Category Archives: Contract
Okoli and Emeasoba, ‘The role of English public policy in promoting the circulation of electronic trade documents’
ABSTRACT The Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (2017) enabled the use and transfer of electronic and digital trade documents across borders. This Model Law influenced the enactment of the 2023 Electronic Trade Documents Act (ETDA) in the United Kingdom, which is a pioneer in this regard. In implementing the Model Law, however, the UK […]
‘Comparative AI Law: Regulating the Future’ – special issue of German Law Journal
Comparative AI Law: Regulating the Future, German Law Journal volume 26, special issue 7, October 2025. Of particular interest for private law are: AI-Driven Dynamic Pricing: Erosion of Consumer Welfare, Invisible Hand, and Rise of Platform Quasi-Taxation (Sang Yop Kang) Digital Alchemy? Rethinking Copyright in the Age of AI-Generated Content: Lessons and Reflections from the […]
‘Coverture 2.0: Rebooting a legal regime of enforced dependency’
Happy Wednesday! This is the last of three posts about women and property (at least for a week or two), and we’re ending with a post about the return of coverture. The idea of coverture has been in the Substack atmosphere lately, and I’ll take any opportunity to talk about coverture (I’ve written about it […]
Adar and Zemach, ‘Reliance as Promise’
ABSTRACT In the face of powerful criticism, the ‘reliance interest’ continues to hold an impactful position in judicial and academic treatment of contract damages. And yet, the theoretical foundation of reliance damages for breach of contract remains unsettled. This Article exposes the inability of the reliance scholarship to coherently explain and justify the widespread judicial […]
William Garske, ‘The Test for Lawful but Illegitimate Pressure’
ABSTRACT Although the High Court of Australia is yet to recognise a doctrine of lawful act duress, this development appears likely to be only a matter of time. This article looks to the future and seeks to determine the appropriate lens through which cases of lawful act duress should be analysed, considering three models recently […]
Chen, Kutin and Russell, ‘Buy Now Pay Later and Its Intersection with Family Violence: Prevalence and Prevention’
ABSTRACT Buy Now Pay Later (‘BNPL’) has gained traction particularly among young Australians as a smart, interest-free ‘way to pay’. Yet, digitalisation, easy access to credit, and the lack of friction have heightened the risks of financial abuse. Coerced BNPL debt continues to increase, and survivors’ attempts to extricate themselves from such debt are fraught […]
Riccardo Serafin, ‘The Road(s) to a Sustainable Contract Law: Three Approaches and Some Remaining Doubts’
ABSTRACT The idea of incorporating environmental sustainability into modern contract law is gaining traction. However, the feasibility of the project as a whole and the concrete changes needed remain largely unsettled and only incompletely explored. The present article contributes to the debate by identifying and critically analysing three strategies (top-down, bottom-up and nudging) to integrate […]
Kelvin Hiu Fai Kwok, ‘The Relationship between Statutory Illegality and Common Law Illegality’
ABSTRACT This article discusses the relationship between statutory illegality and common law illegality in contract law. Statutory illegality refers to contracts that are prohibited by legislation, whether expressly or impliedly. Common law illegality, meanwhile, refers to contracts tainted by illegality because their formation, performance, or purpose involves illegal conduct. The former type of ‘illegal contracts’ […]
Susan Chesler, ‘Leveraging AI-Assisted Contract Drafting for Social Good’
ABSTRACT This article focuses on how contract drafters can – and should – use AI tools to assist them in drafting contracts that not only achieve the parties’ goals but can also be used for social good. While contracts are generally entered into by two discrete parties and private law has not traditionally been viewed […]
Emily Remus, ‘Credit and Coverture in the Age of American Mass Consumption’
ABSTRACT This article considers how married women’s legal status under coverture shaped retail credit practices in the twentieth-century United States, as a mass consumer economy began to take shape. It focuses particularly on the law of necessaries, which made husbands liable for the ‘necessary’ purchases of their wives. Rooted in English common law, this doctrine […]