Monthly Archives: April, 2024
‘Once Again, the Mistaken Party Pays. This Time, I Don’t Think They Should’
Last week, Emily Schmall reported in The New York Times about a Mexican man who found Cartier Earrings on sale on the company’s Mexican website for 237 pesos, which is about thirteen dollars. He knew that the earrings, described as ‘slender studded 18-carat rose-gold cuffs lined with diamonds’, were worth far more than that, so […]
‘The Limits to Law(s)’
Robert W Adler and Carina E Wells, ‘Plastics and the Limits of US Environmental Law’, 47 Harvard Environmental Law Review 1 (2023); Mark P Nevitt and Robert V Percival, ‘Can Environmental Law Solve the “Forever Chemical” Problem?’, 57 Wake Forest Law Review 239 (2022). When young people accusingly complain that my generation unfairly saddled them […]
‘Reforming the Law of Apologies in Civil Proceedings in England and Wales’
The Government believes it is timely to review and consult upon the law of apologies in England and Wales. The current law is set out in section 2 of the Compensation Act 2006 (the Compensation Act) and aims to encourage those defending claims not to be deterred from offering apologies by a perception that doing […]
Çela, Fekolli and Kalemaj, ‘Codification of European Private International Law!’
ABSTRACT The term ‘framework of European private international law’ covers all EU instruments in force, dealing with the problem of jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition and enforcement of law, foreign judgments and authentic instruments. Private international law has traditionally been, and in part still is, a matter of national law. Each state has its own rules […]
Symposium: Natural Property Rights, Texas A&M Journal of Property Law (2023)
Natural Property Rights: An Introduction (Eric R Claeys) Too Simple Rules for a Complex World? Prior Appropriation Water Rights as Natural Rights (Vanessa Casado-Pérez) Balancing the Inequities in Applying Natural Property Rights to Rights in Real or Intellectual Property (Lolita Darden) Business Organizations as Natural Objects of Ownership (Kevin Douglas) How Far Does Natural Law […]
‘What Property Makes Us’
Timothy M Mulvaney and Joseph William Singer, ‘Essential Property’, 107 Minnesota Law Review 101 (2022). Is it personal choice or the society in which we live that creates unequal distributions of wealth? In ‘Essential Property’, Timothy M Mulvaney and Joseph William Singer agree with the Emperor of the French: the source of inequality lies in […]
Dagan and Samet, ‘What’s Wrong with Massively Discretionary Trusts’
ABSTRACT In this article we offer a theoretical analysis of the massively discretionary trust (MDT) from the perspective of the justice requirements imposed by a liberal conception of the state. We aim to show that conceptual, doctrinal or policy-driven analyses of this legal phenomenon cannot fully account for the profound way in which it undermines […]
Cyndi Xinyu Hou, ‘Limited Liability: Playing It Safe or Going Big?’
ABSTRACT Does limited liability on damages improve social efficiency? I show that optimal liability rules trades off tort damages against benefits to outside stakeholders. Full liability promotes care but raises marginal costs, inducing less-than-efficient scale. Limited liability enhances scale but reduces care, proving more efficient than full liability when outside stakeholder value is high. As […]
Rachael Walsh, ‘Specifying Interpersonal Responsibilities in Private Law: Property Perspectives’
ABSTRACT Recognizing Wrongs reflects an ongoing challenge within private law theory: once an ideal of interpersonal responsibility and accountability is recognised at private law’s centre, how are these dimensions of private law to be developed in a manner that does not unduly undermine systemic predictability and clarity? This article responds to this challenge from the […]
Kimberly Kessler Ferzan, ‘NDAs: A Study in Rights, Wrongs, and Civil Recourse’
ABSTRACT According to John Goldberg and Ben Zipursky (‘Goldursky’), there are two central pillars to tort law, pillars that are best explicated by civil recourse theory. Torts are legally recognized wrongs, and the power to seek redress is part of the Lockean bargain. Using the recent question of whether nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) should be permitted, […]