The scientific project behind the Private Law Consortium (PLC) is quite simple: to create a space for international academic exchange where scholars are free to discuss their research ideas.
Every scholar knows that academic debate is usually strictly structured around specific themes and projects. Research funding sources are increasingly directed toward applied research and less and less toward so-called basic research. Consequently, scientific meetings typically revolve around a research idea, bringing together experts in related topics with the goal of producing an output consistent with the initial project. This is the usual way in which academia operates and how research funding is allocated.
With the PLC, the decision was made to create a small island of freedom—an opportunity for academic exchange free from predetermined research inputs—to offer participating scholars a space for pure intellectual discussion, where they can share and debate their research ideas as freely as possible. The only constraint is that the subject of discussion should be (at least primarily) developed from the perspective that characterizes the way private law scholars conceive the law.
This led to the idea of organizing an annual event, structured over two days of research idea presentations, followed by discussions among participants. This event allows members of each group of private law scholars from participating law faculties to discuss and refine the research ideas presented to the rest of the consortium’s scholars attending the meeting.
Each participating faculty has a designated representative responsible for maintaining relationships with representatives from other participating faculties and selecting at least two scholars from their institution each year who are admitted to take part in the annual edition of the PLC.
The PLC event is hosted in turn each year by one of the participating faculties, which commits to covering the costs of the meeting venue, as well as meals and accommodation for participants during the two-day scientific exchange. However, travel expenses to reach the annual PLC conference location are borne by the scholars who decide to participate. This is the only way to ensure an economically sustainable structure for an annual event that does not receive dedicated funding. For the same reason, it has occasionally been decided to divide the two days of academic discussion at a PLC edition, allocating one day to presentations on freely chosen topics and another day dedicated to a theme selected by the hosting institution. This theme is, in turn, linked to a funding source available to the host institution, which helps contribute to covering the costs of the PLC.
Following this constitutive idea shared among scholars from the law faculties of Tel Aviv, Philadelphia, Harvard, McGill, Trento, and Oslo universities, the PLC held its inaugural edition at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv in 2013. Subsequent editions were hosted by:
the University of Pennsylvania in Penn Law School PLC 2014,
the McGill University in Montreal (2015),
the University of Oslo in Oslo (2016),
the University of Trento in Trento (2017),
the Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. (2018),
and again by Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv (2019).
Suspended during the pandemic, the PLC resumed its activities with a changed composition of participating institutions.
Philadelphia, Harvard, McGill, and Oslo exited, while City University of Hong Kong Law School, Durham Law School, Erasmus Law School in Rotterdam, and National University of Singapore Law School joined.
The first post-COVID edition was hosted by City University of Hong Kong Law in 2023 in Hong Kong.
In 2024, it was hosted by Durham Law School in Durham,
while the 2025 edition will be hosted by Erasmus Law School in Rotterdam.