Category Archives: Fundamental or Human Rights
Hathaway, Ewell and Nohle, ‘Has the Alien Tort Statute Made a Difference? A Historical, Empirical, and Normative Assessment’
ABSTRACT The Alien Tort Statute (ATS), which allows aliens to file civil suit in US courts for violations of the law of nations, has been considered by many to be one of the most important legal tools for human rights litigation in the United States and perhaps even the world. The effectiveness of this tool, […]
Nick Sage, ‘Property and Other Worries’
ABSTRACT This comment, written for a symposium on Rowan Cruft’s Human Rights, Ownership, and the Individual, considers some aspects of Cruft’s discussion of property. I suggest that Cruft glosses over certain complexities in this area, especially concerning the relation between property and other kinds of right. I question some of Cruft’s arguments about the justifiability […]
Richard Shay, ‘Discovering the Value of Liberty in Intellectual Property Adjudication: A Methodological Critique of the Reasoning in Discovery Ltd v Liberty Group Ltd 2020 4 SA 160 (GJ)’
ABSTRACT This article discusses the recent decision in Discovery Ltd v Liberty Group Ltd 2020 4 SA 160 (GJ), which concerned a claim of trade mark infringement in terms of sections 34(1)(a) and 34(1(c) of the Trade Marks Act 194 of 1993 and unlawful competition on a developed reading of the common law. This article […]
Duncan Matthews, ‘Reappraising the Relationship between Intellectual Property Rights and Human Rights: A COVID-19 Pandemic Response’
ABSTRACT The Covid-19 pandemic, the greatest global health crisis of our times, has highlighted profound inequities in the manufacture and supply of diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines to health care systems worldwide. Crucially, it has revealed structural fault lines in the international intellectual property (IP) architecture. This has strained relations between those who assert that the […]
‘University risks liability by not requiring on-campus COVID-19 vaccination proof: McGill law profs’
“As law schools in Quebec reopen for in-person classes without requiring students and staff to show they are vaccinated against COVID-19, 35 McGill University law faculty are warning that the situation not only exposes people on campus to ‘serious health consequences’ from the deadly virus, it could also fail to meet an ’emerging standard of […]
Davey and Mead, ‘Whose Right Is It Anyway? The Duties Owed to a Deceased and to Surviving Family Members When Dealing with a Corpse: Brennan v City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust [2021] 1 WLUK 429′
ABSTRACT This commentary considers the case of Brennan, in which surviving family members successfully brought a Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) claim against a hospital and a council for the way in which they both treated a body post-mortem. Their failure to freeze it led to such a state of decomposition that it was unfit […]
Ned Snow, ‘Barring Immoral Speech in Patent and Copyright’
ABSTRACT In the past three years, the Supreme Court has twice ruled that Congress’s moral bars to trademark protection violate the First Amendment. Those rulings raise a simple question in other areas of intellectual property. Does the First Amendment preclude Congress from denying patent or copyright protection based on a moral reason? Congress, for instance, […]
Bill Swannie, ‘Speaking Back: Comparing Australia’s Civil Racial Laws to Counterspeech Alternatives’
ABSTRACT This article examines two versions of the argument that speaking back is an appropriate response by the state to instances of vilification, or hate speech. It finds that civil anti-vilification laws are preferable to counterspeech responses for two reasons. First, these laws enable victims of vilification to seek legal redress for the wrong committed […]
Carlo Vittorio Giabardo, ‘Climate Change Litigation and Corporate Responsibility. A Comment on Milieudefensie and Others v Shell (2021)’
ABSTRACT On May 26, 2021, the Hague District Court (commerce division, first instance) ordered Royal Dutch Shell (hereinafter RDS, the multinational giant oil and gas company) to reduce the total emission of CO2 of the entire Shell Group by 45% by 2030, compared to the levels of 2019 (much more than planned). The reason is […]
Just Published: Rachael Walsh, Property Rights and Social Justice: Progressive Property in Action
Property Rights and Social Justice analyses ‘progressive property’ in action by examining the role of constitutional property rights guarantees in mediating private ownership and social justice. It combines insights from property theory with enlightening doctrinal analysis of the interaction between property rights and social justice in the constitutional and broader legal context. It does so […]