Robert Webster
USC Gould School of Law

Robert Webster is an English barrister. Following his education in England and France, he was called to the bar by the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple and was awarded both the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Scholarship and a Duke of Edinburgh Prize by his Inn. He began his career by serving as marshal (law clerk) to Sir Joseph Donaldson Cantley, O.B.E. – one of England’s most celebrated High Court judges.

He teaches business organizations, contracts, gifts, wills and trusts and contract drafting, analysis and negotiations.

Webster has combined practice with an academic career that began at London’s Inns of Court School of Law (now The City Law School) where he pioneered the school’s international outreach and was responsible for the introduction of specialist skills-training programs for aspirant barristers in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. He has taught and lectured worldwide and has contributed to textbooks on both criminal and civil litigation, having acquired considerable trial experience in both those arenas during his career.

He has advised an international clientele on a wide range of matters relating to European Union law and media law and has lectured extensively on international business negotiations, "doing business in Europe," and the labyrinthine problems associated with Brexit.

He was named "Professor of the Year" four times by the students and alumni of Whittier Law School where he spent a decade teaching a rich variety of domestic and international subjects while serving, firstly, as the director of the school’s Center for International and Comparative Law and, thereafter, as its director of international development.

He has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law — teaching business organizations and criminal law — and has taught at, among other institutions, the University of Salzburg, in its executive MBA program, and Boston University School of Law's London-based legal institute.

He has unparalleled experience in designing and directing innovative overseas programs devoted to entertainment law and media law, as well as advocacy and negotiations in cooperation with academia, the judiciary, practitioners and the diplomatic corps in Austria, France, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom.

He remains a member of his London chambers.

He is a regular contributor to the media on British and European affairs and the British monarchy.

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance
September 25, 2023
Re: Jonathan Barnett

Jonathan Barnett wrote an op-ed piece, based on his forthcoming paper to be published in the University of Chicago Business Law Review, about antitrust regulations and the effects it has on merger review processes. "This inquiry raises serious concerns that legislators and regulators have embarked on a course of action that has an insufficient factual foundation in the digital markets on which competition policymakers have focused," Barnett wrote.

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Jonathan Barnett
August, 2023

"Killer Acquisitions Reexamined: Economic Hyperbole in the Age of Populist Antitrust," University of Chicago Business Law Review.

Robin Craig
August, 2023

Robin Craig's article, "The Regulatory Shifting Baseline Syndrome: Vaccines, Generational Amnesia, and the Shifting Perception of Risk in Public Law Regimes," 21 Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics 1-60 (July 2022), was featured in The Regulatory Review on August 31, 2023.

Edward McCaffery
August, 2023

"The Paradox of Taxing the Rich," Florida Tax Review (Forthcoming, Fall 2023).