Monthly Archives: May, 2025
Alexandra Trofimov, ‘Why evidence-based law? On the need to combine evidence with values to justify laws’
ABSTRACT Evidence-based law is increasingly being advocated as best practice, but its implementation remains limited. The distinctively normative nature of law gives reason to pause and consider the appropriateness of an evidence-based approach to law. In this paper, I argue that the distinctively normative nature of law makes it imperative to adopt an evidence-based approach. […]
Law and the Humanities Hub @ IALS
IALS is pleased to announce the establishment of the Law and the Humanities Hub (LHub), a dynamic initiative led by Professor Anat Rosenberg, who has recently joined the institute. LHub aims to foster academic expertise, creativity, and intellectual leadership in law and the humanities. The hub’s activity is being launched with its 2024/25 Visitors, who […]
Sayed Gewid, ‘To What Extent is the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) Compatible with Sharia Law Principles?’
ABSTRACT The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (Vienna, 1980), usually referred to by the acronym CISG, serves as the primary global framework governing international sales contracts, and was created with the intention to bring about uniformity in international trade laws across borders. Despite its achievements, however, the practical application […]
Wayne Barnes, ‘CISG (2024 Survey)’
ABSTRACT This survey article discusses cases during the prior year, which are decided based on one or more provisions of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). The CISG is a United Nations treaty that provides a uniform international sales law. It was adopted in Vienna in 1980 and […]
Lemley, Cooper, Gokaslan, Cyphert, De Sa, Ho and Liang, ‘Extracting memorized pieces of (copyrighted) books from open-weight language models’
ABSTRACT Plaintiffs and defendants in copyright lawsuits over generative AI often make sweeping, opposing claims about the extent to which large language models (LLMs) have memorized plaintiffs’ protected expression. Drawing on adversarial ML and copyright law, we show that these polarized positions dramatically oversimplify the relationship between memorization and copyright. To do so, we leverage […]
Michels, Millard, Walden and Wuermeling, ‘Beyond Schrems: The Unresolved Tensions between US Government Access and the GDPR’
ABSTRACT In this paper, we analyse the conflict between US government production orders, on the one hand, and European data protection law, on the other. This conflict arises because US law enforcement and intelligence agencies can compel cloud providers subject to US jurisdiction to disclose customer data despite the risk that such a disclosure may […]
Shtefan and Prytyka, ‘Mediation in the EU: common characteristics and advantages over litigation’
ABSTRACT Mediation is an alternative extrajudicial procedure intended to resolve a dispute quickly and efficiently. One of the tasks of mediation is also to relieve the judicial system because disputes whose parties can find a compromise in their legal conflict can be successfully resolved without court involvement. Although many EU Member States have adopted specific […]
‘Third parties without benefits’
Commercial contracts frequently exclude the ability of third parties to enforce contractual rights under the Contract (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999. But, if the parties provide in general terms that a third party can enforce a contract, does that right extend to terms that do not benefit them? The High Court says they can […]
Rebecca Stone, ‘Private Rights: Artificial but Not Instrumental’
ABSTRACT Philosophers tend to be more skeptical of natural property rights than natural contractual rights, arguably reflecting core differences between the two types of right. By contracting parties define their rights together enabling them to reflect morality precisely, while the relations established by property are shaped without the participation of many of the parties to […]
Mashhour, Shamsul and Noor, ‘Smart Contract as a Novel Method of Contracting: Many Unanswered Legal Questions’
ABSTRACT Smart contracts have shed light on a new era of contract law, which necessitates a proper legal response to address their unique characteristics, including automation, self-enforcement, coded, immutability, and irreversibility. While these features offer significant legal and practical benefits, they raised critical legal questions. The study aims to identify the legal challenges resulting from […]