This 5th volume in the "Munster Colloquia on EU Law and the Digital Economy" focuses on one of the most important challenges faced by private law in this era of digitalization: the effects of "data as counter-performance" on contract law; a phenomenon acknowledged by the EU legislator in the new "Digital Content Directive" 2019/770. In this volume, legal experts from across Europe examine various issues, in particular contract performance and restitution, and the relationship between contract law and data protection, central to the question: Contract law 2.0?
This book adds a critical perspective to the legal dialogue on the regulation of ‘smart urban mobility’. Mobility is one of the most visible sub-domains of the ‘smart city’, which has become shorthand for technological advances that influence how cities are structured, public services are fashioned, and citizens coexist. In the urban context, mobility has come under pressure due to a variety of different forces, such as the implementation of new business models (e.g. car and bicycle sharing), the proliferation of alternative methods of transportation (e.g. electric scooters), the emergence of new market players and stakeholders (e.g. internet and information technology companies), and advancements in computer science (in particular due to artificial intelligence). At the same time, demographic changes and the climate crisis increase innovation pressure. In this context law is a seminal factor that both shapes and is shaped by socio-economic and technological change. This book puts a spotlight on recent developments in smart urban mobility from a legal, regulatory, and policy perspective. It considers the implications for the public sector, businesses, and citizens in relation to various areas of public and private law in the European Union, including competition law, intellectual property law, contract law, data protection law, environmental law, public procurement law, and legal philosophy. Chapter 'Location Data as Contractual Counter-Performance: A Consumer Perspective on Recent EU Legislation' of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.
The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.
This thoroughly updated Research Handbook examines the recent exponential growth of data use in society and its implications for legal research and practice. It explores contemporary research in the field of data science, as well as the operationalization of data for use in healthcare, urban governance and smart household devices, among others.
This book analyses the transformation of consumer law and policy in Europe from 4 perspectives: first, the temporal transformation, i.e., changes that can be tracked from the turn of the millennium; secondly, the substantive dimension, i.e., changes in the scope of the rights and remedies provided by consumer law, as well as the underpinning values; thirdly, the institutional dimension, i.e., changes in the role of national courts, national Parliaments, consumer agencies, and consumer organisations; and fourth, the procedural element, i.e., the shift from individual enforcement via courts to enforcement by public regulators, consumer associations, alternative dispute resolution, and the development of collective enforcement exercised by consumer agencies and/or consumer organisations. With contributions by leading consumer law scholars from across Europe, this book is a fascinating account of how consumer law has often been shaped by national as much as European interests.
In this volume, the Study Group and the Acquis Group present the first academic Draft of a Common Frame of Reference (DCFR). The Draft is based in part on a revised version of the Principles of European Contract Law (PECL) and contains Principles, Definitions and Model Rules of European Private Law in an interim outline edition. It covers the books on contracts and other juridical acts, obligations and corresponding rights, certain specific contracts, and non-contractual obligations. One purpose of the text is to provide material for a possible "political" Common Frame of Reference (CFR) which was called for by the European Commission's Action Plan on a More Coherent European Contract Law of January 2003.
Commercial contract law is in every sense optional given the choice between legal systems and law and arbitration. Its 'doctrines' are in fact virtually all default rules. Contract Law Minimalism advances the thesis that commercial parties prefer a minimalist law that sets out to enforce what they have decided - but does nothing else. The limited capacity of the legal process is the key to this 'minimalist' stance. This book considers evidence that such minimalism is indeed what commercial parties choose to govern their transactions. It critically engages with alternative schools of thought, that call for active regulation of contracts to promote either economic efficiency or the trust and co-operation necessary for 'relational contracting'. The book also necessarily argues against the view that private law should be understood non-instrumentally (whether through promissory morality, corrective justice, taxonomic rationality, or otherwise). It sketches a restatement of English contract law in line with the thesis.
The aim of the book is to create a bridge between two ‘lands’ that are usually kept separate: technical tools and legal rules should be bound together for moulding a special ‘toolbox’ to solve present and future issues. The volume is intended to contribute to this ‘toolbox’ in the area of software services, while addressing how to make legal studies work closely with engineers’ and computer scientists’ fields of expertise, who are increasingly involved in tangled choices on daily programming and software development. In this respect, law has not lost its importance and its own categories in the digital world, but as well as any social science needs to experience a new realistic approach amid technological development and individuals’ fundamental rights and freedoms.
Digital Technologies and the Law of Obligations critically examines the emergence of new digital technologies and the challenges they pose to the traditional law of obligations, and discusses the extent to which existing contract and tort law rules and doctrines are equipped to meet these new challenges. This book covers various contract and tort law issues raised by emerging technologies – including distributed ledger technology, blockchain-based smart contracts, and artificial intelligence – as well as by the evolution of the internet into a participative web fuelled by user-generated content, and by the rise of the modern-day collaborative economy facilitated by digital technologies. Chapters address these topics from the perspective of both the common law and the civil law tradition. While mostly focused on the current state of affairs and recent debates and initiatives within the European Union regulatory framework, contributors also discuss the central themes from the perspective of the national law of obligations, examining the adaptability of existing legal doctrines to contemporary challenges, addressing the occasional legislative attempts to deal with the private law aspects of these challenges, and pointing to issues where legislative interventions would be most welcomed. Case studies are drawn from the United States, Singapore, and other parts of the common law world. Digital Technologies and the Law of Obligations will be of interest to legal scholars and researchers in the fields of contract law, tort law, and digital law, as well as to legal practitioners and members of law reform bodies.
