Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion

A Pioneer in Receivables Finance and Insolvency Law

In the field of receivables finance law, few scholars have had the lasting impact that Professor Fidelis Oditah KC, SAN has achieved. I first encountered his seminal work during the early stages of my PhD. My research had an English law focus, so I was at the Taylor Library (the University's law library) one day, poring over leading textbooks on English commercial law, including what is now Goode and McKendrick on Commercial Law and Goode and Gullifer on Legal Problems of Credit and Security, seeking clarity on a topic on securitisation - a form of receivables financing which, quite frankly, could easily overwhelm a first year PhD student. I was struck by how often these authoritative texts referenced Professor Oditah's work, particularly his book Legal Aspects of Receivables Financing, in discussions surrounding the complexities of receivables as secured assets. It quickly became clear to me that he was a reference point in the field.

His book was first published in July 1991, five years after the UK Insolvency Act 1986 came into force. This Act introduced revolutionary changes to UK corporate insolvency law, including the introduction of an administrative procedure for failing companies. Professor Oditah's book was the first to comprehensively examine how this new corporate rescue regime impacted receivables financing - an issue that had far-reaching consequences for businesses relying on this vital funding tool.

Beyond academia, Professor Oditah's work has had a profound impact on legal practice, with judges and practitioners in the UK and abroad frequently relying on his scholarship. His insights have shaped legal interpretations and influenced key judicial decisions in several high-profile cases, demonstrating both the practical relevance and authority of his work. Some notable UK cases where his contributions have been essential include:

• Agnew and Another v Commissioner of Inland Revenue [2001] UKPC 28, paras 39-41;
• Hill v Spread Trustee Co Ltd [2006] EWCA Civ 542, para 112 onwards;
• In Re Bank of Credit and Commerce International S.A. (No. 8) [1996] Ch 245, 258 and 259;
• Cosco Bulk Carrier Co Ltd v Armada Shipping SA [2011] EWHC 216, para 27 onwards;
• Sharp v Blank [2019] EWHC 3096, para 975 onwards;
• Watford Control Instruments Limited v Colin Brown [2023] EWHC 32, para 75 onwards.

These cases, along with the sustained citations in leading academic texts, reflect the enduring relevance of his work, even decades after its publication. While an updated edition of his book would undoubtedly be welcomed, his scholarship remains relevant today and continues to shape understanding and thinking in this area.

I celebrate and deeply appreciate the contributions of this remarkable scholar!

For Black History Month I would like to highlight a lecture called “Race in Contract Law”, which was delivered in 2022 at Michigan Law School by Professor Dylan Penningroth, who is a Professor of Law and History, University of California at Berkeley, as well as the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of American History. Professor Penningroth's talk is fascinating as it shows how an area of law seemingly unconnected with race - such as contract - can actually be highly engaged with it. In this lecture, Professor Penningroth highlights how, historically, many African Americans vigorously used contract law, thus contributing to the history of American contract law. This talk is extremely useful for thinking about how socio-economic categories and factors (in this case, race) engage with and contribute to private law. You can find this great talk here:

Dr Thema Bryant-Davis has introduced into legal scholarship a strong and important voice on the trauma of racism. Although primarily grounded in the psychological literature, Bryant-Davis offers crucial insights for legal scholars seeking to develop a more nuanced concept of trauma, particularly in relation to race and discrimination.

Bryant-Davis's work challenges traditional legal understandings of harm. In 'Racist Incident-Based Trauma' (2005), she and her colleague Ocampo provide a framework for understanding how seemingly isolated incidents can contribute to much broader traumatic experiences. She further develops this in 'Healing Requires Recognition: The Case for Race-Based Traumatic Stress' (2007) emphasising the cumulative and often invisible nature of racial trauma. Her work highlights the limitations of current legal frameworks in recognising such experiences as actionable harms. And by focusing on the sociocultural context of trauma, Bryant-Davis puts into sharp focus the need for any future legal concept of trauma to be both universally applicable and sensitive to diverse lived experiences.

Not only does Bryant-Davis's work bridge the gap between psychological and legal understandings, but her work also connects scholarship with the people it affects. To fully appreciate her impact, consider a part of her story, as told by herself:

“Dr Thema also utilizes sacred dance and spoken word in therapy, community forums, and faith communities. A member of the Association of Black Psychologists, she incorporates culturally based interventions in her teaching, research, and practice. Dr Thema is the host of the Homecoming Podcast, a mental health podcast to facilitate your journey home to your authentic self.”

