Monthly Archives: July, 2026
Michael Briggs, ‘Equitable Ownership’
ABSTRACT Recent academic debate has questioned whether equitable interests should continue to be classified as proprietary, proposing instead analyses based on ‘rights against rights’, ‘modified’ proprietary rights or the erosion of the proprietary/personal divide. This article, based on the text of the XXIV Old Buildings Lecture 2025, argues that these alternative frameworks, while illuminating, do […]
Fouad Maged, ‘A Commercial Ceasefire: Why the EU-US Data Privacy Framework Cannot Survive Schrems III’
ABSTRACT The adequacy mechanism under GDPR Article 45 is structurally incapable of delivering legal certainty across divergent constitutional orders without a binding international treaty. Despite representing the most sophisticated transatlantic data transfer arrangement to date, the EU-US Data Privacy Framework remains a ‘commercial ceasefire’ built on executive discretion rather than structural reform and is likely […]
R George Wright, ‘The Problem of Truth and Falsity in Today’s Libel Law’
ABSTRACT Libel law must always be in the process of adapting to relevant cultural changes. There can be no guarantee, however, that libel law adapts properly, and in timely fashion, to those changes. This Article considers libel law, and in particular the crucial role of claims of truth and falsity, in today’s cultural context. The […]
Yotam Berger, ‘Litigating Commercial Spyware: The Promise and Limits of Private Enforcement in a New Age of Cybersurveillance’
ABSTRACT Commercial spyware firms – private companies that develop and sell sophisticated hacking tools to governments – are operating in a legal environment marked by weak oversight and notable regulatory gaps. NSO Group, the Israeli company behind the Pegasus spyware, offers a prominent example. Although marketed as a lawful investigative tool, Pegasus has also been […]
Andrew Higgins, ‘The damagingly slow development of collective redress procedures in the United Kingdom’
ABSTRACT This article examines recent case law on England’s fragmented collective redress regime. It argues there is a worrying trend of the courts and the Competition Appeal Tribunal erecting additional obstacles to the effective use of representative actions and class actions in the name of avoiding abuse to defendants or represented persons. The article argues […]
Samuel Beswick, ‘The Police Officer’s Right of Redress’
ABSTRACT Should a police officer be able to sue a citizen in tort for harming them? On one view of the theory and practice of private law, they should not. According to this view, a police officer as a public agent is not juridically comparable to a private person and so their interactions with other […]
Helen Fielder, ‘Bitcoin, Property or Money? Reframing The Debate Before the High Court Part II – Following the Logic: Returning to the Common Law Method’
ABSTRACT This article is the second in a series considering the legal classification of Bitcoin in light of two matters presently before the High Court of Australia: Poulton v Conrad and Yeates v The King. Part I examined the competing arguments concerning whether Bitcoin is property, money, information, a digital commodity or a new form […]
Pita Roycroft, ‘Tikanga and Trespass’
ABSTRACT In recent years, the Supreme Court of Aotearoa New Zealand has invited Māori and non-Māori to consider how principles of tikanga may contribute to the development of the common law. Exactly how tikanga is meant to shape this domain was, however, left to the case-by-case incrementalism characteristic of the common law method. Since this […]
David Rolph, ‘Serious Harm to Reputation: Evolution or Revolution?’
ABSTRACT Serious harm to reputation has been an element of the cause of action in defamation across Australia, except for Western Australia, for under five years. Yet already, serious harm has had a significant effect on Australian defamation law. This article considers the actual and potential consequences of the introduction of serious harm. In doing […]
Kallenberg, Nagel and Dolmans, ‘Can Insurers Use Subrogation to Escape the Climate Squeeze?’
ABSTRACT Insurance is under threat. The underwriting business of insurers is increasingly faced with growing exposure to physical risks, liability risks, and system-level risks caused or intensified by climate change and nature loss (Oxera 2024). The asset side of insurers is at the same time exposed to asset value loss caused by the same factors […]