Monthly Archives: August, 2026
Peter Yu, ‘Six Decades of Intellectual Property and Global Development’
ABSTRACT This chapter revisits the debate on intellectual property and global development and explores how we can better harness the intellectual property system, both domestic and international, to promote such development. It begins by reviewing the various contributions provided by the Intellectual Property Conference of Stockholm in 1967 and the United Nations Declaration on the […]
Pavlos Eleftheriadis, ‘Dignity and Virtue’
ABSTRACT Philosophers argue, following Kant, that dignity is an end beyond value, that is not something to be balanced against other ends or interests. Yet, pressing questions arise about the content of this claim. The very language of some person’s ‘equal’ status invites the thought of another’s ‘unequal’ status, a comparison which the Kantian approach, […]
Chantal Mak, ‘The Common Good Contract: Rethinking Contractual Justice in the Regulation of Global Supply Chains’
ABSTRACT This report considers the normative underpinnings of national and regional due diligence laws that aim to get a grasp on the protection of human rights and the environment along global supply chains. Starting from a comparative exploration of several representative due diligence laws, it is analysed what is the place of contract in these […]
Chantal Mak, ‘The Elephant in the Room: Contract, Tort and Company Law Dimensions of Supply Chain Liability as Fragments of the Reimagination of Companies’ Legal Personhood’
ABSTRACT This contribution proposes that a rethinking of legal personhood for companies is necessary to fully develop legal accountability for the risks global business poses to the living environment. It first sets out how private law has facilitated multinational business at the cost of other interests. Solutions in traditional tort and contract law present a […]
Lusina Ho, ‘The Nature of the Interest of an Object of Trust or Power’
ABSTRACT This chapter contends that it is overly reductive to characterize the interests of beneficiaries of trusts and objects of powers using singular labels like in rem rights, in personam rights, and ‘rights against rights’. Instead, these parties hold a bespoke bundle of in personam rights and powers, binding trustees and any third parties whose […]
Nicholas McBride, ‘Private Law in the Ruins’
ABSTRACT In this paper I argue four things. First, the Grenfell Tower fire and the response to that fire almost perfectly manifest and expose fundamental problems and disorders that afflict, and are destined to doom, modern Western, liberal societies (‘MWLs’, for short). Second, these problems and disorders mean that private law is unable to achieve […]
Nicholas McBride, ‘Three Dangerous Ideas in the Law on Liability for Omissions in Negligence’
ABSTRACT This paper discusses three bases for finding a positive duty to act to save someone from harm that are recognised in English law – (i) assumption of responsibility; (ii) interference with rescue by another; and (iii) the demands of common humanity – and the potential problems created by these bases for finding a duty […]
Hai-Anh Tran and others, ‘Life Is a Pressure Cooker: How and Why Stress Directs Consumers to Act Unethically’
ABSTRACT Unethical consumer behavior, such as deceptive product returns, digital piracy, shoplifting, and falsifying online reviews, is a growing concern with significant economic and ethical implications. However, its psychological antecedents remain underexplored. This research investigates the role of stress as a key driver of unethical consumer behavior, offering a novel perspective on why consumers engage […]
John Bruegger, ‘Against Formalist Reductionism: A Pragmatic-Contextualist Defense of Substantial Factor Causation’
ABSTRACT The judiciary’s recent shift from ‘substantial factor’ causation toward a rigid, binary ‘but-for’ standard promises metaphysical clarity but delivers an epistemic crisis. In complex, multifactorial litigation like toxic torts and pharmaceutical harms, strict counterfactual testing fails, insulating tortfeasors whenever causal mechanisms resist mechanical proof. Grounding legal inquiry in pragmatic contextualism, this Article defends substantial […]
Sonali Maitra, ‘Code Without Copyright’
ABSTRACT Congress should remove computer programs from copyrightable subject matter. Code entered the statute in 1980 on a flawed justification, and four decades of case law have hollowed the protection to a residue courts can barely administer. AI code generation finishes the job: a dominant share of new code now has no author and no […]