Adam Hofri obtained his DPhil from Oxford in 2007, specializing in trusts and legal history. Earlier he obtained a BMus in electronic music production from Berklee College of Music and an MA in intellectual history from Tel-Aviv University. He also graduated from law school and was a clerk at the Supreme Court of Israel. Since 2007 he has been teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, eventually becoming Montesquieu Chair in Comparative Law and Legal History. Adam joined the Allard School of Law on January 2023.
How did you first become interested in trusts?
I became interested in trusts when Professor Joshua Getzler of Oxford visited the law school where I was studying. Josh is charismatic, and I was swept away both by his personality and forceful delivery and by the intrinsic mysteriousness of trusts. Trusts law sometimes seems like a mysterious, oddly slippery body of law. It is practice-based, and can be only imperfectly captured by rules.
What are some of your favourite projects you have worked on?
While I have used sophisticated research methods such as coding a large database of trusts-themed legislation and then running regressions to find whether jurisdictions’ abolishing trust law’s long-time restrictions and protective norms has borne the hoped-for result of job creation (short answer: no), perhaps my favourite project was done using a primitive research method which I very much endorse: reading stuff, then thinking about it. The project was concerned with different jurisdictions’ view of the “irreducible core of trustee obligations” – those of trustees’ obligations that cannot be excluded. The contrast between trust law’s default position, burdening trustees with many heavy duties, and the reality of drafters excluding many of those duties has long piqued my interest. Add to that the fact that scholars’ and judges’ various statements of the contents of “irreducible core”, often made with utter confidence and few, if any, reservations, often conflict with each other. It appears different experts and judges have different views regarding the contents of this basic part of trusts law. The law functions, somehow, despite disagreements regarding its contents. I find this state of affairs fascinating, and hope to have done it justice in my “The Irreducible Cores of Trustee Obligations”, published in volume 139 of the Law Quarterly Review.
Are there any upcoming events you are a part of that you would like to share?
From April 5-7 I will host most of the world’s leading trust law scholars at Allard Hall for the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Trust Laws conference. The Conference will bring together most of the world's leading trust law academics to discuss almost every key topic in the current law of trusts. It is one stage in the process of producing the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Comparative Trust Laws, edited by Richard Nolan (York Law School, UK), Lusina Ho (Hong Kong University), Mark Bennett (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand) and Adam Hofri-Winogradow (Allard Law, UBC), and under contract with Oxford University Press. Each presentation will focus on a doctrinal, practical or theoretical topic, as dealt with under the laws of more than 30 countries around the world.
Published July 2023