Regius Professor of Civil Law
Interests
At the moment I am particularly interested in enrichment claims arising from the theft of money: in the way in which such thefts are handled across a range of jurisdictions, and in the theoretical/normative justification for the law's response. 'Interference without Ownership (December 2021 - details below) deals with the mechanisms that South African law has developed in order to protect the victims of thefts out of bank accounts. 'Property | Unjust Enrichment' (October 2024 - details below) seeks a doctrinal explanation for Lipkin Gorman v Karpnale in the German law of unjustified enrichment. 'Chasing, Lying and Persuading: D 47.2.52.19 – 24 in Context' (December 2024 - details below) considers the concept of theft in Roman law (and the theft of incorporeals in particular) through the lens of Ulpian's Edictal Commentary. At the moment I am working on a piece that offers a theoretical justification for enrichment by taking or interference, based on the text of the WA Wilson Memorial Lecture at Edinburgh Law School ('In Defence of Ignorance') that I delivered in November 2024.
Danie Visser (UCT) and I have just finished a piece entitled 'Constitutionalising the law of unjustified enrichment' for the 2025 issue of the South African journal Constitutional Court Review. It considers in particular the decision of South African Constitutional Court in Greater Tzaneen Municipality v Bravospan, handed down in October 2024, and argues that the relationship between the South African Constitution and the common law of unjustified enrichment is and should be one of mutual beneficiation and renewal.
CV / Biography
Helen Scott studied classics and law at the University of Cape Town before coming to Oxford to do the BCL in 1999. She completed her DPhil in 2005, taking up a tutorial fellowship at St Catherine's College in the same year.
She then returned to South Africa, spending almost a decade at the University of Cape Town as senior lecturer, associate professor, and (from 2014) full professor. She served as head of the Department of Private Law between 2014 and 2017.
In 2017 she moved back to England, taking up a tutorial fellowship at Lady Margaret Hall as well as a titular professorship in the Oxford Law Faculty. She was elected Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge in 2022.
Her research concerns doctrinal law (mainly English and South African) as well as Roman law and civilian legal history, and spans a wide range of subject matter: not only the law of unjust/unjustified enrichment and tort/delict, but also the wider law of obligations, property and trusts.
She is Chair of Part II Examiners for the Law Tripos and General Editor of the Cambridge Law Journal.
