McGill Law Journal ~ Revue de droit de McGill
INTRODUCTION
Lionel Smith*
The papers in this special issue of the McGill Law Journal are some of
the fruits of an extended research project on trusts in civilian and mixed
legal systems. This project began in 2007 at the Quebec Research Centre
of Private and Comparative Law, which in 2012 was renamed the Paul-
Andr Crpeau Centre for Private and Comparative Law, in homage to its
founding director, who passed away in 2011 after a distinguished career
spanning more than fifty years at McGills Faculty of Law.
During 20082009, the centre hosted an international series of civil
law workshops, the six papers from which were published in 2012 by
Cambridge University Press as Re-imagining the Trust: Trusts in Civil
Law.1 Then, in 2010, the centre hosted a large international conference,
The Worlds of the Trust / La fiducie dans tous ses tats. There was a
strong response to an international call for papers, and the conference in-
cluded a range of speakers and commentators from all over the world and
from all career stages, including a number of doctoral students. This led
to a volume of twenty-two essays, which will be published in 2013, again
by Cambridge University Press.2
Taking both collections together, six of the papers were written in
French, and these were translated into English for the Cambridge publi-
cations. I am absolutely delighted that, with the cooperation of the au-
thors, the support of the McGill Law Journal, and the permission of
Cambridge University Press, those papers now appear in their original
French in the pages of this special issue. (The English-language paper
that appears in this issue is published here for the first time.)
* James McGill Professor of Law and Director, Paul-Andr Crpeau Centre for Private
and Comparative Law.
Lionel Smith 2013
Citation: (2013) 58:4 McGill LJ 793 ~ Rfrence : (2013) 58 : 4 RD McGill 793
1 Lionel Smith, ed, Re-imagining the Trust: Trusts in Civil Law (Cambridge, UK: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2012).
2 Lionel Smith, ed, The Worlds of the Trust, Cambridge University Press [forthcoming in
August 2013].
(2013) 58:4
MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
794
The research project was supported by the Fonds de recherche du
QubecSocit et culture; the Research Assistance Program of Quebecs
Ministre du Dveloppement conomique, de
lInnovation et de
lExportation; the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada; the American College of Trusts and Estates Counsel Foundation;
and by McGill University and its Faculty of Law. On behalf of the centre,
I thank all of them for their assistance.
My hope is that the substantial published outcomes from this project
will generate a renewed interest in the comparative study of the law of
trusts.
