Fall 26′ Symposia – Common Law Judging and the Great Tradition
Presented by New England Law Review
October 29, 2026 at 4:30pm EST
Join us for an engaging event featuring Richard Hyland, author of Common Law Judging and the Great Tradition. Hyland, alongside his fellow panelists, will discuss the book’s central themes, including the role of the common law tradition in shaping judicial decision-making.
Drawing from the ideas explored in the book, the conversation will move beyond the usual debates and synthesize a coherent approach from the varied strands of common law writing—from Blackstone, Holmes, and Cardozo to the innovative thinking of Duncan Kennedy, Mary Joe Frug, and Patricia Williams. Common Law Judging and the Great Tradition offers a rich experience for scholars, students, and those with or without a law degree, who have ever wondered how law works and what it means to practice law well. Together, the panel will explore how the common law tradition continues to shape the way we understand the practice of law today.
Professor Richard Hyland
Professor Richard Hyland is Distinguished Professor at the Rutgers Law School in Camden, New Jersey. He is one of the country’s leading scholars in the fields of commercial and comparative law.
In 2009, Oxford University Press published his book about the law governing the giving and recovering of gifts, Gifts: A Study in Comparative Law. It was the first wide-ranging comparative study of the topic in any language.
Professor Hyland has also taught as a visiting professor at universities in Barcelona, Berlin, Freiburg, Graz, Hanoi, Kyoto, Lisbon, and Paris, and as a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Tokyo and Beijing. He is a member of the Order of the Coif, the American Law Institute, the International Academy of Comparative Law, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
For his teaching, Rutgers law students chose Professor Hyland Teacher of the Year. He has also received the Camden Provost’s Teaching Excellence Award and the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for a Lifetime of Distinguished Teaching.
Professor Hyland attended Harvard College and the UC Berkeley Law School. He also holds a DEA (Diplôme d’études approfondies) in French private law from the University of Paris 2 and an MFA in fiction from the Columbia University School of the Arts. Prior to joining Rutgers, Professor Hyland worked at the law firm of Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., and taught at the University of Miami Law School.
Panelists
Richard Hyland
Aditi Bagchi
Charles Barzun
Felipe Jiménez
Common Law Judging and the Great Tradition