Category Archives: Tort
Jennifer Rothman, ‘Reframing Deepfakes’
ABSTRACT The circulation of deceptive fakes of real people appearing to say and do things that they never did has been made ever easier and more convincing by improved and still improving technology, including (but not limited to) uses of generative artificial intelligence (‘AI’). In this essay, adapted from a lecture given at Columbia Law […]
Güneş and Kurtulan-Güner, ‘Different Grounds for Climate Change Liability: Can Tort Lawyers Draw Inspiration from Rights-Based Climate Litigation?’
ABSTRACT Tort law and human rights law represent two distinct legal frameworks that have been deployed in climate change litigation. Historically, early climate cases were predominantly grounded in tort law; however, a more recent and significant trend, referred to by some scholars as the ‘rights turn’, has seen a surge in rights-based claims. Despite the […]
Jann Maatz, ‘Deanthropocentric Legal Subjectivity: On the Expansion of the Human Body Using the Example of the Protection of Personality under German Tort Law’
ABSTRACT Keeping pace with the advances in bioinformatics and digitalisation has become one of the central tasks of today’s legal system and its respective sub-areas. However, this will no longer be possible in the future without moving away from the ideal of a technology-free human individual as the only possible legal subject. Supreme Court case […]
David Foxton, ‘“Careless whispers and (sweet) little lies” establishing the boundaries of misstatement claims’
ABSTRACT This article, based on the 2025 Harris Society Lecture, reviews a number of aspects of the law relating to actionable misstatements where the applicable principles remain unclear or appear unsatisfactory. The analysis is structured by reference to four aspects of a core misrepresentation claim: a statement by a defendant; to the claimant; where the […]
Catherine Brown and others, ‘The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Duty and Standard of Care in Legal Practice: A “Disrupting Moment” for Laws That Protect Consumers from Economic Harm?’
ABSTRACT The increasing integration of artificial intelligence (‘AI’) into legal practice introduces a spectrum of automation goals, ranging from systems that merely assist lawyers in decision-making to those that aim to provide fully autonomous legal advice. In particular, the rise of generative conversational artificial intelligence (‘GenAI’), such as ChatGPT, is fundamentally changing the nature of […]
Huys, Kuzma, Olexiuk, Gupta and Aitken, ‘The Impact of Private Climate Change Litigation and Recent Competition Act Amendments on the Canadian Energy Sector: Regulatory and Legal Developments Shaping the Path Forward’
ABSTRACT This article examines the rise of private climate change litigation in Canada, focusing on efforts to hold corporations accountable for their contributions to climate change and their environmental representations. Canadian courts are increasingly engaging with climate claims, despite ongoing challenges such as a reluctance to interfere with corporate discretion. These cases draw on tort, […]
Haim Abraham, ‘Private Nuisance, Looking Out, and Gazing In’
ABSTRACT Can looking into a neighboring property through its windows, or conducting one’s affairs in their own property in a manner that is visible to neighbors, constitute private nuisance? In several cases, courts have answered this question affirmatively. In this Chapter, I critique these rulings through two prisms – a rights-based analysis and a queer […]
Guttel and Leibovitch, ‘Sanctions and Restitution’
ABSTRACT Objections to harsh criminal sanctions have long been offender centered. This Article demonstrates that harsh sanctions also disadvantage victims. Using rich data from Pennsylvania, and employing prior record as an instrumental variable, we examine the interplay between incarceration length and restitution. Our findings show that longer incarceration periods reduce the likelihood as well as […]
Ning Li, ‘Civil Law Perspectives on Private Damage Relief in Climate Change Litigation’
ABSTRACT Climate change has emerged as a structural challenge to the global legal system in the 21st century. In recent years, the increasing number of cases where private entities seek damage relief in climate litigation has posed institutional tensions for the traditional civil law system in terms of rights construction, liability attribution, and causal determination. […]
Kim and Kim, ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Paradox of Professional Liability’
ABSTRACT Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping professional services and complicating liability design. We develop a framework where experts differing in hidden ability adopt AI and choose effort. AI lowers accident risk but raises compliance costs. Even with asymmetric information, strict liability induces efficient AI adoption and care but negligence induces shirking and inefficient adoption, unless […]