Monthly Archives: October, 2024
‘ALI Launches Principles of the Law, Civil Liability for Artificial Intelligence’
The American Law Institute’s Council voted to approve the launch of Principles of the Law, Civil Liability for Artificial Intelligence. The project will be led by Reporter Mark Geistfeld of New York University School of Law …. (more) [American Law Institute, 22 October 2024]
‘Reconfiguring contract law through sustainability’
Though not the centrepiece, sustainability was already on the radar of the Manifesto for Social Justice in European Contract Law in 2004: ‘It is important to align the general principles of social justice that govern the market order with standards designed to protect public goods such as a healthy environment’. Twenty years later, as humanity […]
‘The other “class” question’
The original Manifesto refers to ‘procedures’ and ‘enforcement’ only once each. Yet, civil procedure is essential to any analysis of private law. In Europe, civil procedure and enforcement laws are advancing at a fast pace, influenced both by the European Union and national legislatures. In the past two decades, Europe has witnessed a noticeable increase […]
‘How the “Legal Capacity” of Persons with Disabilities May Serve as a Tool for Social Justice in Europe?’
Self-determination, employment, housing, and access to credit are essential aspects of social justice insofar as they are necessary to satisfy citizens’ fundamental needs and ensure a range of basic entitlements (Caruso 2013). All these central traits of the human condition are closely connected with (and dependent on) one of the basic and traditional concepts of […]
‘The Making of the Debtor Society: From Affluence to Normalised Indebtedness’
In this contribution, I introduce the concept of a ‘debtor society’ and explore how it reflects broader socio-economic transformations shaped by neoliberal policies and financialisation. Building on Pistor’s (2019) argument that capital is coded in law, I argue that the debtor society is defined by two key elements: the normalisation of indebtedness as a central […]
‘How the EU Can Avoid Green Colonialism’
Twenty years after its publication, the Manifesto for Social Justice in Contract Law’s call to ‘align the general principles of social justice that govern the market order with standards designed to protect public goods such as a healthy environment’ continues to resonate. The traditional definition of social justice – focused on the fair and equal […]
Yan Kai Zhou, ‘Undesirably risky affairs: resuscitating the desire-based approach to risk as harm’
ABSTRACT This paper engages with the longstanding debate over whether being exposed to a risk of harm amounts to harm itself (what I call ‘risk-harm’). The dominant view has been that those exposed to risks of harm do not suffer harm. In this paper, I defend the widely unpopular subjectivist account of risk-harm – according […]
Nicole Iannarone, ‘Investor Justice’
ABSTRACT There is a systemic flaw in the investor protection landscape. Unrepresented investors face off against well-resourced repeat-player firms that almost always have lawyers. While consumers face similar challenges in civil courts, in forced securities arbitration, the decisionmaker may not have a law degree; is prohibited from conducting any outside legal research; and has no […]
Ignacio Cofone, ‘Certifying Privacy Class Actions’
ABSTRACT Privacy class actions are undertheorized. Courts are increasingly called upon to adjudicate them when they arise from corporate business practices and data security events. But, even when they overcome problems of standing and compensation, courts lack frameworks for constituting and certifying a class in view of shared intangible losses and harms. Consequently, despite the […]
Alexandra Braun, ‘Testamentary responsibility’
INTRODUCTION … The aim of this article is to challenge these perceptions and related assumptions and to question testamentary freedom as the self-evident organising principle of modern succession law. Its purpose is to bring into sharper focus another important value of succession law: ‘responsibility’. While we speak of responsibility in other areas of private law […]