Monthly Archives: May, 2026
Katie McCay, ‘Digital assets, personal property and categorisation: the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025’
ABSTRACT Personal property has had an enduring bipartite categorisation of things in action and things in possession. But digital assets, supposedly situated outside both categories, have disrupted this categorisation. Recent statutory reform, through the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025, seeks to permit a third category of personal property. This contribution outlines the effect of […]
Jun Wang, ‘Thirty Years of the Company Law of China: Review and Prospect’
ABSTRACT This article reviews the evolution and development of China’s Company Law over the past three decades, and examines its relationship with SOE reform, the growth of the private economy, as well as corporate governance and creditor protection. At present, the primary mission of the Company Law remains to encourage and protect investment, enabling both […]
Ishaq Kundawala, ‘Super-Efficient Breach in Bankruptcy: Recalibrating Remedies for Contract Rejection Damages’
ABSTRACT Contract law rests on a simple but powerful premise: when a party breaches, the law protects the injured party’s expectation interest, placing them, as nearly as possible, in the position they would have occupied had the contract been performed. This principle underlies the theory of efficient breach, which tolerates economically rational breaches so long […]
Marie-Sophie De Clippele, ‘Once people, now objects? Rethinking human remains along a person-thing continuum’
ABSTRACT This paper examines the limitations of the traditional legal binary between persons and things, with particular attention to human remains. Rooted in Cartesian dualism, this framework shaped modern legal systems to safeguard human dignity and prevent the commodification of bodies, notably in contexts such as slavery and organ trafficking. Yet, the rigid dichotomy proves […]
‘Doctrine by the Numbers’
Lewis Graham, ‘Interpreting the Interpretive Obligation: Empirical Insights into the Use of Section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (14 March 2026). It is not difficult to think of constitutional rules that are criticized, defended, or often both, on normative grounds that are more or less fact-free – not […]
Byron Stier, ‘Judicial Review of Individual Punitive Damages Awards in Light of Aggregate Punitive Damages’
ABSTRACT Over more than three decades of reviewing punitive damages awards for due process, the United States Supreme Court has increasingly clarified that punitive damages awards are personal: while juries may consider harm to others for purposes of assessing the reprehensibility of a defendant’s actions, each plaintiff must only be awarded that plaintiff’s share of […]
Ann Mumford, ‘Re-Enacting the Judicial Philosophy of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr: Saunders v Vautier and Claflin v Claflin Compared’
ABSTRACT Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr sat on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in 1889, when, in the case of Claflin v Claflin, he joined the decision that a trust may not be modified if the intention of the testator would be undermined. Claflin rejected Lord Cottenham’s reasoning in Saunders v Vautier that, under certain […]
Jack Whiteley, ‘Property’s Climate’
ABSTRACT Over the past two centuries, property jurisprudence has encouraged climate change through decisions that were not required by private property rights. In disputes between landowners over coal and oil, courts crafted rules that spurred carbon emissions. And in disputes over land, courts developed doctrines that diminished forests. These doctrines, with names like the rule […]
Sitkoff and Niles-Weed, ‘Trusts Without Borders’
ABSTRACT There is broad consensus that the law of conflict of trust laws is outdated. Both the American Law Institute and the Uniform Law Commission have initiated reform projects to address this obsolescence. But there is no consensus around what went wrong or how to fix it. This short article summarizes our earlier paper, ‘The […]
Giesela Ruhl, ‘Regulating Contracts across Borders: The Role of Private International Law’
ABSTRACT Private international law – or conflict of laws, as it is commonly referred to in the United States – deals with the co-existence of different legal systems and determines which state’s law applies (should apply) in cross-border cases. It is traditionally regarded as a rather apolitical and value-neutral field of law. In the 20th […]