Monthly Archives: January, 2026
Cristina Estrella, ‘Access to Justice from a Preventive Perspective in Civil Law Systems’
ABSTRACT Access to justice has traditionally been understood as access to courts and judicial remedies. While judicial protection remains an essential guarantee of the rule of law, this article argues that a purely jurisdictional conception of access to justice is insufficient to ensure the effective and equal protection of rights in contemporary societies. Drawing on […]
‘European AI FOMO: The European Commission Sacrifices the Digital Acquis at the Altar of AI Hype’
The last 12 months have seen an extraordinary shift in the European Commission’s approach to digital regulation. Faced with intense geopolitical uncertainty and concerns about EU competitiveness and security, we are seeing a shift away from the espoused ‘Brussels Effect’, with the EU placing itself as a global rule setter and emphasising fundamental rights at […]
‘A Feminist Reconstruction of Intellectual Property Laws in Music ’
The IPKat has received and is pleased to host the review of A Feminist Reconstruction of Intellectual Property Laws in Music written by Metka Potočnik. This book review has been prepared by Katfriend Zoya Yasmine (University of Oxford). Here is what Zoya writes … (more) [The IPKat, 27 January 2026]
Mala Chatterjee, ‘From Extended Personality to Extended Minds: Toward an Expanded Theory of Legal Personality’
ABSTRACT This chapter argues that the extended personality doctrine implicates – and so ought to incorporate – a class of external objects that are not presently contemplated by legal doctrine or scholarship, but which can be functionally integrated with our cognitive systems in much the same way that clothing or eyeglasses are integrated with our […]
Stasys Drazdauskas, ‘Artificial neural network as an object of legal relationships’
ABSTRACT Deep neural networks are a dominant artificial intelligence technology targeted for regulation in both the EU and other jurisdictions. The correct legal qualification of this technology as an object of legal relations becomes a necessary condition for the proper application of the new rules, as well as for properly solving the issues of protection […]
‘What We Can Learn from Family Abolition’
Susan Frelich Appleton and Albertina Antognini, ‘Abolishing the Family’, 61 Harvard Civil Rights – Civil Liberties Law Review (forthcoming, 2026), available at SSRN (1 August 2025). There are benefits to thinking about extreme proposals – suggested utopias and radical restructurings of institutions. However unlikely it might be that such proposals are ever put into effect, […]
Robert Pushaw, ‘The Original Understanding of Strict Products Liability’
ABSTRACT In the 1980s, George Priest published two seminal articles on the intellectual history of strict liability for injuries caused by defective products. First, he demonstrated that the states’ remarkably quick acceptance of such liability starting in the mid-1960s reflected the consensus among prominent legal thinkers of the wisdom of ‘enterprise liability’ theory, which had […]
Hong Wu, ‘Fault-Based Liability for Artificial Intelligence Torts’
ABSTRACT Attributing liability for torts caused by artificial intelligence (AI) constitutes one of the central and most challenging issues in AI governance. Neither the expansion of product liability nor proposals to confer legal subjectivity on AI systems provide a coherent framework for addressing AI-related torts. Legal risk must be distinguished from mere danger: the legal […]
Eleonora Dimitrova, ‘Contract Interpretation in English Law: Doctrinal Analysis, Practical Guidance, and Student Exercises’
ABSTRACT Contract interpretation occupies a central and persistently unstable position in English private law. Since Investors Compensation Scheme v West Bromwich Building Society, courts have formally rejected literalism while continuing to rely on proxies of objectivity – textual primacy, commercial common sense, and the reasonable observer – to constrain judicial discretion. The result is not […]
Thomas Gallanis, ‘Time for a New Restatement’
ABSTRACT In February 2025, the author wrote by email to the American Law Institute’s Director, Judge Diane Wood, encouraging the ALI to consider whether the time had come to undertake a new Restatement of the law of trusts. Director Wood replied swiftly and kindly that ‘[t]his possibility had not been on my radar’ but that […]