Category Archives: Land use and Environment
Orts and Schafhäutle, ‘Corporate Fiduciary Duties and the Climate and Biodiversity Crisis’
ABSTRACT This Article argues that addressing one of the most urgent environmental challenges facing humanity today – the global climate and biodiversity crisis – calls for a transformation at the heart of corporate law: its fiduciary duties. After demonstrating how current corporate fiduciary duties are implicated in this crisis, we argue for reform of fiduciary […]
Lai, Yu and Lam, ‘Michael Heller’s theory of the “tragedy of the anti-commons”: A Coasian property rights interpretation and some applications to planning policies’
ABSTRACT This short analytical paper discusses Heller’s (2013) concept of the ‘tragedy of the anti-commons’ (TOAC) and his car-parking fable; and translates his analysis, in its best possible light, into a Coasian property rights-access framework. Within this framework, the paper proceeds to denominate TOAC as a special case of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ (TOC) […]
Elias Van Gool, ‘Product Liability in a More Circular Economy: A Study of Liability for Alternative Methods of Distributing and Producing Durable Consumer Goods’
ABSTRACT Specific, more strict theories of product liability, which have now largely been maximally harmonised in the EU, have developed on the basis of a linear economic model. By using doctrinal and economic legal research, this thesis examines the state of EU product liability law and how it is tested by alternative, circular economic methods […]
Kaden Pradhan, ‘Earth Jurisprudence and Land Law: A Critique of the Philosophical and Economic Foundations of the Modern Law of Real Property’
ABSTRACT This article explores the interaction between land law and the natural world through the critical lens of Earth Jurisprudence. Land law plays a critical role in either fostering environmental preservation or enabling its destruction, as it governs the private rights that can be exercised over land. At the heart of land law, however, are […]
Kidd and Mocsary, ‘Corporate Governance as Bloodsport’
ABSTRACT The modern Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) movement promotes diversion of corporate assets from shareholders to ‘stakeholders’. This is done in the name of a corporate duty to society. But ‘successful’ ESG efforts threaten the success of the corporate form by inviting rent-seeking. This conflict between ESG principles and established theories and norms of […]
Aryan Mohseni, ‘What (is) a nuisance: Hunt Leather Pty Ltd v Transport for NSW’
ABSTRACT By a slim majority of 3-2, the High Court of Australia in Hunt Leather Pty Ltd v Transport for NSW [2025] HCA 53 has now endorsed the test for private nuisance laid out by the UK Supreme Court in Fearn v Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery [2023] UKSC 4; [2024] AC 1. […]
Aisha Saad, ‘Subrogation as Climate Governance’
ABSTRACT As climate change intensifies wildfires, floods, and other catastrophic events, homeowners insurance has become a critical site for allocating the resulting losses, owing to its economic significance for millions of Americans. Yet, debates over insurance reform have focused largely on pricing, availability, and public backstops, overlooking the governance role played by insurance doctrine itself. […]
Chris Bevan, ‘Adverse Possession, the Significance of the “Type” and “Character” of Land, and Minor or Trivial acts of Possession’
ABSTRACT This article examines the principles of adverse possession, focusing on the significance of the type, nature, and character of land, as well as the sufficiency of minor or trivial acts in establishing factual possession. It critiques the inconsistency and incoherence in interpretations of these principles by the court, highlighting conflicting case law and unpredictability […]
Nadav Shoked, ‘Two Hundred Years of Spite’
ABSTRACT Spite’s role in property law is garnering much academic attention. Yet spite remains strikingly misunderstood. Commentators partaking in the reinvigorated debate over property rights’ nature often point at the law’s prohibition on spiteful uses of property by owners as indicating that property law is sensitive to individuals’ goals and attitudes when distributing powers. This […]
‘Government to lift paywall from large parts of the Land Registry’
Finding out who owns land in England is to become much simpler because a paywall will be lifted from large parts of the Land Registry, the government is to announce. A small number of landowners control the majority of land but finding out who owns what is difficult to piece together, even for government departments, […]