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Staff Profile

Dr Derek Whayman

Lecturer in Law

Background

I was appointed lecturer in May 2016, but I have been at Newcastle Law School since September 2013 when I started my PhD. I have taught at the University of Leeds. I took a Senior Status LLM at Leeds where I won the academic prize for the best SS LLM in my year.

My research interests are, broadly, equity and property law.

Research

Research Interests

My research interests are, broadly, the doctrinal aspects of equity and property law. This draws in wider private law matters such as the law of contract, which interacts heavily with the equity. Equity is unusual in that we are seeing a vast number of doctrinal changes happening now. This can be contrasted with the law of contract whose major doctrines were settled in Victorian times.

Accordingly, my research has been focused on the many unstable parts of equity, such as account of profits for dishonest assistance and knowing receipt, the nature of the remedy for knowing receipt and the nature of tracing. My doctoral thesis, 'The Decline of the Axiomatic Method in Equity' concerned how equitable obligations have been recast as simple duties, rather than highly technical and regimented forms of liability such as 'fiduciary disabilities'.

My current projects include a monograph on the development and transformation of trust and fiduciary law, following my doctoral thesis. They also include an edited collection, Landmark Cases in Tracing, with co-editor Prof Katy Barnett of Melbourne University and a variety of contributors. The present status is that we are assembling a team of contributors before making a formal pitch to the publisher.

Teaching

I teach Equity & Trusts and the Law of Succession. I have previously taught Land Law, Contract Law, Legal Institutions and Method (LIM) and the Law of Secured Credit.

I am the author of Essential Cases: Equity & Trusts, published by Oxford University Press, now in its fourth edition.

Publications