Monthly Archives: October, 2026
Chen, Chen and Sun, ‘The Anti-SLAPP Statutes and Corporate Environmental Policies’
ABSTRACT We examine whether legal protection for civic participation affects corporate pollution. Polluters may deter public discipline through strategic lawsuits. Anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) statutes mitigate this threat by enabling prompt dismissal and recovery of legal costs. Using a difference-indifferences design, we find that enacting an anti-SLAPP statute in a state significantly reduces […]
Martha Chamallas, ‘Power and Vulnerability in the Torts Restatement: Vicarious Liability for Sexual Assault’
ABSTRACT Historically, most courts have refused to impose vicarious liability on employers for sexual assaults inflicted by their employees, applying the traditional view that sexual assaults are outside the scope of employment because they do not further the interests of the employer. However, in the past few decades, the tide has turned, with many courts […]
‘Show some consideration, please’
It is rare for a contract to be found to lack consideration. However, in a recent jurisdiction challenge, the High Court held that there was no good arguable case that a security letter was supported by consideration. Denning lent USD 1 million to Arcem under a loan agreement, with repayment obligations guaranteed by Main. The […]
Aaron Salomon, ‘Moral Duties and Imperfect Social Norms’
ABSTRACT An influential and troubling objection to contractualism and rule consequentialism is that they cannot account for the fact that sometimes actual, imperfect social practices – such as, for example, our property conventions – can determine what we are morally required to do. My main aim in this paper is to argue that this objection […]
Marco Pasqua, ‘Towards a SLAPP-Aware EU Private International Law Framework?’
ABSTRACT Strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) raise distinctive challenges for European Union private international law. While the Anti-SLAPP Directive establishes a common procedural framework for addressing abusive litigation, it does not provide a comprehensive response to the private international law questions that arise when SLAPPs cross borders. This article examines those questions across three […]
‘Wherein Lies Contemporary Law and Economics?’
In their recent paper ‘Contemporary Law and Economics’, Adam Chilton, Joshua Macey, and Mila Versteeg argue that LPE critics of the Law and Economics movement are attacking a straw man. The authors claim that although Law and Economics once stressed efficiency goals, which they defined as ‘wealth maximization’, contemporary practitioners simply endorse the use of […]
Martínez-Ramil and Kerikmäe, ‘Who is Accountable for the Algorithm? Assessing the Effectiveness of the EU’s Approach Towards AI Liability’
ABSTRACT This chapter examines the European Union’s approach to civil liability for artificial intelligence systems. It considers how responsibility should be allocated when AI systems cause harm, taking into account the technical complexity of the AI lifecycle and the multiple actors involved in the design, development, deployment and operation of AI systems. Against this background, […]
Shahshahani and Beim, ‘Judges, Lawyers, and Legal Innovation’
ABSTRACT We investigate the conditions that support or suppress legal innovation through a formal model that incorporates a litigant’s strategic decision about how to frame a case. Litigants’ legal innovation depends on the distribution of judicial ideology and aptitude, meaning a judge’s ability to adjudicate innovative legal arguments. We show that judicial aptitude sometimes matters […]
David Erdos, ‘UK Data Protection After Brexit: Between the EU and the Most Developed Commonwealth States?’
ABSTRACT Although the UK retained an EU-derived legal model of data protection post-Brexit, in September 2021 its Conservative Government launched a non-radical initiative for the primary law reform of this which was extensively influenced by legislation in the other most economically developed Commonwealth States (namely, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Singapore). This ultimately led to […]
Urs Schweizer, ‘Damages Rules Implementing Desired Outcomes’
ABSTRACT This paper deals with tort relationships where some parties are directly involved, others indirectly. Only directly involved parties choose actions relevant for the case. The desired outcome reflects concerns also of indirectly affected parties and, for that reason, need not maximize welfare of the directly involved parties. Damages rules compensatory relative to such a […]