My private law research focuses on the proper justification of private (contract and tort) law doctrines and tries to explain how our considered views about moral justification, responsibility and social justice bear on general theories of private law and on the way particular private law doctrines should be understood and applied.

My international law research focuses on the nature and the 'sources' of international law, especially on the role of normative propositions in determining what international law requires or allows. I am particularly interested in questions about the normative force of customary international practices and the character of the reasons that such practices give rise to for international agents.

LL204 Advanced Torts

LL305 Jurisprudence

LL452E Tort Law: Foundations and Contemporary Issues

Private Law and the Value of Choice (Hart Publishing: 2017)

Some say that private law ought to correct wrongs or to protect rights. Others say that private law ought to maximise social welfare or to minimise social cost. In this book, Emmanuel Voyiakis claims that private law ought to make our responsibilities to others depend on the opportunities we have to affect how things will go for us. Drawing on the work of HLA Hart and TM Scanlon, he argues that private law principles that require us to bear certain practical burdens in our relations with others are justified as long as those principles provide us with certain opportunities to choose what will happen to us, and having those opportunities is something we have reason to value.The book contrasts this 'value-of-choice' account with its wrong- and social cost-based rivals, and applies it to familiar problems of contract and tort law, including whether liability should be negligence-based or stricter; whether insurance should matter in the allocation of the burden of repair; how far private law should make allowance for persons of limited capacities; when a contract term counts as 'unconscionable' or 'unfair'; and when tort law should hold a person vicariously liable for another's mistakes.

click here for publisher's site

• 'Benefit, Acceptance, and Opposability: A Response to Edward Song'  Journal of Moral Philosophy (2024) 1-10
• ‘The moral wrong in partisan gerrymandering - a review’ in Fasone, Mostacci, and Romeo (eds.) Judicial Review and Electoral Law in a Global Perspective. Hart Studies in Comparative Public Law (Hart, 2024) 25-46
• 'Causation and Opportunity in Tort' Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (2017) 38 (1), 26-47.
• 'A Disaggregative View of Customary International Law-Making' 29 LeidenJournal of International Law (2016) 365-388
• 'Rights, Social Justice and Responsibility in the Law of Tort' 35(2) UNSW Law Journal, Thematic Issue: Critical Perspectives on Social Justice (2012) 449-469
• 'Contract Law and Reasons of Social Justice' 25(2) Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence (2012) pp.393-416
• 'Estoppel' in Carty T. (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online: International Law (2012, New York: Oxford University Press)
• 'International Law, Interpretative Fidelity and the Hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer'  54 German Yearbook of International Law (2011) 385-420
• 'Customary International Law and the Place of Normative Considerations' 55 American Journal of Jurisprudence (2010) 163-201
• 'International Treaties' in Cali B. (ed.), International Law for International Relations (OUP, 2010) 99-121
• ‘Do General Principles Fill ‘Gaps’ in International Law?’ 14 Austrian Review of European & International Law (2009), [FORTHCOMING November 2011 ]
• 'The Great Illusion: Tort Law and Exposure to Danger of Physical Harm', 72 Modern Law Review (2009) 909-935
• 'Unconscionability and the value of choice' in Kenny-Fox-Devenney (eds.), Unconscionability in European Private Financial Transactions: Protecting the Vulnerable (CUP, 2010) 77-98
• 'Voting in the General Assembly as Evidence of Customary International Law?' in Allen-Xanthaki (eds.), Reflections on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Hart Publishing, 2010) 209-224.
• 'International Law and the Objectivity of Value' 22(1) Leiden Journal of International Law (2009) 1-28
• 'Of Foxes and Hedgehogs: Some Thoughts on the Relationship Between WTO Law and General International Law' in Picker et al (eds.), International Economic Law: The State and Future of the Discipline (Hart, 2008) 106-119
• 'Contracts, Promises and the Demands of Moral Agency' in Freeman (ed.), Law & Philosophy: Current Legal Issues (OUP, 2007) 288-303
• ‘Access to Court v. State Immunity’ 52 International & Comparative Law Quarterly (2003) 297-332