Monthly Archives: August, 2025
Shieh and Leung, ‘Limitation periods and secret profits – Hui v Hui’
ABSTRACT In December 2024, the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal delivered its judgment in Hui Chun Ping v Hui Kau Mo [2024] HKCFA 32, examining the limitation periods applicable to proprietary and personal claims against fiduciaries who acquire unauthorised profits from third parties. Lord Hoffmann NPJ, who delivered the main judgment with which the […]
Jeremy Kosky, ‘The challenges arising when assessing the mental incapacity of a protector’
ABSTRACT An introduction to the challenges faced when assessing the mental incapacity of a trust protector, particularly in aging international trust structures. Settlors and protectors now face cognitive decline, affecting crucial decisions within trusts. Sophisticated protectors may struggle to recognize or accept their diminishing capacity, possibly masked by others. Trust deeds from 30 to 50 […]
Stefan Theil, ‘Carefully Tailored: Doctrinal Methods and Empirical Contributions’
ABSTRACT Doctrinal research is the distinct methodological approach of lawyers and a core contribution of legal studies to human knowledge. Yet, lawyers do not often explain their doctrinal research methods and by implication struggle to articulate where empirical research can make helpful contributions. The articles suggests that doctrinal research is characterised by three core features […]
Travis Luis Pantin, ‘Premium Justice: An Egalitarian Defense of Risk-Based Insurance Pricing’
ABSTRACT Should insurance companies be allowed to charge different prices based on a policyholder’s likelihood of making claims? This Article challenges the common view that ‘risk-based pricing’ in insurance presents a tradeoff between the twin goals of efficiency and fairness. It argues that the most compelling justification for charging policyholders prices that reflect their individual […]
Hui Jing, ‘Passive Acquiescence and the Limits of Disposition in Co-owned Land’
ABSTRACT In the context of co-ownership, it is a fundamental principle that a tenant in common is entitled to dispose of their own undivided share in any manner they choose, provided that such dispositions do not exceed their ‘proper share’ of the use and enjoyment of the co-owned land. However, the interpretation of ‘proper share’ […]
Gilat Juli Bachar, ‘Coercive Settlements’
ABSTRACT Can civil settlements be coercive? Conventional wisdom suggests they generally cannot, as the inherent power dynamic of private law is accepted as inevitable. The media fuels this perception by publishing stories of lucrative bargained-for settlements and ignoring those offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis by disproportionately powerful defendants. Courts have done the same. Despite the […]
Mateusz Grochowski, ‘Shadow Contract Law in the Platform Economy’
ABSTRACT The emergence of the platform economy was a momentous development in early 21st-century capitalism, concentrating vast economic and political power within a small number of market entities. This power, coupled with limited oversight, has given platforms the unique capacity to establish and enforce rules governing horizontal contracts among users. These rules parallel state-made contract […]
JG Allen, ‘Property in Digital Coins’
ABSTRACT Digital coins have burst into mainstream awareness recently, mainly as a result of high-worth ‘Initial Coin Offerings’ (‘ICOs’). The most immediate question in the legal treatment of digital coins is whether they are properly seen as digital ‘commodities’, and/or as ‘securities’, and/or as units of ‘money’. But the conceptual underpinnings of these categories are […]
Marc DeGirolami, ‘Person, Religion, and the Problem of Legal Essences’
ABSTRACT While American law continues to use the terms ‘person’ and ‘religion’, their meanings in different legal contexts suffer from a growing incoherence whose source is similar: a lack of essential attributes. An essential legal attribute is a characteristic without which something cannot be a member of a given legal category-in this case, the category […]
Alma Diamond, ‘Contract’s Two Foreseeabilities’
ABSTRACT Contract law’s foreseeability rule is a staple of 1L contracts courses, casebooks, and contract theory: a plaintiff may recover only losses that the defendant had reason to foresee at the time of contracting. Conventional wisdom is that the rule is as simple as it is irrelevant. It operates straightforwardly, encouraging plaintiffs to notify defendants […]