Monthly Archives: May, 2024
Evan Piermont, ‘Vague Preferences and Contracts’
ABSTRACT In this paper, I examine decision making in an environment where payoff relevant contingencies are vague, that is neither absolutely true nor absolutely false. In this model, an agent values acts that are predicated on linguistic statements, rather than an exogenous state-space. I axiomatize a class of preferences under which agent’s beliefs about the […]
Claudia Haupt, ‘The Horizontal Effect of Fundamental Rights’
ABSTRACT This chapter examines in comparative perspective the constitutional doctrine of horizontal effect as it relates to speech and data privacy on social media platforms. In the United States, the fundamental right to free speech is conceptualized as a negative right directed against the state. But whereas protecting private speech against government restrictions is the […]
‘Top 10 Defamation Cases of 2023: a selection’
Inforrm reported on a large number of defamation cases from around the world in 2023. Following a now established tradition, with my widely read posts on 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 defamation cases, I present my personal selection of the most legally and factually interesting cases from England, Australia, Canada and New Zealand […]
Allan Hutchinson, ‘The Next Revolution? Negligence Law for the 21st Century’
ABSTRACT Donoghue’s neighbour is still the defining concept of Canadian tort law. Indeed, the whole history of modern negligence law can be reasonably understood as a concerted judicial effort to adapt and accommodate that principle to changing social, commercial and legal conditions. Now, 90 years later, it is perhaps time to recommend another revolution in […]
‘Forum Selection Agreements as Indicators of Implied Choice of Law’
In a recent article, I explore what should be globally significant in a forum selection agreement as an indicator of the implied choice of law when the agreement omits a choice-of-law clause. This topic is in itself a very old one, dating back to the late 19th century when English judges in Hamlyn and Co […]
Betsy Rosenblatt, ‘Considering the Role of Fairness in Copyright Fair Use’
ABSTRACT Moral intuitions regarding when it is ‘fair’ to engage in unauthorized copying or derivation from a copyrighted work may often take into account factors that the fair use statute, 17 USC § 107, does not enumerate among fair use considerations. This project examines one extra-legal factor that may weigh in a moral equation: a […]
Naghavi, Pignataro and Zajc, ‘Culture, Law and Contractual Relations’
ABSTRACT This paper explores the role of culture in firm organization and its interplay with legal enforcement in determining the organization and longevity of buyer-supplier relationships. We provide theory and evidence, showing how individualism and legal enforcement interact and affect firm behavior in industries with different technological characteristics. A higher level of individualism in source […]
Cathay Smith, ‘Editing Classic Books: A Threat to the Public Domain?’
ABSTRACT Over the past few years, there has been a growing trend in the publishing industry of hiring sensitivity readers to review books for offensive tropes or racial, gender, or sexual stereotypes. In February 2023, for instance, reports that Puffin Books had edited several classics by Roald Dahl – in consultation with sensitivity readers – […]
Crafa, Laneve, Sartor and Veschetti, ‘Pacta sunt servanda: Legal contracts in Stipula’
ABSTRACT We present Stipula, a domain specific language that may assist legal practitioners in programming legal contracts through specific patterns. The language is based on a small set of programming abstractions that correspond to common patterns in legal contracts. We illustrate the language by means of two paradigmatic legal contracts: a bike rental and a […]
Caterina Sganga, ‘Sui Generis Protection of Non-Creative Databases’
ABSTRACT One of the most controversial acts of EU harmonization in the field of copyright law, and one of the first copyright directives, was without doubt Directive 96/9/EC on the legal protection of databases. Many of its definitions, the narrow scope of its exceptions and the lack of coordination with general copyright law have been […]