Monthly Archives: February, 2025
Susan Bright, ‘Escalating Ground Rents in Residential Leases and Consumer Protection’
ABSTRACT Escalating ground rents in long residential leases (rents that double or are adjusted by reference to an index at regular intervals) have been described as onerous and can prevent property sales. This article considers whether they are legally enforceable under consumer protection legislation. Although litigation would be needed both to clarify the application of […]
Gregory Sisk, ‘Immunity for Imaginary Policy in Tort Claims Against the Federal Government’
ABSTRACT Fictional policy justifications for official negligence are regularly accepted by the federal courts to shield the federal government from liability for ordinary tortious wrongdoing. The lower federal courts have adopted an extravagant interpretation of the discretionary function exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act that applies whenever a policy implication can be theorized. Under […]
Kwan Yiu Cheng, ‘The legal structure of decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs): governance, legal personality and liability’
ABSTRACT The article considers the legal structure of decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs). DAOs leverage smart contracts to encode their management and operational rules onto the blockchain with a vision to enable autonomous operation without a centralised authority. The novel nature of DAOs presents legal challenges and opportunities that are yet to be addressed in existing […]
Alessandra Daccò, ‘Fortunes and misfortunes of categories of shares’
ABSTRACT The creation of shares with different rights responds traditionally and historically to specific and cyclical financing needs of joint stock companies. In particular, special categories of shares seem to take on an important role both in raising new risk capital and as a governance tool: they can thus be effectively used to consolidate ownership […]
Gordon and Spivack, ‘Donative Freedom, Disrupted’
ABSTRACT You can do what you want with your property at death – and after – because it is ‘yours’. This is the ‘fundamental guiding principle’ of American succession law today. Despite occasional criticism over the years, for example, that it goes too far in allowing parents to disinherit children, legal scholars, courts, law reformers, […]
John Land, ‘Company Contracting in New Zealand after Autumn Tree’
ABSTRACT This article examines the decision of the New Zealand Court of Appeal in Bishop Warden Property Holdings Ltd v Autumn Tree Ltd. The Autumn Tree case reaffirms the danger of relying on the ability of one director (on a board of more than one) to contract on behalf of a company. The decision also […]
‘Are the Needs of Research Reflected in Copyright Decision-Making? An analysis of Copyright Councils and Consultations’
The interests of research are not necessarily heard or represented when decisions are being made about copyright laws that affect them. Both permanent and temporary consultation structures more often than not fail to ensure that there is a channel open for this … (part 1, part 2) [Stephen Wyber, Kluwer Copyright Blog, 20 and 21 […]
‘Can Tort Theory be Foundationalist?’
Adam Slavny, ‘Wrongs, Harms, and Compensation: Paying for Our Mistakes’ (2023). Adam Slavny’s ‘Wrongs, Harms, and Compensation: Paying for Our Mistakes’ rejects a basic premise of most contemporary tort theory. It renounces all aspiration to interpretive adequacy and holds contemporary tort law up to rigorous philosophical scrutiny. The results are invariably stimulating, usually illuminating, and […]
M Scott Donald, ‘The “proper” approach to a trustee’s right to indemnity out of trust assets’
ABSTRACT A trustee’s right to indemnity in respect of expenses properly incurred in the administration of the trust is a right inherent to trusteeship. But need those expenses be ‘reasonably’ incurred? Despite recurrent curial deference to this proposition, the requirement for ‘reasonableness’ seems incongruous. This article advances the argument that the reference to reasonableness in […]
Robert Rhee, ‘A Theory of Calibrated Fiduciary Duties in Firms’
ABSTRACT Although the laws of firms state the same traditional duty of loyalty, they diverge in expressing the duty of care and the concept of good faith. The differences are not subtle shades of refinement, but quantum contrasts of discrete legal states. The law shuffles, reclassifies, and relocates core elements of the duty of care […]