Biography:
Joshua Getzler teaches legal history, trusts, property theory, and Roman law. In his modern legal research he works on fiduciaries, trusts, investment and finance, and increasingly, banking and corporate law. In his historical research he is working on the relationships of public finance and private banking and investment, and the evolution of property, trust, corporate and charitable forms, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He is also interested in the history of the judiciary, and has been involved in large research projects on imperial law and native title. His first degrees in law and history were taken at the Australian National University in Canberra, and his doctorate in Oxford, as a member of Balliol and Nuffield Colleges. He has taught and researched at the Australian National University, the Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, the University of Chicago, and at the University of Pennsylvania. Most recently he has been serving as Global Professor of Law at New York University. He maintains links to Australia as Conjoint Professor of Law at the University of New South Wales and as an Overseas Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law. He serves on the editorial board of the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies and the Journal of Equity, and he is co-editor of the American Journal of Legal History and the OUP monograph series Oxford Legal History. He is an associate member of Cornerstone Barristers, Gray’s Inn, an academic member of the Chancery Bar Association, and is a trustee of the Selden Society for English legal history. He has served as counsel and adviser in a number of complex transnational cases in public and private law.
Representative and recent publications:
- The Common Law: A Very Short Introduction (forthcoming Oxford University Press 2026)
- A History of Water Rights at Common Law (Oxford University Press 2004, 2006) (Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship, 2005)
- ‘What Do Corporations Do?’ in D Gindis (ed.), Governing Corporate Knowledge Commons (Cambridge University Press 2025)
- ‘Equity, legal coding, and the foundations of banking: Foley v Hill (1838-48)’ in D Foster and C Mitchell (eds.), Essays on the History of Equity (Hart Publishing 2025)
- ‘Motive and Malice Prepensed’ in J Sampson and S Tofaris (eds.), Essays in Law and History for David Ibbetson: Querella (Hart Publishing 2024)
- ‘Corporate Torts in England: Limiting Liability by Capacity’ in E Bant (ed.), The Culpable Corporate Mind (Hart Publishing 2023)
- ‘Ownership and Control of Fresh Water in Common Law Cultures’ (2023) 33 Western Legal History 49
- Judiciaries’ in P Cane and H Kumarasingham (eds.), The Cambridge Constitutional History of the United Kingdom, Volume 1: Exploring the Constitution (Cambridge University Press 2023)
- Laying the axe to the root of the tree? Shielding a co-trustee from liability’ in J Goudkamp, PS Davies and S Douglas (eds.), Defences in Equity (Hart Publishing 2018
- ‘Magna Carta Chapters 4 and 5 and the Origins of Accountability’ in C Macmillan and C Smith (eds.), Challenges to Authority and the Recognition of Rights (Cambridge University Press 2018
- (with Alexandra Whelan), ‘Common Law and the Constraint of Financial Markets: Credit Rating Agencies as a Test Case’ in Kit Barker, Karen Fairweather and Ross Grantham (eds), Private Law in the 21st Century (Hart Publishing 2016)
- ‘Frederic William Maitland – Trust and Corporation’ (2016) 35 University of Queensland Law Journal 171
- ‘Interpretation, Evidence, and the Discovery of Contractual Intention’ in S Degeling, J Edelman and J Goudkamp (eds), Contracts in Commercial Law (Thomson 2016)
- ‘Law, Self-Interest, and the Smithian Conscience’ in Maksymilian Del Mar and Michael Lobban (eds), Law in Theory and History: New Essays on a Neglected Dialogue (Hart Publishing 2016)
