Monthly Archives: October, 2026
‘Permitted or Required? Pension Trustees and the System-Level Risk They Create’
Twice in two years the UK Government has described the fiduciary duty of pension trustees as permissive. In April 2025 the Department for Work and Pensions said that the findings of the Law Commission review of investment intermediaries ‘reflect the permissive nature of trustee fiduciary duty’, and the Government was ‘not currently considering any change […]
Call For Chapter Proposals: The Research Handbook in Feminist Intellectual Property Studies
The Research Handbook in Feminist Intellectual Property Studies or ‘FIPS’ offers an insight into the emerging field of feminist critique, review and approaches in intellectual property scholarship. Inclusivity of IP systems has been on the agenda of international policy makers since 2007, but the state of parallel academic scholarship in the area is still unclear. […]
Friehe and Teitelbaum, ‘Background Risk and Optimal Liability Rules’
ABSTRACT We study how background risk affects optimal liability rules in a unilateral accident model with risk-averse parties. Under negligence, background risk borne by a prudent victim raises the optimal due-care standard relative to the benchmark case without background risk. Under strict liability, the optimal level of damages is higher when the prudent victim faces […]
Robé, Seabrooke and Wigan, ‘What’s a Firm, What’s a Corporation, and Why Does It Matter?’
ABSTRACT To understand how corporate activity is changing our economies and societies, we need to distinguish how they organize through bodies of law. In general parlance, the words firm, corporation, and company are used interchangeably. This is a matter of convenience but masks how firms, as organizing units, articulate their activities through corporations as legal […]
‘Law Commission consults on product liability reform. A step too far?’
Earlier this month the Law Commission published its consultation paper on product liability reform. The paper proposes to modernise the Consumer Protection Act 1987 (CPA) for the digital age, bringing digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, social media and video games into scope among a raft of other proposals. The European Union recently conducted its […]
Manor-Percival and Chambers, ‘Restitution and Unjust Enrichment: Promoting Justice in Business and Human Rights Litigation’
ABSTRACT Using Josiya v British American Tobacco (BAT) as a case study, this article explores the growing potential of unjust enrichment to become an additional route to redress in business and human rights (BHR) litigation. Josiya, in which over 7,000 Malawian tobacco farmers are suing BAT for exploitative practices, marks a significant development in attempts […]
Colin Bradley, ‘Accountability and Obligations Come Apart’
ABSTRACT Nicolas Cornell’s Wrongs and Rights Come Apart argues that accountability practices are rooted in wrongs, that obligations are rooted in rights, and that these are two distinct relations. Cornell’s argument convincingly pushes back against a widely held family of views in moral and legal philosophy according to which there is a necessary conceptual relation […]
Bensouda Koraichi and others, ‘Who Leads in Mass Litigation?: Evidence from MDL’
ABSTRACT Who leads in mass litigation? That question sits at the center of debate over multi-district litigation (MDL) – sprawling, consolidated proceedings that now account for a large share of federal civil litigation and play a pivotal role in responding to mass harms ranging from opioids to social media. At the heart of that debate […]
Call for submissions: Association of Law and Political Economy (ALPE), Annual Meeting, Boston MA, 9-10 June 2027
ALPE invites proposals for our second annual meeting, to be held on June 9-10, 2027, in Boston, MA. Panels, roundtables, and individual paper proposals are welcome. We encourage submissions by academics, organizers, practitioners, policy professionals, and others engaged in research that examines the relationship between law and political economy … (more)
Chinonso Ekuma, ‘Third-Party Funding in International Commercial Arbitration: A Critical Analysis of Funding Procedures, Regulatory Frameworks and Emerging Legal Challenges’
ABSTRACT Third-party funding has become an established feature of international commercial arbitration, yet its regulation remains fragmented across jurisdictions. Legislative reforms in Nigeria, Singapore and Hong Kong have removed the traditional legal barriers of maintenance and champerty, while institutional rules, such as the 2021 ICC Rules and the 2025 SIAC Rules, provide for the disclosure […]