ground than might first appear. Many of the similarities between the two legal systems are a product of shared history, both systems having been influenced by the medieval ius commune.

In the lecture, Prof Macgregor was able to assess whether, in each legal system, the influence of English law had produced positive or negative effects, focussing in particular on the continuity of the partnership. This is a practical issue which impacts on the way in which parties contract with partnerships on a long term basis.