Monthly Archives: January, 2024
Bala, ‘Who Owns Children’s DNA?’
ABSTRACT In recent years, DNA has become increasingly easy to collect, test, and sequence, making it far more accessible to law enforcement. While legal scholars have examined this phenomenon generally, this Article examines the control and use of children’s DNA, asking who ultimately owns children’s DNA. I explore two common ways parents – currently considered […]
Melitz and Dia, ‘The Impact of Common Law on the Volume of Legal Services – an International Study’
ABSTRACT We show that the heavy use of legal services relative to output in the US is not a peculiarity of the country but applies to common law countries in general. It is widely attributed to better ability to contract and to adapt to changes in the environment. Yet in close association, common law also […]
Feinberg, ‘The Boundaries of Multi-Parentage’
ABSTRACT Multi-parentage has arrived. In recent years, a growing number of courts and legislatures have recognized that a child may have more than two legal parents. A number of significant societal, medical, and legal developments have contributed to the trend toward multi-parentage recognition. The traditional family structure of a married different-sex couple and their biological […]
Drennan, ‘Contract Law’s “Too Good to Be True” Doctrine – Is It?’
ABSTRACT In a wonderful variety of emotionally charged contract law opinions, including the cases of the boastful cheater, the opportunistic attorney, and the careless concrete contractor, courts unfortunately have used the phrase ‘too good to be true’ as a single-step test to decide enforceability. These cases can generate emotional responses ranging from empathy to schadenfreude […]
Foster, ‘Novel climate tort? The New Zealand Court of Appeal decision in Smith v Fonterra Co-operative Group Limited and others’
ABSTRACT In Smith v Fonterra the New Zealand High Court and Court of Appeal struck out all causes of action in proceedings seeking orders that seven New Zealand companies cease direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 grounded in the three distinct claims of negligence, public nuisance and a proposed novel tort referred to […]
Rantanen, ‘Studying Patent Infringement Litigation’
ABSTRACT This chapter describes a comprehensive approach to studying patent infringement litigation that encompasses multiple layers of patent infringement litigation. It explains how to link together and analyze datasets containing information about those components. The example used in this chapter involves patent litigation, but this approach can be expanded to empirical analysis of other types […]
Hofri-Winogradow and David, ‘Quistclose Trusts from a Corporate Insolvency Perspective: a Positive and Normative Analysis’
ABSTRACT Leading cases show Quistclose trusts being used by companies nearing insolvency. Their use in this context raises serious normative problems: it may prefer the beneficiary to the company’s other creditors, and creates a misleading impression that trust funds are in fact free of trust. Building on the emergent normative literature on Quistclose trusts, we […]
Bruce, Odinet and Tosato, ‘The Private Law of Stablecoins’
ABSTRACT Stablecoins are one of the cornerstones of the crypto world. They’ve attracted significant attention over the past few years, ranging from Wall Street to kitchen table investors, and even the White House. As a less volatile alternative to crypto-assets like bitcoin, stablecoins have the potential to change the way we make payments, unlock the […]
Symposium on Martijn Hesselink, Justifying Contract in Europe (Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy)
The Radical Aspirations of Justifying Contract in Europe (Mirthe Jiwa and Lyn KL Tjon Soei Len) How Radical is the Understanding of Democracy in Justifying Contract in Europe? (Christina Eckes) Pluralism as Inability to Choose (Giacomo Tagiuri) Justifying Racial and Gendered Contract in Europe (Lyn KL Tjon Soei Len) Reasoning Towards Utopia (Gareth Davies) Searching […]
Graves ‘Sorry, Your NFT Is Worthless: The Copyright and Generative Art Problem for NFT Collections’
ABSTRACT There are many types of non-fungible tokens. NFTs are most commonly made available using the Ethereum blockchain network. A non-fungible asset can be one unique item or multiple unique items, and the token can provide a range of rights or permissions to the owner of the token. NFTs are not limited to artwork and […]