Category Archives: General
Thilo Kuntz, ‘Formalism for Realists’
ABSTRACT Formalist thinking and legal doctrine are regaining respectability and scholarly attention, and not only in the circles of the New Private Law. Modern-day legal realists readily acknowledge the importance of legal doctrine as a systemic constraint, just as their forebears did. Substantial disagreement remains, however. Notwithstanding their conciliatory rhetoric, legal realists hold steadfastly to […]
Gold and Smith, ‘Managing Legal Concepts: Maintenance, Modulation, Modification’
ABSTRACT Functionalists, especially those inspired by American Legal Realism, downplay the importance of abstract concepts and their interrelations as playing a role in legal reasoning. Hence, they stress shallow, narrow, and isolated concepts in order to be close to the facts in a transparent way. In this paper, we will address an often-overlooked function of […]
Ebere, Askins and Tande, ‘Ubuntu: A New Standard for Arbitration in Africa and Beyond’
ABSTRACT In this article, we critically examine how existing international arbitration and specifically investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) may be misaligned with African values and legal culture and proposes the African concept of Ubuntu as a philosophical and procedural foundation to reform norms of arbitration. Using benchmark cases such as Biwater Gauff v Tanzania, Von Pezold […]
‘Democratic socialism and the law’, Inaugural Lecture by Ewan McGaughey (15 October 2025)
Are democracy and socialism compatible? Does democratic socialism work? And what is its relation to the law? This inaugural lecture shows that democratic socialism is the dominant political model in wealthy democracies, overwhelmingly popular among voters, and the chief driver of human progress. It explains how democratic socialism was built through the understanding of capitalism’s […]
Robert Reed, ‘What are university law schools for?’
It is an honour to have been invited to join you in celebrating sixty years of the School of Law at Queen Mary University of London. The question posed by my lecture – what are university law schools for? – is one to which Queen Mary gives a convincing answer as I will go on […]
Emma Patchett, ‘Performing spatial justice in the shadow of Grenfell’
INTRODUCTION On 14 June 2017 a fire broke out in Grenfell Tower on the Lancaster West Estate, social housing in North Kensington, London. In just a few hours, the fire spread rapidly through the tower block resulting in 72 deaths. Described as ‘one of the most deadly preventable disasters in recent British history’, the fire, […]
Gold and Kuntz, ‘Bridges Between Realism and Formalism’
ABSTRACT This introductory essay to a symposium issue of the American Journal of Jurisprudence starts out from the observation that the relation of legal realism and formalism can be (much) more complicated than often assumed. Instead of setting realism and formalism in opposition only, a more productive way to proceed is to concentrate on what […]
‘Dialogues: Interrogating the Foundations of European Transnational Private Law’ (Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law)
Introducing European transnational private law – A conversation starter (Anna Beckers, Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz, Rodrigo Vallejo and Pia Letto-Vanamo) On the Europeanness of transnational private law: Human rights due diligence laws inside and out (Chantal Mak) How private is European transnational private law? (Kaarlo Tuori) European solidarity and the imaginative ordering of markets (Damian Chalmers) Three […]
Chris Reed, ‘Autonomy, Responsibility and Agentic AI’
ABSTRACT Some have argued that AI technologies which have sufficient autonomy to direct their own actions create a ‘responsibility gap’, meaning that those who deploy those technologies no longer have responsibility for their actions. Agentic AI has a higher level of autonomy than predecessor AIs, and is thus a good test case for examining whether […]
Milan Markovic, ‘Equal Justice and Generative AI’
ABSTRACT The United States has long suffered from unequal access to justice, with countless low-and middle-income Americans forced to navigate the legal system alone. Recently, prominent judges, lawyers, and scholars have seized on generative AI as a potential corrective. These techno-optimists maintain that ChatGPT and other large language models can demystify the law and address […]