Part of the market-leading Landmark Cases series, this book brings together leading experts in company law to analyse the the landmark cases in company law which have shaped and defined the field.

Drawing on a range of diverse methods and a multi-disciplinary orientation, the book explains the past, present, and future of company law as well as its shape, structure, and trajectory.

Company law is now understood to be a creature of statute law. The Companies Act of 2006 is a monumental piece of legislative work. Cases, however, played a central role in creating, establishing, and influencing legal ideas that were later enshrined within pieces of legislation.

To identify the landmark cases in company law, the book develops an original, democratic, and objective method. It undertakes a citation analysis of cases used by 5 leading English company law textbooks. Highly cited cases are widely understood to be central to the company law curriculum. Once these cases have been identified, they are examined by leading scholars in company law. The analysis that follows sheds some much needed light on how, why, and when historic rules came into being. This contextual analysis is missing from the original law reports as well as the legislation that we see in operation today.

It follows that these novel accounts of the roots of company law push beyond a simplistic narration of the case and proffer a new explanation for why legal rules took the shape that they did. Other archaeological studies also provide a fresh account of the case. Such an excavation informs the reader about legal advisors or the parties in the suit to explain why the litigation arose in this particular way, manner, or form.

Victoria Barnes is Reader in Commercial Law at Queen's University Belfast, UK.
Sally Wheeler is Professor of Law and VC Designate at Birkbeck, University of London, UK.