- ‘Lord Tenterden’s 1832 Prescription Act: Why Was it Passed, and Was it a Failure?’ in JH Dondorp, DJ Ibbetson and EJH Schrage (eds), Prescription and Limitation (Duncker und Humblodt 2016)
- ‘Personality and Capacity: Lessons from Legal History’ in Timothy Bonyhady (ed), Finn’s Law: An Australian Justice (Federation Press 2016)
- ‘Ascribing and Limiting Fiduciary Obligations: Understanding the Operation of Consent’ in Andrew S. Gold & Paul B. Miller (ed), Philosophical Foundations of Fiduciary Law (Oxford University Press 2014)
- ‘Faith, Trust, and Charity’ in AS Burrows, D Johnston and R Zimmermann (eds.), Judge and Jurist: Essays in Memory of Lord Rodger of Earlsferry (Oxford University Press 2013) View
- Getzler J, ‘Morice v Bishop of Durham (1805)’ in C Mitchell and P Mitchell (eds.), Landmark Cases in Equity (Hart Publishing 2012) View
- Getzler J, ‘Assignment of Future Property and Preferences’ in P Ridge and J Glister (eds.), Fault Lines in Equity (Hart Publishing 2012)
- ‘”As If.” Accountability and Counterfactual Trust’ (2011) 91(3) Boston University Law Review 973
- ‘Richard Epstein, strict liability, and the history of torts’ (2010) 3(1) Journal of Tort Law 1
- , ‘Rumford Market and the Genesis of Fiduciary Obligations’ in A BURROWS and A Rodger (eds.), Mapping the Law: Essays in Memory of Peter Birks (Oxford University Press 2009)
- ‘Transplantation and mutation in Anglo-American trust law’ (2009) 10(2) Theoretical Inquiries in Law 355
- ‘Fiduciary Investment in the Shadow of Financial Crisis: Was Lord Eldon Right?’ (2009) 3 Journal of Equity 219
- ‘Plural ownership, funds, and the aggregation of wills’ (2008) 10(1) Theoretical Inquiries in Law 241
- ‘ASIC v Citigroup: Bankers’ conflict of interest and the contractual exclusion of fiduciary duties’ (2007) 2 Journal of Equity 62
- ‘Use of Force in Protecting Property’ (2006) 7(1) Theoretical Inquiries in Law 131
- ‘The Role of Security over Future and Circulating Capital: Evidence from the British Economy circa 1850-1920’ in J Getzler and J PAYNE (eds.), Company Charges: Spectrum and Beyond (Oxford University Press 2006)
- ‘Property, Personality, and Violence’ in T Endicott, J Getzler and E Peel (eds.), Properties of Law: Essays in Honour of Jim Harris (Oxford University Press 2006)
- )with Mike Macnair), ‘The Firm as an Entity before the Companies Acts’, Adventures of the Law: Proceedings of the Sixteenth British Legal History Conference (Four Courts Press, Dublin 2005)
- ‘Am I My Beneficiary’s Keeper? Fusion and Loss-Based Fiduciary Remedies’ in S Degeling and J Edelman (eds.), Equity in Commercial Law (Thomson (LBC), Sydney 2005)
- ‘Law, History, and the Social Sciences: Intellectual Traditions of Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-century Europe’ in M Lobban and A Lewis (eds.), Law and History (Oxford University Press 2004)
- ‘Roman and English Prescription for Incorporeal Property’ in J Getzler (ed.), Rationalizing Property, Equity and Trusts: Essays in Honour of Edward Burn (Lexis-Nexis Butterworths 2003)
- ‘Duty of Care’ in P Birks and A Pretto (eds.), Breach of Trust (Hart Publishing 2002)
- ‘The Fate of the Civil Jury in Late Victorian England: Malicious Prosecution as a Test Case (revised version)’ in J W Cairns and G McLeod (eds.), ’The Dearest Birth Right of the People of England’: The Jury in the History of the Common Law (Hart Publishing, Oxford 2002)
- ‘Patterns of Fusion’ in P Birks (ed.), The Classification of Obligations (Oxford University Press 1997)
- ‘Judges and Hunters: Law and Economic Conflict in the English Countryside, 1800-60’ in C Brooks and M Lobban (eds.), Communities and Courts in Britain 1150-1900 (Hambledon Press 1997)
- ‘Theories of Property and Economic Development’ (1996) 26(4) Journal of Interdisciplinary History 639
- ‘Unconscionable Conduct and Unjust Enrichment as Grounds for Judicial Intervention’ (1990) 16(2) Monash University Law Review 283
