Monthly Archives: January, 2024
Katz, ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll, his English Wills and Scottish Law’
ABSTRACT In Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, much of the action of the story is driven by the belief of Mr Utterson the lawyer that a will made by Jekyll leaving everything to Hyde was a valid will. That belief was caused in turn by Stevenson’s belief that, on […]
‘Law and Lord Peter: some legal content from the Wimsey novels of Dorothy L Sayers’
The Lord Peter Wimsey novels of Dorothy L Sayers are regarded as among the very best ‘golden age’ detective novels. As well as being enjoyable in their characterisation and their intricate plotting, they also have a lot to say about contemporary attitudes to law and justice, and, although the interwar period is far away from […]
‘Disputing Grounds for Possession and Property Guardians’
Global 100 Ltd v Laleva [2021] EWCA Civ 1835; [2022] 1 WLR 1046. In this recent decision, the Court of Appeal gave judgment on two interesting matters in the field of residential landlord and tenant litigation – namely, the test to be applied when deciding whether a claim for possession is genuinely disputed on grounds […]
Barczentewicz, ‘Minimizing Privacy Risks in Regulating Digital Platforms: Interoperability in the EU DMA’
ABSTRACT I analyze some of the provisions included in the proposed EU Digital Markets Act (‘DMA’). The DMA purports to benefit consumers and improve the competitiveness of digital markets. It is likely to have negative and unaddressed consequences, however, in terms of information privacy and security. For brevity, I chose to focus on one regulatory […]
Kaminski, ‘Regulating the Risks of AI’
ABSTRACT Companies and governments now use Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) in a wide range of settings. But using AI leads to well-known risks that arguably present challenges for a traditional liability model. It is thus unsurprising that lawmakers in both the United States and the European Union (‘EU’) have turned to the tools of risk regulation […]
Cormack, Graen, Novo and Shen, ‘Quasi-Professional Negligence: A New Standard of Care for Volunteer Youth Sports Coaches’
ABSTRACT While in decades past parents could simply show up and coach, today parents are the front lines for public health efforts around nutrition, sports concussions, and disease transmission. To facilitate these new roles, parents are often required by states and leagues to undergo training. The policy goals are clear: better-informed volunteer coaches should be […]
de Gay, ‘Do England & Wales Qualified Solicitors Have a Legal Duty to Advise Their Clients on Climate-Related Risks?’
ABSTRACT Whilst practising solicitors in England and Wales are largely familiar with their duty of disclosure, they are less familiar with their duty to warn. Their duty to disclose, to their client, information of which they are actually aware and which is material in the context of the matter they have been retained to advise […]
‘Book Review: Once Upon a Time, the Patent’
This Alicante-based Kat has been enjoying her sea view with a good book in paws: ‘Once upon a time, the patent’ by Pascal Attali (2022, 304 pp). The first part of the book is devoted to the history of patent law. I will mention several interesting episodes in this connection covered in Attali’s book. The […]
Opderbeck, ‘Cybersecurity and Data Breach Harms: Theory and Reality’
ABSTRACT This paper challenges the view among some privacy scholars that private law should routinely recognize dignitary, emotional distress, or potential future harms in commercial data breach cases. Such harms might be cognizable in specific and relatively rare circumstances, but they are not empirically or doctrinally viable in the mine run of cases. A realistic […]
Raghavan, ‘Consumer Law’s Equity Gap’
ABSTRACT This Article is about the views that shape and constrain the development of consumer law. Consider the market for short-term, highcost loans. Policymakers tend to justify intervening in these markets on inefficiency grounds (consumers exhibit present bias) and rarely on equitable grounds (these loans cost too much). Why? One recent explanation suggests that policymakers […]