Unearthing Cartojuridism

Legal History, Legal Theory

Maps are all around us. Maps not only inundate our reality, impel our direction, depict weather forecasts, provide demographic data, and distinguish electoral districts, but they also mark property boundaries, affirm state lines, represent territorial limits, provoke geopolitical crises, and sustain sovereign claims. These are all more or less well-known cartographic functions and have merited scrutiny, in varying degrees, from various disciplines. But the historically constituted intrinsic ties that bind maps and law, cartography and jurisdiction, the visual and the legal, are yet to receive sustained attention in legal scholarship.

Carbon-free Shipping and Shipping Carbon

Shipping and Maritime Law

My recent book, Carbon-Free Shipping and Shipping Carbon (Hart Publishing, 2024) co-edited with Professor Vibe Ulfbeck contains 15 chapters. It explores the private law implementation of the new international and EU regulatory framework targeting decarbonisation in the shipping industry. It is the follow-on to a Conference organised by Vibe Ulfbeck and hosted by the Shipping and Ocean Law Group (SHOC) at the University of Copenhagen in November 2022, where I also spoke.

The Extension of Vicarious Liability in Determining Group Companies’ Liability

Legal Theory, Private Law

It is an unresolved but important issue whether one legal entity can be vicariously liable for another legal entity’s tort in a corporate group. The debate over a parent company’s liability for its subsidiary’s torts has emerged, particularly in the context of environmental harms or mass torts resulting in personal injuries. Often, liability claims surpass the subsidiary’s value, leading to its insolvency, and tort creditors attempt to claim against alternative defendants, especially the parent company. 

Unjust Enrichment Law and AI

Data Protection, Unjust Enrichment

When companies collect our data to train their AI systems, or benefit from our data in other ways, are we entitled to any of those benefits? In a chapter published in The Cambridge Handbook of Private Law and Artificial Intelligence edited by Ernest Lim and Phillip Morgan, I consider the situations in which individual data subjects should be allowed to seek gain-based remedies against those companies.

Large Language Models in Legal Education

Legal Education

LLMs are swallowing the legal world. No, not the Master of Laws degree – I’m talking about large language models. These LLMs are here, they’re increasingly powerful, and they’re already being used by law students and legal professionals alike (with occasionally disastrous results). Even judges are getting on board. So, what does this all mean for legal education?

Islamic Wealth Management: Prospects, Challenges, and the Case of Singapore

Banking and Finance, Islamic Law

Islamic finance is currently a multi-billion dollar industry and has the potential to grow considerably bigger. Some commentators have noted that while the amount of money that could be available to be placed in Islamic wealth management structures in significant, the industry has not been able to absorb all this potential investment. This post discusses our article recently published in the Capital Markets Law Journal, and which is situated in this context.

Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance in India

Corporate Governance

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has had a pivotal status in the debates surrounding corporate law and governance at the turn of the century. Although CSR was ensconced in the idea of voluntarism by which companies and their boards are invited to pay attention to the interests of various constituencies affected by a company’s activities, in some jurisdictions it has also acquired the status of a legal obligation. However, a recent strain of literature has identified that the broader sustainability concerns surrounding corporate governance have focused more on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG), and away from CSR as traditionally understood.

A New Player in the Treaty Interpretation Game

Public International Law

As lawyers, texts are – to a large extent – our ‘stock in trade.’ And so, like many other lawyers, I have become fascinated by the ability of services such as ChatGPT to use large language models (‘LLMs’) to generate human-like text. Much has been written on how LLMs can pass bar exams and how they might affect various areas of national law. But there’s something of a blind spot when it comes to how LLMs will affect international law, particularly in the realm of treaty interpretation. Yet treaty interpretation, with its complex interplay of language, context, and legal principles, provides a particularly intriguing case study for the potential impact of LLMs.

Illegal Wildlife Trade: The Critical Role of the Banking Sector in Combating Money Laundering

Banking and Finance

During the past two decades or so, the sale of illegally harvested wildlife or derivatives thereof, commonly referred to as illegal wildlife trade (IWT), has developed into a highly profitable organised crime, with the World Economic Forum estimating an annual generation of approximately USD 20 billion in proceeds from wildlife products. The increasing demand for wildlife products such as pelts, ivory, furs, wildlife-based medicines and exotic pets poses major consequences for the international financial system. It also threatens biodiversity, enables corruption and increases public health risks such as the spread of zoonotic diseases which are transmitted from animals to humans. This widespread impact illustrates the seriousness of IWT.