Obligations XI: Harvard Law School, July 2025

Private Law Inside and Out

The Eleventh Biennial Conference on the Law of Obligations will be held at Harvard Law School from July 8–11, 2025. The conference will be co-hosted by Harvard Law School and Melbourne Law School, and will be co-convened by John Goldberg, Andrew Robertson and Henry Smith. Obligations XI will be the first conference in the Obligations series to be held in the United States.

The conference theme is intended to provoke discussion about the inside and outside of private law. The conference will focus on the contrast between ‘internalist’ and ‘externalist’ perspectives on the law in this field. It will also consider the boundaries and relationships between private law and morality, private law and economic efficiency, and private law and other policy goals. A central aspiration of this iteration of Obligations is to give private law scholars working in different intellectual traditions an opportunity to identify previously underappreciated overlaps and synergies, and thereby help to break down methodological barriers to an improved understanding of the field.

The call for papers for this conference is closed. The conference website is now accepting registrations.