Monthly Archives: February, 2025
Gavin McLeod, ‘Substantial gifts and unilateral transactions in favour of fiduciaries: the restoration of abuse of confidence’
ABSTRACT There is a strict obligation upon fiduciaries who receive substantial gifts in unilateral transactions with their principals to demonstrate the fairness of their receipt by showing that independent and sufficient advice was taken before the transaction completed. The point, being that there is this burden upon them to justify their receipt – and quite […]
Ahson Azmat, ‘Formal Causation in the Law’
ABSTRACT The but-for test has bedeviled the law for decades now. Over the last few years, however, the Supreme Court has cemented it as the centerpiece of the law’s model for factual causation. This spells trouble in a landscape brimming with disputes about disparate treatment, equal protection, Executive Branch action, and other constitutional rights whose […]
Ajunwa and Kamer, ‘Data Privacy by Contract’
ABSTRACT Protecting consumer privacy rights presents a particular challenge given the prevalence of data breaches. This Article notes that current law is woefully inadequate in protecting the privacy rights of consumers. Notably, the law fails in the following four areas: (1) classification of consumer data, (2) lack of a comprehensive approach, (3) after-the-fact focus, and […]
Robert Stevens, ‘The Scope of Restraint of Trade’
ABSTRACT A short paper explaining why Lord Reid was correct as to the proper scope of restraint of trade in Esso Petroleum v Harper’s Garage, and why the UK Supreme Court were wrong to depart from his view in Penninsula Securities v Dunnes Stores (Bangor) Ltd. Stevens, Robert, The Scope of Restraint of Trade (January […]
Christine Haight Farley, ‘Trademark Fair Use Is No Joke’
ABSTRACT This Article examines how the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Jack Daniel’s Properties v VIP Products reveals the limitations of using parody as a framework for resolving tensions between trademark rights and free speech. While the Court’s ruling narrowed trademark protection in certain instances and acknowledged the importance of protecting parodic speech, it ultimately […]
Matteo Maria Cati, ‘“Law and …”: a New Perspective’
ABSTRACT This paper revisits the interplay between law and economics from an unconventional perspective, shifting away from the traditional lawyer-economist view to that of an economist-mathematician. Inspired by Calabresi’s seminal 2016 work, The Future of Law and Economics – Essays in Reform and Recollection, it challenges existing interpretations and introduces a novel methodological framework employing […]
Jeffrey Pojanowski, ‘Faces of Formalism’
ABSTRACT Formalist approaches to legal interpretation, such as textualism and originalism, are ascendant in federal statutory and constitutional law. Yet with success has come uncertainty and dissatisfaction. Formalists and their critics observe that textualism and originalism can seem as open-ended as the purposive and dynamic methods they were supposed to replace. This article tries to […]
Samuel Bray, ‘The Concept of the Common Law’
ABSTRACT The common law is, among other things, a mode of legal development. In this mode, judges develop the law yet simultaneously act as if they were only discovering law that already existed. This sketch of the common law introduces contemporary readers to a way of thinking and talking about law that was once instinctive […]
‘The benefits and pitfalls of drug manufacturing IP (T 2543/22)’
The Board of Appeal decision in T 2543/22 relates to a manufacturing method for preparing a therapeutic peptide. The Board of Appeal found that whilst various methods were known, the skilled person would not have had a reasonable expectation of success in applying them to produce the specific claimed peptide. The case highlights some interesting […]
Crescente Molina, ‘Can We Derive Property Rights from Bodily Rights?’
ABSTRACT Many authors have attempted in different ways to connect the morality of property rights with the morality of bodily rights. In Chapter 7 of Bound by Convention, David Owens offers a novel and refined version of this justification strategy. Owens’ account advances our understanding of the relationship between property and our bodily rights, and […]