Category Archives: Land use and Environment
Marco Cappelletti, ‘Rylands v Fletcher Redux: Rubis Bahamas Ltd v Russell’
ABSTRACT The decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Rubis Bahamas Ltd v Russell is the most significant development in the law of Rylands v Fletcher for decades. Rejecting the view that the rule is merely a sub-species of private nuisance, the Committee reconstructed it as an independent rule of strict liability […]
Mezei and Härkönen, ‘Intellectual Property Law and Upcycling – Towards a Sustainable Transformativeness?’
ABSTRACT Upcycling is an increasingly important practice within the circular economy, particularly in the fashion and creative industries, where discarded or underused goods are transformed into products with a new function or added value. Yet, when the source materials embody intellectual property (IP), upcycling may conflict with the exclusive rights of copyright, trademark, and design […]
‘New Zealand’s Shameful Climate Tort Law – And What Climate Lawyers Can Learn from It’
New Zealand’s Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Act became law on 24 August 2026. The Act is the first national law to comprehensively rule out civil liability for activities that cause harm by contributing to climate change. In this post, I describe the Act, its political context, and lessons that climate lawyers might learn. […]
Chantal Mak, ‘The Common Good Contract: Rethinking Contractual Justice in the Regulation of Global Supply Chains’
ABSTRACT This report considers the normative underpinnings of national and regional due diligence laws that aim to get a grasp on the protection of human rights and the environment along global supply chains. Starting from a comparative exploration of several representative due diligence laws, it is analysed what is the place of contract in these […]
Chantal Mak, ‘The Elephant in the Room: Contract, Tort and Company Law Dimensions of Supply Chain Liability as Fragments of the Reimagination of Companies’ Legal Personhood’
ABSTRACT This contribution proposes that a rethinking of legal personhood for companies is necessary to fully develop legal accountability for the risks global business poses to the living environment. It first sets out how private law has facilitated multinational business at the cost of other interests. Solutions in traditional tort and contract law present a […]
Alexandra Klass, ‘Building Judicial Narratives for Climate Accountability Litigation’
ABSTRACT It has been nearly ten years since the first climate accountability lawsuits were filed by state and local governments against major oil and gas companies and their trade association, the American Petroleum Institute, seeking damages and/or civil penalties for deception and other harms associated with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. If any of these climate […]
Kiran Chawla, ‘Who Pays for Wildfires?’
ABSTRACT Sparks from private utility infrastructure have ignited some of the deadliest wildfires of the last decade. Climate change and a pattern of building in harm’s way have made the resulting harms catastrophic. Who should pay? This Article evaluates the liability and regulatory rules that answer that question, analyzing two categories of costs and their […]
Güzide Irem Can, ‘Why Contracts Need a Holistic Approach to Sustainability?’
ABSTRACT The concept of sustainability – which has become central to today’s legal and economic systems – is being transformed from a broad social, ecological and business-related concern into a binding legal principle that concerns and affects both public and private law. In other words, sustainability is also being transformed into a binding legal paradigm […]
Chon and Dreyfuss, ‘Intellectual Property and the Circular Economy: Tripping Over (or Around) TRIPS?’
ABSTRACT Written for a forthcoming two volume set on Global Challenges in Intellectual Property Law: TRIPS at 30 and Beyond, this chapter explores the conflicts between the framework of the 1995 WTO TRIPS Agreement and the goals of the circular economy, which in some jurisdictions has become an embedded regulatory (or at least an aspirational […]
María Ignacia Vial Undurraga and Isabel Zuloaga Ríos, ‘The principle of contractual sustainability and privity of contract: challenges and solutions in transnational commercial law’
ABSTRACT Contractual sustainability meets the requirement to be a general principle of law and, in particular, of transnational commercial law, as it protects an urgent and basic shared ethical value and expresses the duties that we all owe to present and future generations. Contractual sustainability refers to achieving or promoting sustainable development through contractual mechanisms […]