Monthly Archives: March, 2024
Susan Bright, ‘Private Law Failings and Policy Development following the Grenfell Tower Fire’
ABSTRACT The building safety crisis following the Grenfell Tower Fire has had a devastating impact on leaseholders in England and created public safety risks. In response, the UK government has put together a package of non-legislative and legislative reforms. The primary legislative measure is the Building Safety Act 2022, which received Royal Assent on 28 […]
‘The Enforcement Opportunity: From Mass Arbitration to Mass Organizing’
Over the past thirty years, mandatory arbitration clauses have proliferated in employment contracts, preventing more than sixty million American workers from vindicating their civil rights in a courtroom and forcing them to pursue legal claims in private, confidential forums. Nearly twenty-five million workers are also subject to waivers of class or collective actions, rendering many […]
David Hayton, ‘Trustees’ duties: exemptions and exonerations’
ABSTRACT As part of the bargain for undertaking a trusteeship, a trustee can exempt itself not only from liability for a breach of trust, it can altogether oust particular trusteeship duties, so long as it leaves intact the irreducible core obligations of a trust. Where a trustee is to hold underlying controlled companies, the trustee’s […]
Jeong-Yoo Kim, ‘Law and Economics of Artificial Intelligence: Optimal Liability Rules for Accident Losses Caused by Fully Autonomous Vehicles’
ABSTRACT We consider the optimal liability rule in the case of accidents by fully autonomous vehicles. We show that when due activity is not enforceable, it is socially optimal to apply the strict liability rule to the human operator who determines the activity level and to apply the negligence rule to the manufacturer and the […]
Daniel Harris, ‘The Case Against Vicarious Gatekeeper Liability’
ABSTRACT A 2020 article in the Georgetown Law Journal by Professor Rory Van Loo urges changing the common law to make internet gatekeepers such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook strictly liable for wrongs accomplished through the use of their platforms, even when the gatekeeper did nothing wrong and the actual wrongdoer was not an agent […]
Joe Buffington, ‘It’s Not a Contractual Offer, Unless It’s a Question’
ABSTRACT Jurists often describe, or even define, contractual offers as conditional promises, but multiple linguistic intuitions suggest that offers to enter into contracts are neither promises that are somehow made upon the occurrence of a later condition (acceptance) nor unconditional commitments (‘promises’) with conditional content. In short, it seems that English conditionals and promises cannot […]
Jia Wang, ‘Reconceptualizing the Interface of Copyright and Design Rights for 3D Printing’
ABSTRACT Three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies and platforms are becoming more prominent, faster and more ubiquitous, and they have significantly challenged the modular IP system. Currently, an unclear interface between different types of IP rights has led to the overprotection of design files. Moreover, despite the significant growth of designs in China, the current debate on […]
Fins and Shapiro, ‘Pain Management, Disorders of Consciousness, and Tort Law: An Emergency Tort to Fix a Longstanding Injustice’
ABSTRACT We address the systemic undertreatment of pain for individuals diagnosed with disorders of consciousness (DoC). Patients with DoC are often unable to communicate due to damage to their brains, and because DoC patients appear to be insensate, practitioners often believe that these patients are unable to feel pain and may not offer them analgesia, […]
Duus-Otterström and Page, ‘Defeating Wrongdoing: Why Victims of Unjust Harm Should Take Priority over Victims of Bad Luck’
ABSTRACT It is sometimes suggested that victims of unjust harm should take priority over victims of other forms of harm. We explore four arguments for this view: that victims of unjust harm experience greater suffering; that prioritizing victims of unjust harm would help prevent unjust harm in the future; that it is good for perpetrators […]
‘Consumer Protection for Gig Work?’
Amazon’s business depends on deliveries. Deliveries, in turn, require drivers. In 2015, Amazon piloted a new model: paying drivers per gig to use their own vehicles to drop off time-sensitive deliveries like groceries and same-day orders. Amazon offered $18 to $25 per hour and explicitly promised drivers ‘100% of the tips [they] earn’. But Amazon […]