‘Two Takes on Freedom of Contract, Part II: Hanoch Dagan’

Back in May, Hanoch Dagan (left) Dagan presented the 2024 Maastricht Private Law Lecture on the subject of ‘Freedom of Contract, Properly Understood’. On Friday, we reviewed Rebecca Stone’s take on freedom of contract. It is nice to have two pieces on the topic coming out around the same time to get a state of the field. Professor Dagan begins with a simple dichotomy – freedom of contract is often touted by libertarians as a negative freedom, while liberal egalitarians attempt to limit it when doing so is in the public interest … (more)

[Jeremy Telman, ContractsProf Blog, 14 October 2024]

William Moppett, ‘Donatio mortis causa: new signs of life? Rahman v Hassan [2024] EWHC 1290 (Ch)’

ABSTRACT
In Rahman v Hassan [2024] EWHC 1290 (Ch), HHJ Paul Matthews held that registered land and online bank and shareholding accounts can form the subject-matter of donatio mortis causa, and that, respectively, handing over the land certificate or certain lease documents, and sharing the login/password, can suffice for ‘parting with dominion’ over them. It is suggested that difficulty regarding these assets stems from ambiguity as to whether the function of the ‘sufficient step to implement’/‘parting with dominion’ element(s) of the doctrine is to evidence donative intention or to perform a ‘transitive’ function (and, if the latter, what that function is).

William Moppett, Donatio mortis causa: new signs of life? Rahman v Hassan [2024] EWHC 1290 (Ch), Trusts and Trustees. Published: 10 October 2024.

Sadie Mapstone, ‘The Fiduciary Duty of Combatting Global Climate Change’

ABSTRACT
Ancient Roman Law codified the concept that there are certain resources that are so great and so important to human survival, that intuitively, no person should own them. Further, the government must protect these resources for the people. Today, this concept is known at the public trust doctrine. According to the contemporary doctrine, the seas, oceans, shores, and submerged lands cannot be privately owned, but shall be held in trust by the government for public use. Relying on the public trust doctrine, climate change litigants have brought a tirade of lawsuits – which have largely been unsuccessful – alleging that the government has a fiduciary duty to protect trust resources, and thus must take steps to mitigate the effects of climate change. Despite the backdrop of the current climate crisis, courts have declined to impose such an affirmative duty on the government.

This Note analyzes the viability of the public trust doctrine as a litigation tool to combat global climate change. It examines the doctrine’s history and purpose dating back to ancient Roman Law. Further, this Note advocates for an expansion of the doctrine and for the establishment of an affirmative fiduciary duty on the government to protect the resources held in trust. Ultimately, it offers a solution to give the doctrine the necessary teeth to enact meaningful environmental change.

Sadie Mapstone, The Fiduciary Duty of Combatting Global Climate Change, 82 Washington and Lee Law Review Online 41 (2024).

‘Conference on “Characterisation in the Conflict of Laws” at Oxford, 20-21 March 2025’

At the University of Oxford, a conference on ‘Characterisation in the Conflict of Laws’ will be held on 20 and 21 March 2025. It is jointly organised by Dr Johannes Ungerer (University of Oxford and University of Notre Dame in England), Dr Caterina Benini (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan), and PD Dr Felix Berner (University of Tübingen), and is funded by the Institute of European and Comparative Law and the Faculty of Law … (more)

[Johannes Ungerer, Conflict of Laws .net, 14 October 2024]

Kelvin Low, ‘“Property” as Polyseme and Its Implications for Trust “Property”’

ABSTRACT
The trust may be English law’s ‘greatest and most distinctive achievement … in the field of jurisprudence’ but it is likely to also be its most confounding. A fierce debate has raged for more than a century over whether a beneficiary’s interest under a trust is proprietary or not. Often cast in dualistic terms – is the trust proprietary (or in rem) or is it obligational (or in personam)? – the dispute is more complex and sophisticated than it first appears. Upon closer examination, some of the disagreements are less substantive and more semantic. At the heart of this debate lies the ambiguity inherent in the meaning of the word ‘property’ itself. Yet, although equitable ‘property’ may not be identical to legal ‘property’ (indeed, tangible legal ‘property’ is fundamentally different from intangible legal ‘property’) does not make it any less properly regarded as ‘property’. Rather than being a mere mimic or metaphor, equitable ‘property’ simply secures exclusive control to a resource in a different, indirect, manner for equitable ‘owners’. ‘Property’ is a polyseme, where a word has different meanings but those meanings are related so that even though it is different from legal ‘property’, it is no less truly ‘property’. The primary objective of this clarification is to serve as a via media to reconcile some of the apparently opposing views that have arisen in this debate. However, those taking the proprietary view who suggest reform of underlying rules on the basis that beneficial interests are proprietary and thus should have certain effects are mistaken because they have failed to appreciate the importance of the different forms of exclusion that underpin the polyseme that is ‘property’. This understanding of equitable ‘property’ also carries implications for the English Law Commission’s conception of digital assets as third things that supposedly carry no rights until they are interfered with. If so, then they cannot be the subject-matter of trusts, contrary to current authorities.