It is certainly worth a listen .

Ms Bensouda is the former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, the first Black person and first woman to hold the post. She was elected in 2004 and served until 2012. One of her major contributions to international criminal justice was to seek a ruling from the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court on the territorial jurisdiction of the ICC in Palestine in 2019. The Chamber confirmed that the ICC had jurisdiction over the Occupied Territories in 2020, three years before the Hamas atrocities on 7 October 2023 and the 2023-4 ground incursion by the Israeli Defence Force, which is still ongoing. This recognition of jurisdiction, as well as the preliminary examination which began well before then, allowed for an expeditious consideration of the current situation before the ICC, and the application for the release of arrest warrants earlier this year.

Professor Akande is the Chichele Professor of Public International Law at the University of Oxford and the United Kingdom's intended nominee as Judge at the International Court of Justice. Professor Akande is a highly influential scholar across various areas of public international law and his work has contributed extensively to the development of law relating to cyberoperations and international humanitarian law. 

F.K.A. Allotey, also known as the man with the many firsts, was a Ghanaian mathematician and physicist born in 1932 in Saltpond, Ghana. His passion for science was ignited by reading mathematics and science books from his father's bookshop as a little boy. He attended Ghana National College; a school established by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in July 1948. The school was established for students who the colonial administration had expelled from Addisadel and St. Augustine's Colleges in Cape Coast for demonstrating for the release of Kwame Nkrumah and colleagues (The Big Six) from prison. Allottey became the school's only first-year student in its foundation year. Upon completion, he travelled alone to Liberia at the tender age of 19 to obtain a British passport to enable him to travel to England, where he later studied at Borough Polytechnic and the Imperial College in London. Allotey earned a Ph.D. in Mathematical Physics from Princeton University in 1966, becoming the first Black African accepted to Princeton's Math Department. His doctoral research focused on the effect of electron-hole scattering on X-ray emission spectra. Upon returning to Ghana, he resumed teaching at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), where he founded Africa's first department of computer science and was appointed as KNUST's first full professor of mathematics, serving multiple terms as Dean of the Faculty of Science, and becoming the Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1978.

He was deeply committed to advancing science education in Africa, helping to establish the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences and working with the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). He was a founding member of the African Academy of Sciences, the founding president of the African Physical Society, and President of the Ghana Institute of Physics. He won a Prince Philip Gold Award for his work on soft X-ray spectroscopy, through which he developed a method, “Allotey Formalism,” (a constant) to determine how matter works in outer space. This method continues to provide a theoretical basis for understanding the behaviour of electrons in atoms during a chemical reaction. He was also instrumental in UNESCO's declaration of the International Year of Physics in 2005 and the International Year of Light in 2015. Allotey passed away in 2017 at the age of 85. His contributions to mathematics, physics, and education have left a lasting impact, inspiring generations of students and researchers across Africa.

Margo A. Bagley is an outstanding scholar, policy maker and thought leader in the field of international intellectual property law and knowledge production. Margo has made groundbreaking contributions in particular in relation to patent disclosure and traditional knowledge, industrial designs and Digital Sequence Information.  She is an incredibly supportive and also stimulating colleague; intellectual property, and the intellectual property community, is in by far a better place because of her.       

Professor Obiora Chinedu Okafor is the Edward B. Burling Chair in International Law and Institutions at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Professor Okafor has served as the UN Independent Expert on Human Rights and International Solidarity and Chairperson of the United Nations Human Rights Council Advisory Committee. In these two capacities, he has authored over ten UN Reports. He has also served as an expert panellist for the United Nations Security Council's Counter-Terrorism Committee, the United Nations Working Group on People of African Descent. He has also worked as a consultant or adviser for several international organizations, government agencies, national parliaments, and law firms.

Professor Okafor has published extensively in the fields of international law, including on international human rights law and immigration/refugee law, and third world approaches to international law. He is the author of several influential texts, including:

• Refugee Law after 9/11: Sanctuary and Security in Canada and the United States (Vancouver: The University of British Columbia Press, 2020);
• The African Human Rights System, Activist Forces, and International Institutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007);
• Legitimizing Human Rights NGOs: Lessons from Nigeria (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2006); and
• Re-Defining Legitimate Statehood (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 2000).

