Monthly Archives: April, 2025
Mateusz Grochowski, ‘Consumer Vulnerability: A Genealogy’
ABSTRACT Vulnerability has become a central concept in contemporary discussions on contract regulation and market oversight. In particular, it features prominently in the European Union’s digital market regulatory framework, where appeals to vulnerability frequently serve as justifications for intervention in horizontal market relationships. These arguments are typically grounded in the recognition that market actors are […]
Charles Duan, ‘What Is Copyrightable in Software?’
ABSTRACT For five decades, copyright law has been internally inconsistent. Computer code receives copyright protection-the statute says so. But the statute also excludes methods of operation from copyright. Given that computer code is a method of operating a computer, these two blackletter doctrines contradict each other. To avoid this doctrinal conflict, courts and commentators have […]
Nicholas McBride, ‘Free-Standing Liabilities’
ABSTRACT This chapter was written in honour of Stephen A Smith, and discusses a number of different liabilities that cannot be said either to arise out of the breach of a duty owed to another or to give effect to a duty that is owed to another. The chapter discusses the characteristic reasons that give […]
Nicholas McBride, ‘Equity/Tort: Each a Doctor and Student of the Other’
ABSTRACT This chapter explores aspects of Equity and Tort Law that make them different from each other (how they enforce obligations and what sort of obligations they recognise) and what they can learn from each other when they operate in the other’s natural territory, such as in holding equitable wrongdoers liable for their wrongs and […]
Samantha Barbas, ‘New York Times v Sullivan: A Civil Rights Story’
ABSTRACT The 1964 Supreme Court decision in New York Times v Sullivan established the ‘actual malice’ rule in libel law, requiring that in order to win a libel suit, a public official must show that a defamatory statement was false and that the speaker made the statement knowing that it was false or ‘with reckless […]
Andrew Gilden, ‘Pleasure and Pain in Intellectual Property’
ABSTRACT Intellectual property produces pleasure. IP laws incentivize investment in popular culture, helping to ensure the viability of entertainment industries and the steady production of our favorite shows, cherished brands, and beloved celebrities. Across IP-heavy industries, creators cite the joy of writing, composing, coding, and experimenting as a motivation for countless hours in the office, […]
Chowdhury, Chudkowski and Gulati, ‘The Form Knows Best’
ABSTRACT Law students learn that contracts are carefully negotiated, precisely drafted, and shaped by doctrine. But lawyers tell a different story. This article compares six pillars of contract law with what we heard in over 170 interviews with senior transactional lawyers across M&A, sovereign bonds, and leveraged loans. The result is a gap between the […]
Gilbert and Hayashi, ‘Altruism and Coasean Bargaining’
ABSTRACT We introduce altruism into standard models of bargaining and explore its implications for the Coase Theorem. A strict interpretation of the Coase Theorem holds in the presence of pure altruism, but it fails when agents have impure altruism. Both pure and impure altruism also generally prevent private bargaining from achieving an efficient allocation of […]
Nicholas McBride, ‘Remoteness of Damage in Contract’
ABSTRACT This paper discusses: (1) the historical origins of the rule in Hadley v Baxendale; (2) whether that rule is rightly characterised as a ‘default rule’; (3) what has to be foreseeable for a loss to be recoverable under the rule; (4) how the rule differs from remoteness of damage rules in tort law; and […]
‘Greenforcement of Intellectual Property Rights’
The current practice of enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) impacts the environment in many ways. The disposal and destruction of IPR infringing goods are an everyday occurrence throughout the EU, causing waste, pollution of the air and soil (depending on the method of destruction), and also waste of scarce raw materials. There is increasing […]