Category Archives: Fundamental or Human Rights
Patrick Parkinson, ‘The Constitutional Constraints on Altering Property Rights After Relationship Breakdown’
ABSTRACT Section 79(2) of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) provides that the court shall not make an order altering property rights unless it is just and equitable to do so. This article argues that s 79(2) is required by the constitutional foundations upon which the power to alter property rights rests. The discretion of […]
Michele Corgatelli, ‘The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive: Outstanding Issues’
ABSTRACT This paper contextualises the origins of the due diligence process embedded in the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and assesses how these origins are reflected in the notions of ‘adverse impact’ and its ‘severity’, ‘risk’, ‘influence’ and ‘leverage’. In analysing the new provisions, the paper highlights a number of interpretive problems and outstanding issues […]
Ralph Brubaker, ‘Mass Torts, the Bankruptcy Power, and Constitutional Limits on Mandatory No-Opt-Outs Settlements’
ABSTRACT This essay explores the constitutional tensions produced by aggressive efforts to resolve mass-tort liability through federal bankruptcy proceedings, as illustrated by non-consensual non-debtor (or third-party) releases and the so-called Texas Two-Step maneuver. The goal of both of those devices is to impose a mandatory no-opt-outs settlement of (and that imposes a hard cap on) […]
‘“Slow-walk” protests banned at 1,200 locations’
The scale of efforts by oil companies and public bodies to protect their premises from environmental protesters can be revealed in new BBC analysis. More than 400 demonstrators are named in court orders that restrict protests at more than 1,200 locations, the data gathered by File on 4 shows. The civil injunctions – in force […]
‘Techno-rights’
Anu Bradford, ‘Europe’s Digital Constitution’, 64 Virginia Journal of International Law 1 (2023). The US produces technology and the EU produces rules. This ‘division of labor’ was encapsulated in this exchange: On the acquisition of then-Twitter, Elon Musk tweeted ‘the bird is freed’. An EU commissioner almost immediately responded (also on Twitter) that ‘In Europe, […]
Jie Ouyang, ‘“Embedded Consumer”: Towards a Constitutional Reframing of the Legal Image of Consumers in EU law’
ABSTRACT Consumer protection is an integral part of the current phase of the European integration project. However, eclipsed by market-building, the image of European consumers is homogeneously defined by individual economic interests against a uniform metric. This article proposes the alternative image of an ’embedded consumer’ to align with the imaginary of the constitutional person […]
Vidir Petersen, ‘Constitutional Property Law’
ABSTRACT If the idea of ownership was ever the “sole and despotic dominion” over property, it has been significantly reshaped over the past decades. Indeed, private property is not unfamiliar with adapting to regulations that respond to important public interest and welfare concerns. Examples include land-use controls and the rise of environmental regulations in the […]
Emile Zitzke, ‘Justice Froneman and Transformative Delict’
ABSTRACT In this article the Constitutional Court judgments of Justice Johan Froneman are analysed with the aim of assessing his contribution to the South African law of delict. It is argued that traditional delict scholarship in South Africa is common-law centric in the sense that the common-law rules and principles that regulate the discipline are […]
James McGovern, ‘The “bundle of rights” theory of property: an Irish constitutional solution to a universal conceptual problem?’
ABSTRACT The Irish Constitution’s wording on property rights does not suggest how property should be conceptualised in Irish constitutional jurisprudence while the case law shows that significant conceptual confusion has arisen in this area. This article engages with how certain theories of property conceptualise property and applies them in an Irish context. The article concludes […]
Carsten Koenig, ‘Human Rights or Private Rights? – Effective Protection of Victims in Global Supply Chains’
ABSTRACT The business and human rights movement has made significant gains recently. After years of struggle, courts are increasingly embracing the idea of holding multinational corporations accountable for human rights abuses and environmental damage in countries of the Global South. Legislators are supplementing this with supply chain laws that impose due diligence obligations on multinationals, […]