Category Archives: Fundamental or Human Rights
‘Book Review: Property in Housing by Gustav Muller and Sue-Marie Viljoen’
“The proverb is Gospel: ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand’. Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, even George Costanza has uttered these words to reflect the reality that things so tightly intertwined cannot exist at odds with one another. And thus, the South African Constitution (along with many other Constitutions around the world) present us with a […]
Goldberg and Zipursky, ‘Tort Theory, Private Attorneys General, and State Action: From Mass Torts to Texas SB 8’
ABSTRACT Late twentieth-century tort theory was dominated by scholars who regarded tort law as public law in disguise, and as primarily as a means employed by government to deter anti-social conduct. On this model, tort plaintiffs are cast as private attorneys general whose lawsuits promote safety. As is now better appreciated among contemporary tort theorists, […]
Oona Hathaway, ‘Nestlé USA, Inc v Doe and Cargill, Inc v Doe: The Twists and Turns of the Alien Tort Statute’
ABSTRACT For four decades now, the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) has been one of the most important tools for pursuing justice for human rights victims in the United States. The statute’s latest trip to the Supreme Court came in the October Term 2020 in a pair of cases: Nestlé USA, Inc v Doe and Cargill, […]
‘Should (Some) Political Uses be Presumptively Fair?’
Cathay YN Smith, ‘Political Fair Use’, 62 William and Mary Law Review 2003 (2021). According to conventional wisdom, fair use factor two plays a minor role, if any, in copyright cases. But, as Cathay Smith shows in ‘Political Fair Use’, this factor plays a major role – and may even be dispositive – in cases […]
Kotzé and Boggenpoel, ‘Living Together as Neighbours: Rethinking the Reasonableness Standard in Nuisance Law Under the Constitution’
ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic, with its concomitant ‘stay at home’ catchphrase, has certainly made living together as neighbours in a constitutional dispensation more tangible. Conflicts between neighbours will inevitably increase, especially in a time when citizens from different social, cultural, customary or religious backgrounds and with different rights and interests are restricted to the boundaries […]
Rachael Walsh, ‘Distributing the Costs of Change: Property Transitions and Pacts’
ABSTRACT This paper considers the question of property transitions – of how quickly rules should be permitted to change in ways that have adverse impacts on discrete groups of owners – in light of Hanoch Dagan’s theory of property as a key autonomy-facilitation tool as articulated in A Liberal Theory of Property (Cambridge University Press, […]
Eli Bukspan, ‘The Israeli Public Class Action Fund: New Approach for Integrating Business and Social Responsibility’
ABSTRACT One of the major innovations in the Israeli Class Action Law is the establishment of Public Fund to Finance Class Action Lawsuits to assist representative plaintiffs finance the petitions for certification of class actions ‘with public and social importance’. The fund is a rare phenomenon throughout the world, and therefore can be viewed as […]
Londoño-Lázaro and Córdoba-Marentes, ‘Embedding Human Dignity Standards into Biotechnology Patents: The Role of Morality Clauses’
ABSTRACT This paper proposes an approach to the debate on how to reconcile international trade and human rights, explaining the minimum content of the ordre public and morality clauses (OPMCs) as the recognition of international human rights law (IHRL) standards in trade law and intellectual property law. Within the context of a multicultural and globalised […]
Kotzé and Boggenpoel, ‘Living Together as Neighbours: Rethinking the Reasonableness Standard in Nuisance Law Under the Constitution’
ABSTRACT The Covid-19 pandemic, with its concomitant ‘stay at home’ catchphrase, has certainly made living together as neighbours in a constitutional dispensation more tangible. Conflicts between neighbours will inevitably increase, especially in a time when citizens from different social, cultural, customary or religious backgrounds and with different rights and interests are restricted to the boundaries […]
Philip O’Sullivan, ‘Putting a Check on Police Violence: The Legal Services Market, Section 1983, Torture, Abusive Detention Practices, and the Chicago Police Department from 1954 to 1967’
ABSTRACT This article explores the conception, rise, and initial implementation of a legal strategy which sought to fashion civil liability into a tool for reforming the Chicago Police Department (CPD) from the mid-1950s to 1967. A group of lawyers, working in close concert with the Illinois Division (their preferred name of choice at the time) […]