Repugnant transactions and taboo trades: The Baron de Lancey Lecture 2025

Professor Kimberly D. Krawiec from the University of Virginia School of Law explores "repugnant transactions and taboo trades" — markets that are morally contested and sometimes even prohibited, such as sex work, commercial surrogacy, and the sale of organs, eggs, and sperm. She asks how we, as a society, decide what is up for sale and what is off-limits.

The controversies here are not about the dangers of markets themselves, but rather the dangers of buying/selling certain goods or services. Advocates of market restrictions seek to define the ethical boundaries of the marketplace – to identify the specific goods and services that are inappropriate for market trading, and to explain why these restrictions should exist even for apparently willing buyers and sellers.

Although all cultures have deemed some transactions too sacred for the marketplace, the targets of these restrictions have varied widely, even within a given time period. For example, prostitution is currently legal in much of the world but illegal in most of the United States. Meanwhile, commercial surrogacy and paid egg donation are legal in much of the United States but illegal in many other parts of the world.

This talk delves into these and other restricted trades. It identifies how they are regulated by legal regimes as well as social norms, evaluates the consequences of different approaches, and explores potential paths forward.

About the Speaker: Professor Kimberly D. Krawiec holds the Charles O. Gregory Professorship of Law at the University of Virginia. Her current research analyses “taboo trades” — exchanges that are contested by society and, in some cases, forbidden altogether. She has written on commercial surrogacy, egg and sperm markets, and sex work. At the moment, much of her work is on incentives for organ donation. Another area of her research centres on the regulation of financial markets and business organizations. Prof. Krawiec has extensively examined the administrative process surrounding the Volcker Rule, a complex and highly contested provision of the Dodd-Frank Act. She has also researched corporate boards of directors. Through an ethnographic method, this work analyses directors’ views on the workings of the corporate boardroom and board relations with management, with a special emphasis on directors’ views on race and gender diversity in the boardroom.

With a wealth of experience in commodity and derivatives law, she has also been a commentator for the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI) of the American Bar Association and has taught at top institutions including Duke, North Carolina, Harvard, and Northwestern, where she won the Robert Childres Award for Teaching Excellence.

The lecture begins at 03:44

Baron Cornelius Ver Heyden de Lancey (1889-1984) was a wealthy and public-spirited Dutchman who at different times in his life was a dentist, doctor, surgeon, barrister and art historian. In 1970 he created the De Lancey and De La Hanty Foundation, to promote studies in medico-legal topics. The Foundation generously gave Cambridge the Ver Heyden de Lancey Fund, which since 1996 has funded occasional public lectures on medico-legal issues of current interest.

For more information about the Baron Ver Heyden de Lancey Lecture series, please see http://www.lml.law.cam.ac.uk/events/vhdl-events