He has co-edited three other books: Legitimate Governance in Africa: International and Domestic Legal Perspectives (The Hague: Kluwer, 1999); Humanizing Our Global Order: Essays in Honour of Ivan Head (University of Toronto Press, 2003); and The Third World and International Order: Law, Politics and Globalization (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2003). He has edited four special journal issues and published over one hundred journal articles, book chapters and other scholarly writings.

Professor Okafor was the founding General Editor, of the Transnational Human Rights Review and later served as its Co-Editor-in-Chief. He also sits on the editorial advisory board of a number of scholarly periodicals, including the International Journal of Law in Context, the Journal of African Law, the African Human Rights Law Journal, the Nigerian Yearbook of International Law, and the TWAIL Review.

Professor Kevin E. Davis is the Beller Family Professor of Business Law at New York University School of Law. His research focuses on the relationship between law and development, with a particular interest in anti-corruption. For me, his scholarship on governance indicators has been particularly influential. His work in this area has demystified the methods used by academics and development actors to code law; making these indicators accessible to lawyers and opening up space for academic lawyers to critically analyse the (a) appropriateness of the coding and (b) the veracity of the findings of empirical studies that employ these data sets to measure the relationship between governance factors and development outcomes. He has also produced a rich body of scholarship which questions the foundations of “law and development” project, reminding scholars of the need to question their baseline assumptions, not overstate their claims, and appreciate the myriad of socio-political factors that influence legal development. Some of my favourite works are:

• "What Can the Rule of Law Variable Tell Us About Rule of Law Reforms? ," 26 Mich. J. Int'l L. 141 (2004) 

• "Indicators as a Technology of Global Governance ," 46 Law & Soc'y Rev. 71 (2012)

• "Legal Indicators: The Power of Quantitative Measures of Law ," 10 Ann. Rev. L. Soc. Sci. 37 (2014) 

• "The Relationship Between Law and Development: Optimists Versus Skeptics ," 56 Am. J. Compar. L. 895 (2008)

• Governance by Indicators: Global Power Through Quantification and Rankings (Oxford University Press, 2012) (ed. with Angelina Fisher, Benedict Kingsbury and Sally Engle Merry)

Kader Asmal was appointed Minster for Water Affairs and Forestry in Nelson Mandela's first government. Quite a change for a law professor from Trinity College Dublin, where he had lectured for 27 years. He had, however, been teaching and practicing human rights law for years, combining education with action. As a law student in London, an exile form South Africa, he was founder of the anti-apartheid movement. In Ireland, he created and led numerous civil rights campaigns and international inquiries into human rights violations, contributing to his award in 1983 of the Prix Unesco for the advancement of human rights.

On returning to South Africa as a member of the ANC constitutional committee he was insistent on the inclusion of a bill of rights for the emerging rainbow nation. As a politician he was successful, getting on with people and getting the job done. His final government role was the South African Education Minister successfully implementing affirmative policies for black staff and students.

Kader Asmal taught me International Law. His lectures on the right of self-determination were memorable not only for his passion for the subject, but his clear enjoyment in passing on knowledge and inspiring students. He combined a lightness of touch and humour with a total and unswerving commitment to supporting human rights worldwide.

His positive and far-reaching impact and influence on his country, the world and his many, many students is recognised globally, but also now in our Aberdeen Law School Black History month project.

Law & Racial Injustice by Dr Bharat Malkani (Cardiff University)

Wednesday, 25 October 2023, 14:00 - 15:00

Event Organised by the School of Law Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Committees to commemorate Black History Month

Moderator: Dr Francesca Farrignton

A Conversation about Work-Life Balance with Margaret L Ross (Emeritus Professor in Law, University of Aberdeen) and Professor Angela J Black (Business School, University of Aberdeen).

Tuesday, 8 December 2020. 12:00 - 13:00 GMT.

Event Organised by the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committees of the School of Law and Business School.

Opening Remarks: Dr Titilayo Adebola, Ms Anne-Michelle Slater, Dr Qiang Cai and Mr Mark Whittington.

Moderator: Dr Eddy Wifa.

Centering Race in International Law by Professor James Thuo Gathii (Wing Tat-Lee Chair, Loyola University Chicago).

Thursday, 22 October 2020. 14:00 - 15:00 GMT

Event Organised by the School of Law Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Committees to commemorate Black History Month

Opening Remarks: Professor Greg Gordon.

Moderator: Dr Titilayo Adebola.