Category Archives: General
‘What a difference a century makes: academic lawyers in the courtroom’
The issue the UK Supreme Court had to decide in Rukhadze v Recovery Partners GP Ltd [2025] UKSC 10; [2025] 2 WLR 529 was undoubtedly an important one. It concerned the scope of the so-called profit rule as it applies to trustees and other fiduciaries such as company directors. In the words of the Court, […]
Cristina Estrella, ‘Access to Justice from a Preventive Perspective in Civil Law Systems’
ABSTRACT Access to justice has traditionally been understood as access to courts and judicial remedies. While judicial protection remains an essential guarantee of the rule of law, this article argues that a purely jurisdictional conception of access to justice is insufficient to ensure the effective and equal protection of rights in contemporary societies. Drawing on […]
Mala Chatterjee, ‘From Extended Personality to Extended Minds: Toward an Expanded Theory of Legal Personality’
ABSTRACT This chapter argues that the extended personality doctrine implicates – and so ought to incorporate – a class of external objects that are not presently contemplated by legal doctrine or scholarship, but which can be functionally integrated with our cognitive systems in much the same way that clothing or eyeglasses are integrated with our […]
Duncan Kennedy, ‘Continental and American Critical Legal Studies: A Close Reading of an Article by Giovanni Marini’
ABSTRACT This article, intended as a contribution to a tribute issue of the Revista critica del diritto privato, offers a detailed reading of an early article by Giovanni Marini. Marini provides a richly historicized account of the similar and different trajectories of Continental European and American critical legal studies as they stood in the early […]
Goodman and Laser, ‘Ten Tips for Legal Empiricists’
ABSTRACT This essay offers practical tips from leading legal empirical researchers to assist new scholars who are entering the field. Topics include developing meaningful research questions, designing robust survey methodologies, balancing qualitative and quantitative approaches, ensuring data transparency, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, and navigating ethical considerations in empirical work. Drawing from their own unique challenges and […]
Hiller and Sewell, ‘Presumptions of AI Malfunction: A Judicial Response to AI Harms’
ABSTRACT In stark contrast to the recently revoked federal policy meant to incentivize the adoption of safe, secure, and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems, the July 2025 Winning the Race, America’s AI Action Plan succinctly summarizes its approach as ‘Build, Baby, Build!’. Public discourse, as well, vacillates between artificial intelligence (AI) as a savior or an […]
Ilias Ioannou, ‘Is the Electronic Trade Documents Act 2023 Sufficient to Promote the Uptake of Paperless Trading Systems?’
ABSTRACT In September 2023, the Electronic Trade Documents Act (ETDA) came into force in the UK. It aims to facilitate paperless trade by allowing certain trade documents in electronic form to have the same legal functionality as their paper counterparts. The question this article poses is whether the ETDA, and similar legislative initiatives in other […]
Mala Chatterjee, ‘A Functionalist Theory of Legal Persons’
ABSTRACT This Article defends a functionalist theory of legal persons that substantively unifies individuals, corporations, and other constructed or juridical persons, and then canvasses revisionary implications for law. In more words, I argue that, because the law has (and ought to have) an instrumentalist conception of the world, legal persons are defined and delineated on […]
SI Strong, ‘Artificial Intelligence and Civil Justice: US Practice, Policy, and Principles’
ABSTRACT This paper has been prepared as the US National Report for the International Academy of Comparative Law (IACL) World Congress 2026 (Section: Artificial Intelligence and Civil Justice). The paper addresses a number of topics relating to US practice, policy, and principles concerning artificial intelligence (AI). Items discussed include (1) a general overview of AI […]
Sandy Steel, ‘Compensation for Permissible Harm’
ABSTRACT This article examines the law on when a person has a duty to compensate, despite acting permissibly in causing harm that normally violates a person’s right. First, it compares the law’s approach to compensation across a number of different types of permitting fact, such as defence, private necessity, public necessity and preventive action against […]