scholarly journals The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality – Core Themes

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Katharina Pistor

Abstract In this brief introduction, I summarize the core themes of my book “The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality”. Capital, I argue, is coded in law – predominantly in a handful of private law institutions. By relying on legal coding techniques, asset holders invoke the right to enforce claims against others, if necessary with the help of the state’s coercive power.

2013 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 629-665 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Sanders

AbstractNeither in England, nor in Germany, nor in all Canadian provinces, does the law provide specific rules for the redistribution of property for unmarried cohabitants after the breakdown of their relationship. Instead, courts apply the law of trusts, contract and unjust enrichment with an eye to the characteristics of intimate relationships, as, for example, in decisions like the EnglishJones v Kernott([2011] UKSC 53) and the CanadianKerr v Baranow(2011 SCC 10). This article compares English, Canadian, and German case law and evaluates it both from a doctrinal perspective and as a part of a general approach towards cohabitation. The article concludes with an appeal for legislative action that strikes the right balance between party autonomy and protection of the weaker party.


Author(s):  
Jinyuan Su

The research and development, testing, production, storage, and deployment of antisatellite weapons (ASATs) is limited directly by the law of space arms control and indirectly by the law of environmental protection. The former only prohibits the testing and deployment of ASATs in a partial manner, with conventional space-based ASATs and ground-based ASATs unaddressed. The latter may constrain the right to test and use ASATs, by limiting their exterior impact on the environment and/or their potential interference with others’ activities. While the law of environmental protection is complementary to the law of space arms control in protecting the space environment from damage caused by military activities, to address the core issue of space security lies in the strengthening of space arms control itself.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-57
Author(s):  
Tatiana Cutts

Mistaken payment is the ‘core case’ of unjust enrichment, and it has had a powerful effect on the development of this area of private law. For Peter Birks, unjust enrichment was simply ‘the law of all events materially identical to mistaken payment’—to be shaped through a process of abstraction from that core case. But this begs the question: how do we work out what counts as ‘materially identical’ to mistaken payment? The most obvious starting point, and that which Birks chose, is the central characteristic of money: money is valuable. Thus, ‘the law of all events materially identical to mistaken payments’ is ‘the law of all events that unjustly enrich one party at another’s expense’.In this article, I argue that this starting point is incorrect. Rather than looking for some factual similarity between mistaken payment and other events, we should identify the role that money plays in justifying restitution. And what justifies restitution in the core case is not the ‘value’ or ‘benefit’ that money confers; rather, it is a defect in the legal transaction that links payor with payee. The payee is not liable because she has been ‘enriched’, but because she is the counterparty to a legal transaction which exhibits traits that there are institutional reasons to disavow. Just like contract and torts, the role of value is secondary: where correcting the injustice in specie is impossible or undesirable, the defendant must pay whichever sum will most nearly achieve that goal.


2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-108
Author(s):  
Andrew Halpin

This article provides a scheme of intelligibility for correlativity, recognising its importance for analytical and normative aspects of legal relations. It considers a variety of types of normative correlativity, investigates the logic of correlativity, and distinguishes three forms of correlation involving legal rights. It undertakes careful re-examination of Aristotelian texts to reveal neglected or misrepresented insights, restores certain Hohfeldian distinctions, and argues for a more complicated relationship between correlativity and reciprocity than previously acknowledged. Specific sections employ the scheme to provide critiques of Weinrib’s use of correlativity in his understanding of private law as corrective justice, and Zylberman’s amalgam of reciprocal correlativity in his non-instrumental view of human rights. A brief concluding section notes the deep asymmetry of law and suggests an understanding of corrective justice based on asymmetry rather than equality. More speculatively, it raises doubts about the core conviction of Kantian thinking on legal and social relationships.


Author(s):  
Ruth Gaffney-Rhys

The Concentrate Questions and Answers series offers the best preparation for tackling exam and assignment questions. Each book includes key debates, typical questions, diagram answer plans, suggested answers, author commentary and tips to gain extra marks. This chapter considers children’s rights and private law relating to children. The first essay question focuses on the rights of the child to make his or her own decisions and to participate in private law proceedings, whilst the second examines how the law ensures that children have a relationship with both parents after separation. The third question is a problem scenario that requires discussion of orders under s.8 of the Children Act 1989, the welfare principle and the Welfare Checklist. The final problem question concerns inherent jurisdiction and the right of a child to refuse medical treatment.


