About us

W113 is the CIB working commission on law and dispute resolution. It was established in September 2006 and reflects the CIB’s commitment to promoting and developing legal scholarship as a mainstream aspect of its activities.

We are a worldwide community of legal scholars working in the fields of property, construction and the built environment. Our focus is on the application of law in these contexts and our membership includes those with expertise in property, construction, housing, planning and environmental law as well as the many other areas of law which impact on the wider built environment.

Our activities embrace all forms of legal scholarship including theoretical, doctrinal, empirical and comparative law research. Our international membership provides us with a unique opportunity to undertake collaborative comparative law studies across multiple jurisdictions and we welcome enquiries from legal scholars worldwide who would be interested in working with us on future projects.

W113 activities

W113 hosts regular international meetings and academic symposia in partnership with other subject groupings in the built environment. These have become increasingly well attended and the participation by scholars in these events has played a major role in establishing legal scholarship as a significant research activity within CIB.

W113 provides a focus for communication between legal scholars from different jurisdictions who collaborate on comparative research projects.

W113 maintains excellent links with a number of publishers and academic journals. The research outputs from W113’s various projects are published as books, CIB reports and in the form of occasional special issues of established peer-reviewed journals. W113 also has its own official peer-reviewed journal, the International Journal of Law in the Built Environment. It collaborates with many other CIB working commissions and task groups as well as with members of other research organisations including the European Network for Housing Research (ENHR) and the Socio Legal Studies Association (SLSA).

W113 has grown rapidly since its launch and is committed to an ambitious programme of meetings and research projects over the coming years. It actively seeks opportunities for further collaboration with external organisations and with individual scholars. It also welcomes enquiries from those who would like to participate in its future meetings and symposia.

W113 objectives

Our formal objectives may be stated in the following terms:

To establish a thriving international legal research community within the fields of property, construction and the built environment.
To contribute to the wider interdisciplinary research agendas in these subject areas through encouraging the active engagement of legal scholars with other specialists working in these fields.
To coordinate efforts to identify and address emerging legal challenges by building a coalition of stakeholders from industry, the professions and academia.
To generate interest in the application of law in the built environment amongst legal subject specialists in the legal professions and law faculties throughout the world.
To increase understanding of the obstacles to effective trans-national property transactions and construction projects by facilitating the development of comparative legal methodologies and research projects.