- Commercial, Corporate and Financial Law
- European and Comparative Law
- Climate Change, Energy Policy and Sustainability
- International Law at Westminster
About me
Dr Catherine Pédamon, PhD (Westminster), LLM (Harvard Law School), DEA (Paris Panthéon-Assas), SFHEA, is Director of the Commercial, Corporate and Financial Law Research Group and a Senior Lecturer in Law at Westminster Law School, University of Westminster. She is Director of the London Centre for Commercial and Financial Law, Co-Editor of the Springer series LCF Studies in Commercial and Financial Law, and Co-Rapporteur of the International Law Association Committee on Business and Human Rights. She is admitted to the Paris and New York bars.
Catherine holds a PhD in comparative contract law from the University of Westminster, an LLM from Harvard Law School, where she was a Fulbright Scholar and a Scholar of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Sachs, and a DEA de droit privé général from the University of Paris Panthéon-Assas. She practised with Sullivan & Cromwell (New York), Gide Loyrette Nouel (Paris) and Allen & Overy (London). She then taught at the University of Texas School of Law and BPP Law School, and joined Westminster in 2010.
Teaching
Catherine is module leader for the following LLM and LLB modules:
- Commercial Contracts in the Digital Age (LLM)
- International Economic Law (LLM)
- Business and Human Rights (LLM)
- Law of International Trade (LLB)
- French Law and Legal Language (LLB)
She supervises doctoral research in commercial and corporate law, business and human rights and sustainability law. She has coached Westminster teams in international commercial arbitration moots, including the Willem C. Vis Moot (2026).
Research
Catherine's research lies in private law, with a focus on commercial contracts, comparative private law, business and human rights, sustainability law, including sustainability in global value chains.
Her doctoral thesis proposed a common taxonomy of commercial contracts as a means of overcoming divergence between English and French law. She is currently doing some research on sustainable contracting in agri-food supply chains and mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence.
Recent publications include "The Reasonable Person in French and English Law: Insights on Contractual Interpretation from a Tale of Faux Amis" (2026) 34(4) European Review of Private Law (with R. Vassileva). With S. Tisseyre, she wrote "A Journey Towards Fair Contracting", an edited chapter in International Contracts: New Trends in International Business and Commercial Law (Wolters Kluwer, 2026). She also contributed an edited chapter to the Mélanges Pédamon (Dalloz, 2026). She is co-editor of Sustainability in Financial and Commercial Contracts (Springer, forthcoming 2026).
Earlier work includes:
- "Judicial Interpretation of Commercial Contracts in English and French Law: A Comparative Perspective" (2021) 32(6) European Business Law Review
- "Contractual Performance in Covid-19 Times: Does Anglo-French Legal History Repeat Itself?" (2021) 29(1) European Review of Private Law (with R. Vassileva)
- "The 'Duty to Cooperate' in English and French Contract Law: One Channel, Two Distinct Views" (2019) 14(1) Journal of Comparative Law (with R. Vassileva)
- Hardship in Transnational Commercial Contracts (Paris Legal Publishers, 2013) (with J. Chuah)
With Humberto Cantú Rivera she wrote the ILA White Paper on Business and Human Rights (2022/2023), prepared for the 150th anniversary of the International Law Association, which led to the creation of the ILA Business and Human Rights Committee. Her work has been cited by the English Commercial Court in LIC Telecommunications Sarl v VTB Capital Plc [2018] EWHC 169 (Comm).
Publications
For details of all my research outputs, visit my WestminsterResearch profile.