Category Archives: Public law
‘Criminal Law meets Estates Law: Incarceration and Inheritance’
Brittany L Deitch, ‘Estate to State: Pay-To-Stay Statutes and the Problematic Seizure of Inherited Property’, 95 University of Colorado Law Review (forthcoming 2024), available at SSRN (20 March 2023). Criminal law scholars and estates and trusts scholars do not usually travel in similar circles. They do not typically attend the same conferences or read each […]
Young, Nagdee and Pieterse, ‘The dose-effect relationship in PTSD: the South African Constitutional Court Case of AK v Minister of Police (2022)’
ABSTRACT The decision of the South African Constitutional Court in AK v Minister of Police has implications for law enforcement agencies that fail the victims of crime. In this matter, the plaintiff sued the Minister and others for damages after officers had failed to rescue her from the perpetrator(s) of a protracted sexual assault and […]
Ellen Rock, ‘Government Liability and the Will of Parliament’
ABSTRACT Government liability in tort has long presented difficulties for the common law, particularly when it comes to the exercise of statutory powers. The courts have grappled with difficult questions regarding the extent to which common law liability can be superimposed on a statutory function, adopting various common law tools in the attempt to confine […]
Sandy Steel, ‘Public Authority Liability for Careless Failure to Protect from Harm’
ABSTRACT This article considers the UK Supreme Court decision in Michael v Chief Constable of South Wales Police. It explains the significance of the decision in terms of its affirmation of the principle that public authorities, in the case, the police, are subject to the same duties of care as private individuals in the tort […]
Sarah Swan, ‘Beltran-Serrano v City of Tacoma’
ABSTRACT In Tacoma, Washington, on a late June afternoon in 2013, a police officer brutally shot an unarmed, mentally-ill, middle-aged homeless man four times in the back with a Glock 45. He was not a suspect in any criminal wrongdoing, and horrified eyewitnesses confirmed that he was not posing a threat to anyone, including the […]
Dorothea Anthony, ‘Resolving UN Torts in US Courts: Georges v United Nations’
ABSTRACT This article concerns the recent case of Georges v United Nations, which constitutes, to date, the most elaborate public law challenge to the principle of UN immunity from suit and private law attempt at procuring compensation from the UN for alleged malfeasance. Despite the fact that it relates to people and events in Haiti, […]
Symposium: Natural Property Rights, Texas A&M Journal of Property Law (2023)
Natural Property Rights: An Introduction (Eric R Claeys) Too Simple Rules for a Complex World? Prior Appropriation Water Rights as Natural Rights (Vanessa Casado-Pérez) Balancing the Inequities in Applying Natural Property Rights to Rights in Real or Intellectual Property (Lolita Darden) Business Organizations as Natural Objects of Ownership (Kevin Douglas) How Far Does Natural Law […]
Manish Oza, ‘The Personality of Public Authorities’
ABSTRACT This paper is about when associations, and in particular associations that are part of the state, should be treated as legal persons. I distinguish two forms of association – those that render coherent the agency of their members and those that are group agents – and argue that only the latter should be treated […]
Rafał Szczepaniak, ‘The Application of Private Law in the Public Sector: A Key Issue in the Legal Theory of EU Member States’
ABSTRACT This text presents a brief synthesis of the most important problems associated with the application of private law in the public sector which have arisen in the last 200 years in the States of Continental Europe. In the author’s view, the application of private law in the public sector is one of the key […]
Michael Fielding, ‘Exemplary Damages and Police Wrongdoing: An Empirical Analysis’
ABSTRACT An important recent empirical study of exemplary damages found that compared to other categories of defendant, Australian courts most frequently award exemplary damages against the police. This article provides a tailored empirical study of exemplary damages claims against the police in all Australian jurisdictions between 2000 and 2021, analysing the incidence of claims and […]