Monthly Archives: July, 2025
Elizabeth Emens, ‘Bound: The Imaginative Surplus of Contractual Intent’
ABSTRACT Contract law is generally understood in terms of enforcement. The legal definition of a contract is a promise that the state will enforce. Individuals are empowered by contract law to create legal arrangements that the state will step in and enforce. And yet most contracts never make it to court. This Article inverts the […]
Elizabeth Emens, ‘Mainstreaming Parafamily’
ABSTRACT In Parafamily, Chen and Mulligan have managed to cover vast terrain, to catalogue important developments in law, to canvass insights from generations of thinkers, and to propose an ambitious yet pragmatic approach to the laws that govern human relationships, directly and indirectly. They do all this in a relatively short article composed of unusually […]
Weiming Tan, ‘Account of Profits in Dishonest Assistance, the “Equal Rigour” Principle, and the Retreat from “Status”’
ABSTRACT The Court of Appeal in Novoship (UK) Ltd v Nikitin [2014] EWCA Civ 908; [2015] Q.B. 499 held that parties who have dishonestly assisted a fiduciary to breach their duty are liable to account for the profits made from such assistance. However, questions and controversies remain. Should the dishonest assistants be required to account […]
Yibo Li, ‘Characterising Ecosystem Power: the Use of Pricing and Contractual Leverages’
ABSTRACT This paper presents a conceptualisation and characterisation of ecosystem power, distinguishing it from market power and bargaining power. Unlike market power, which primarily concerns external relationships of a firm, and bargaining power, which addresses bilateral relationships, ecosystem power operates through multisided relationships, shaping pricing and contractual structures and determining welfare distribution among stakeholders within […]
Natalie Byrom, ‘Necessary But Insufficient? Reforms to Legal Services Regulation, Technology and the Role of the Courts in Increasing Access to Justice in England and Wales’
ABSTRACT This chapter examines the evolving role of the market and the state in addressing access to justice in England and Wales through legal services regulation and digital court reform. Focusing on developments since 2015, it critically evaluates the ambitious £1.3 billion digital court reform programme, particularly the failed delivery of the Online Solutions Court, […]
Linda Mullenix, ‘Outgunned No More: The New Era of Firearms Industry Accountability’
ABSTRACT Outgunned No More comprehensively addresses the changed legal landscape under which governments and private citizens can sue the gun industry for contributing to and sustaining the gun violence epidemic in the US and Mexico. The book canvasses federal and state efforts to regulate firearms through gun control measures, arguing that these regulatory measures have […]
‘Dead Hand Control’
Lawrence M Friedman, ‘Immortal Longings: Perpetuity in Context’, 71 Buffalo Law Review 695 (2023). Professor Lawrence M Friedman has had a remarkable career. Much of his work has focused on legal history, and he has served as president of the American Society for Legal History in recognition of his distinction in that field. He also […]
The scope of “clam” in prescriptive claims’
In a recent decision of the First Tier Tribunal, Property Chamber (Land Registration) (REF/2021/0571), Jones & Paddick v Hughes & Others [2025] UKFTT 00839 (PC), the scope of the concept of ‘clam’ user was considered and applied with particular reference to user that was perpetuated through the user’s dishonest claim to have the benefit of […]
‘Reinach and the Foundations of Private Law’
Before his death on the battlefields of the First World War, the young philosopher Adolf Reinach was a rising star – prime assistant to Edmund Husserl; mentor and friend to a generation from Max Scheler to Edith Stein. Since then, his influence has waned. To be sure, he developed something like speech act theory decades […]
‘Private International Law and Sustainable Development in Africa’
Recall, on 14 October 2024, we invited submissions to the Journal of Sustainable Development and Policy for a special issue focusing on ‘Private International Law and Sustainable Development in Africa’. Make today matter! Under this motto, legal scholars from all over the world gathered at the University of Pretoria on July 8, 2025 to take […]