Low, Kelvin FK, ‘Property’ as Polyseme and Its Implications for Trust ‘Property’ (August 27, 2024), Journal of Equity, special issue on ‘Equitable Property’, Forthcoming.

‘Consumer Law and Inequality: Comparative Approaches to Consumer Vulnerability’

With the amount of exploitative digital tools explicitly targeting consumers’ vulnerabilities on the rise, it hardly seems controversial to call for greater protections. Whether consumer law should be concerned with inequality, however, is a multi-faceted question that depends to an extent on the particular vision and understanding of the aims of consumer law in play, not to mention the original conception of the consumer in whichever legal system is in question … (more)

[María Guadalupe Martínez Alles, Transformative Private Law Blog, 14 October 2024]

Philip Sales, ‘The role of purpose in legislative interpretation: inescapable but problematic necessity’

INTRODUCTION
Statutes are expressed in words. Courts interpret and apply statutes according to their proper meaning. But words are not simple building blocks constituted of fixed and unalterable datums of meaning which are put together like Lego bricks to reveal clear and perspicuous meaning of composite sentences. Words have shades of meaning, which becomes determinate when used in specific contexts for specific purposes. There are therefore philosophical reasons why the meaning of words involves recourse to the purposes of the person who uses them … (more)

Lord Sales, ‘The role of purpose in legislative interpretation: inescapable but problematic necessity’. Presentation at the Oxford University and University of Notre Dame Seminar on Public Law Theory: Topics in Legal Interpretation, 19 September 2024.

‘“Good news’’ as copyright and AI stand-off to end within months’

The UK government is planning to end uncertainty around the use of copyright content as artificial intelligence (AI) training data in what appears to be good news for AI companies and creative industry stakeholders. The ongoing stand-off over the use of copyright protected materials in training AI systems will be resolved by the end of the year, according to the UK’s parliamentary under-secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, Feryal Clark … (more)

[Cerys Wyn Davies, Pinsent Masons, 10 October 2024]

Geoffrey Vos, ‘AI and the GDPR’

INTRODUCTION
The EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act began entering into force on 1 August 2024. It will take some 2-3 years to come fully into operation. The Council of Europe’s Treaty on AI and human rights, democracy and the rule of law was opened for signature on 5 September 2024 by European Justice Ministers in Vilnius. The Council of Europe’s Treaty was billed as the first-ever international legally binding treaty aimed at ensuring that the use of AI systems is consistent with human rights, democracy and the rule of law. The Treaty has already been signed by the EU, the UK and the USA, amongst others … (more)

Sir Geoffry Vos, Master of the Rolls, Irish Law Society Industry Event, 9 October 2024.

Chathuni Jayathilaka, ‘A Tale of Too Many Doctrines: Supervening Impossibility and the Sale of Goods’

ABSTRACT
Contracts for the sale of goods contain three default rules addressing the problem of supervening impossibility: sections 7 and 20 of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 and the doctrine of frustration. This article uses a legal historical method to examine why this is the case and what the relationship between these rules is. It contends that the current approach is the accidental result of a series of historical contingencies and argues that it is unsatisfactory for several reasons. It then offers suggestions as to how the law might be rationalised. On a broader level, the inquiry provides a lens through which the wider history of supervening impossibility in English contract law can be explored. The article argues that our current conceptualisation of the law prior to 1863 is fundamentally flawed, and that this inhibits our understanding of how the earlier law both shaped and confused the development of a more general doctrine of supervening impossibility.

Chathuni Jayathilaka, A Tale of Too Many Doctrines: Supervening Impossibility and the Sale of Goods, Modern Law Review. First published: 13 October 2024.