Author(s):  
Anderson Ross G

Chapter 2 of the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts (PICC) contains the core provisions on contract formation. It has two sections: the first deals with offers, acceptances, negotiations, standard terms, and standard firms; the second deals with agency. The fundamental rules on formation of contract which focus on the law of offer and acceptance are provided in Arts 2.1.1–2.1.14. The ‘classical’ model of contract law centres on the parties' agreement to assume obligations with private law consequences, whereas the ‘neoclassical’ model adopts a less strict approach but with a similar focus. This chapter covers contract formation in modern commercial practice, along with provisions relating to electronic signatures, letters of intent, and notices.


Author(s):  
Ben McFarlane ◽  
Andreas Televantos

This chapter identifies and explores a core task of private law: to determine “third party effects” of transactions. We ask to what extent an A–B transaction may affect C, a party who enters into a subsequent transaction with A, or otherwise interferes with the right claimed by B. We show first that such third party effects are controlled not only by rules relating to legal property rights and equitable interests, but also by parts of the law of agency, of partnerships, and of tort. Secondly, whilst a range of doctrines thus share this function of controlling third party effects, it is important to distinguish between the precise legal form used by each doctrine. Thirdly, we argue that even when considering one particular form, such as that of a legal property right, third party effect is determined by the interaction of different types of rules, with the practical operation of one type of rule modified by the application of a different type. For this reason, attention must be paid to the interaction between the different forms used to govern third party effect. There is a question as to whether the law in this area is unduly complex, but we suggest that, so long as the range of forms tracks the diversity of ordinary transactions, private law usefully enhances party autonomy by offering parties these different means of casting their legal relations.


Contract Law ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 429-466
Author(s):  
TT Arvind

This chapter examines how English law defines breach of contract and what the immediate effect of breach is on the validity of the contract, along with the obligations of the parties under the contract. It first considers the core principles underlying the law’s approach to defining breach before explaining how the courts assess performance and the consequences of breach, with particular emphasis on cases involving repudiation. It then discusses three types or classes of contractual terms: conditions, warranties, and innominate terms. It also looks at how the law deals with situations of anticipatory breach and concludes with an analysis of the scope and limits of the right of a party to terminate the contract following a repudiatory breach by the other party.


2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-262
Author(s):  
Marina L. Nokhrina

This paper focuses on ‘absolute’ relationships in private law that do not involve any influence exerted by persons - legal entities or individuals - on external items, whether tangible or otherwise. Such relationships are non-property in nature. Their specific feature is that they exist only as long as a person himself exists - in this respect, they are essentially ‘personal’. Therefore, the relationships in question may be classified as personal and non-property relationships. In such relationships, persons are interested in expressing their individuality, which makes it possible to treat such interest as an ‘absolute’ (i.e., available against the world at large) personal non-property right. This right is the right of personal freedom that requires that any conduct in which a person is engaged in the non-property sphere shall be protected by the law, with certain exceptions the law provides. The paper defines the right of personal freedom, describes its content and legal features, and demonstrates that this right is different from the general ability to have rights. The paper puts forward arguments to support the personal and not political nature of certain powers that comprise the right of personal freedom. The author presents both practical and theoretical arguments in favour of the right of personal freedom being introduced as a new concept both in legal scholarship and legislation.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172110301
Author(s):  
Guy Aitchison

Aside from the case of refugees under international law, are non-citizen outsiders morally justified in unlawfully entering another state? Recent answers to this question, based on a purported right of necessity or civil disobedience, exclude many cases of justified border-crossing and fail to account for its distinctive political character. I argue that in certain non-humanitarian cases, unlawful border-crossing involves the exercise of a remedial moral right to resist the illegitimate exercise of coercive power. The case accepts, for the sake of argument, two conventional assumptions among defenders of immigration restrictions: that states have a ‘right to exclude’ and that migrants have a prima facie duty to respect borders. Nonetheless, where immigration law is racist or otherwise discriminatory, it violates the egalitarian standards at the core of any authority it can plausibly claim over outsiders. In such cases, it may be resisted even where the law is facially non-discriminatory.


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