Mrs Catherine Pedamon
I am Deputy Head of the LLM Course in International Commercial Law at Westminster Law School and a Senior Lecturer in Law. I was a Fulbright and French Foreign Ministry Scholar at Harvard Law School where I gained a Master of Laws majoring in Corporate Law. Before this I graduated in law with Honours from the University of Paris II (Panthéon-Assas) where I also obtained a postgraduate degree (DEA de droit privé) with Honours. I have also studied at the European University Institute in Florence. I am admitted to the New York and Paris bars.
I practised law with Sullivan & Cromwell (New York), Gide Loyrette Noel (Paris), and Allen & Overy (London). I moved on to academia to lecture at the University of Texas School of Law at Austin (Texas), before joining BPP College of Law to set up the LLM in International Business Law with Professor Barry Rider.
My fields of research are the Law of International Trade, Comparative Contract Law, Business and Human Rights/ ESG and International Corporate Governance.
I am a co-convenor with Maren Heidemann, IALS, and Joseph Lee, University of Exeter, on The Future of the Commercial Contract in Scholarship and Law Reform - an annual conference organised at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies or virtually. It gathered experts and practitioners in the commercial field and considered the interface between public and private law and the new frontiers of commercial law. I have lead research on hardship rules in commercial contract law from a comparative law perspective. One paper that I presented - The Paradoxes of the Theory of Imprevision in the new French Law of Contract - A judicial deterrent? - was published in the Amicus Curiae in January 2019. I also wrote a monograph on Hardship in Transnational Commercial Contracts with Professor Jason Chuah.
I also used to contribute to the Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime and symposia organised by the Embassy of France in the United Kingdom and the French judiciary. I was a Co-convenor of the Comparative Law section of the Society of Legal Scholars from 2017 to 2020.
I have recently written an article on the Impact of Covid-19 on Contractual Performance in the European Review of Private Law (2021) with Radovesta Vassileva, UCL. It follows another publication - The 'Duty to Cooperate' in English and French Contract Law: One Channel, Two Distinct Views - with Radovesta Vassileva, UCL in 2019 in the Journal of Comparative Law. This article examines the role and scope of the 'duty to cooperate' as well as its relationship with good faith in English and French law in the light of Yam Seng.
I presented a paper on AI and Corporate Governance in a conference on AI in the Financial Markets: Innovation, Law and New Ecosytems, in 2018 at The Lansdowne Club and at Liverpool John Moores University in 2019.
I am researching in the fields of International Trade Law, Law of International Sales, Comparative Contract Law, Business and Human Rights, ESG and International Corporate Governance.
I am currently working on a series of articles on Comparative Contract Law as France has implemented an overhaul of its law of obligations.
I wrote a comparative paper between French and American Corporate Law with respect to the fiduciary duties of Controlling Shareholders under the direction of Professor Vagts whilst studying at Harvard Law School.