As anyone even noddingly familiar with law-and-economics can attest, the name of Ronald Coase has become associated with the vision of a world that is free of transaction costs. Such an association derives largely from Coase's classic article, “The Problem of Social Cost”. However, as should be recognised by anyone who peruses that article, its author's chief concern lies in taking account sustainedly of the presence and implications of transaction costs.

If students of company law know just one case, that case will be Salomon v. A. Salomon & Co. Ltd. which firmly established the English law principle that a company is a legal person entirely separate and distinct from the members ofthat company. It is trite law that a rather hefty veil is drawn between these two that can be lifted only in a limited number of circumstances that seem to fluctuate according to current judicial thinking. However, it “is well established that the courts will not allow the corporate form to be used for the purposes of fraud or as a device to evade a contractual or other legal obligation”, a principle which is referred to hereafter as the “fraud exception” to the Salomon principle.

I must begin with a few words about my predecessor in the Rouse Ball chair, Sir David Williams. David Williams has had a career of outstanding service to legal studies, to universities, in particular Cambridge, and to the wider public. After completing his studies, he became one of the formidable group at the University of Nottingham's Law Faculty. He went on to Oxford—he has told me that he went there as a missionary—and during his time there produced his pathbreaking books on official secrets and public order, Not in the Public Interest and Keeping the Peace. He was, it must be said, not the only Cambridge public lawyer-missionary in Oxford. Sir William Wade was also there. By 1967 it appears that two missionaries were no longer required, and David Williams returned to Cambridge. In 1982 he succeeded Wade—by now also back in Cambridge—as Rouse Ball Professor. He has been an important presence in the world of administrative law and his contribution to environmental issues has been enormous. We are delighted that now he has laid down the burdens of office as Vice-Chancellor he has returned to the Faculty— albeit to a different chair.