Monthly Archives: May, 2026
Katherine Day, ‘Censorship v the public interest: measuring the extent and impact of editorial mediation in trade book publishing’
ABSTRACT Implicit censorship describes a practice whereby editors and publishers subtly circumvent, constrain and/or excise text and titles that communicate material considered legally, politically, religiously or culturally problematic. Focussing on a legally challenged text, this paper provides a comparative analysis of the 2013 US and 2016 UK editions of Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood […]
John Manderscheid, ‘Constructive Trusts and Intergenerational Equity in Human Rights Law: Beyond the Public Trust Doctrine’
ABSTRACT Human rights litigation increasingly confronts claims that environmental degradation violates duties owed to future generations, yet existing doctrinal frameworks struggle to give these intergenerational obligations concrete effect. This article argues that the constructive trust offers a more coherent and workable private-law architecture for intergenerational equity than the public trust doctrine that dominates current scholarship […]
Mark Hanna, ‘SLAPPs in Aotearoa New Zealand’
ABSTRACT This article examines strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) in Aotearoa New Zealand, focusing on how civil procedure can be used to suppress public-interest expression. Drawing on 218 reported judgments between 2014 and 2024, supplemented by official records, interviews, and pre-action correspondence, it applies a four-phase socio-legal framework to identify cases that exhibit SLAPP-type […]
Juan Carlos Olarra, ‘Trusts and Spanish law in 2026: institutional indifference as a method of legal non-engagement’
ABSTRACT The increasing globalisation of private wealth has established the trust as a cornerstone of cross-border estate planning. Yet Spanish law in 2026 continues to resist meaningful engagement with this legal institution. This resistance does not stem from ignorance in any literal sense. Rather than confronting trusts directly, Spanish law has developed a strategy of […]
Ira Chadha-Sridhar, ‘The Legal Concept of Care’
ABSTRACT The notion of ‘care’ is invoked within legal doctrine in the law of tort, medical law, and family law. Yet despite its centrality across these doctrinal domains, these invocations have rarely been studied together. This neglect seems to stem from an underlying assumption that ‘care’ refers to fundamentally different things in each context – […]
Roshana Ching, ‘Civil Litigation: Too Much, Too Little or Just Right?’
ABSTRACT Simultaneously, there is talk in the legal community of the need for efforts and procedures to encourage as well as to limit the use of the legal system. Yet there is little discussion in legal literature as to where the socially desirable level of litigation falls. As litigation comes at significant public cost, it […]
Jing and Zhang, ‘Defining Trustee Liability in Chinese Law’
ABSTRACT This article examines the ambiguity and inconsistency surrounding trustee liabilities in Chinese law, with a particular focus on the scope of a trustee’s liability in transactions involving trust assets. It highlights the absence of explicit statutory provisions, resulting in uncertainties that undermine the effectiveness and attractiveness of trust structures in both commercial and private […]
Emily Chu, ‘To Use, or Not to Use: Re-Evaluating the Definition of Trademark “Use” in Depreciation of Goodwill Through the Lens of Parody Marks’
ABSTRACT Section 22 of the Trademarks Act protects against the depreciation of goodwill caused by third-party use of a registered trademark. This ‘registered’ requirement limited the actionability of depreciation until 2006, when Justice Binnie loosened ‘use’ to include ‘sufficiently similar’ marks. The ramifications of this decision are most evident in parody case law, where defendants […]
Konstantinos Bozos and others, ‘Safe to Talk, Safe to Work: Anti-SLAPP Statutes and Workplace Safety’
ABSTRACT We study whether legal protections for stakeholder voice improve workplace safety. Using the staggered adoption of state-level anti-strategic lawsuit against public participation (anti-SLAPP) laws, we exploit establishment-level injury data in a within-firm, cross-establishment design to isolate the impact of enhanced speech protections. Establishments in adopting states experience significant declines in injury rates and counts […]
Frank Fagan, ‘Stakeholder Personhood and Artificial Intelligence’
ABSTRACT Legal personhood has long functioned as a tool for settling high-stakes conflicts in corporate organization, immigration, environmental protection, and political representation, and its allocation has consistently reflected the power and preferences of affected stakeholders. This article brings that institutional dynamic to debates over artificial intelligence by treating AI personhood not as a declaration of […]