The United States is threatening the multilateral trading system with a World Trade War - a combination of aggressive unilateral trade restrictions and a wilful disabling of the rules-based dispute settlement system of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Other WTO Members must unite around a...
On the 8th of December 2017, Mr. Matthijs Geuze, who worked for the WIPO Secretariat during the negotiations of the Geneva Act, held an expert lecture at Maastricht University on the International Registration and Protection of Appellations of Origin and Geographical Indications in the light of the...
How do we explain a decision made by a machine-learning algorithm? Do works of art created by artificial intelligence enjoy copyright protection? If intelligent games gather data of their users, who is liable if users are harmed by such games?
The well-known British James Bulger case is ‘celebrating’ its 25th anniversary. This revives the debate on how we should deal with children suspected and convicted of serious crimes.
Trust in the legal system of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has promoted an historic global expansion of trade and investment. That trust is at risk of erosion. The evolutionary role of complexity may hold the key to understanding why.
Every once in a while, I have the good fortune of reading a court case which is both fun and educational. The UK Supreme Court case Ivey (Appellant) v Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd t/a Crockfords (Respondent) is one such case, which tells an interesting story, while also explaining to the public the...
The US government is breaching its obligation to promote universal respect for human rights by cutting back on its contribution to UNRWA for aid to Palestinian refugees. Other states have extraterritorial human rights obligations to compensate for this reduction.
Fred Rodell, the once revered Yale Law School professor and the “bad boy of American legal academia” wrote that “[t]here are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content.” His harrowing words acutely capture my conflicting relationship with (legal)...
When a court invalidates an agreement because the rules of contract law were violated, then that agreement is deemed to have never existed. It was never valid and never will be valid. Aside from a few exceptions, everything that has already been performed under the agreement must be undone.
The biggest challenge of the 21st century is undoubtedly the question of how to tackle the effects of a rising population, expanding industrialisation and growing environmental degradation. Apart from an ever complex world, there are externalities that are the result of the way humankind has been...
