Contract law is increasingly used to serve regulatory purposes considered beyond the reach of private law. This Handbook explores a range of modern practices that are not typically treated in standard expositions of this area. By exploring these phenomena, it reveals the changing role of regulatory private law in a globalised legal world - one where distinctions between public and private law, hard law and soft law, and rule making and contracting have become increasingly blurred. Contributors explore key examples drawing on an extensive range of private law. The book pays close attention to the use of codes of conduct to coordinate and steer behaviour in business-to-business and business-to-consumer relationships, concerning health and safety, environment, and employment conditions. It also examines the formation of contractual `networks', such as franchises, to regulate multi-party trade relationships, and the application of contracts and contract law to secure business and consumer compliance with public standards. With its global reach and detailed research, this Handbook will appeal to academics exploring the potential of new law making methods and practitioners looking to gain insight into emerging approaches to private law. Contributors include: A. Beckers, R. Brownsword, R.R. Condon, D. Leczykiewicz, M. Mataija, M.-C. Menting, H.-W. Micklitz, C. Mitchell, M. Namyslowska, E.T.T. Tai, R. van Gestel, P. Verbruggen

This insightful book presents a radical rethinking of the relationship between law, regulation, and technology. While in traditional legal thinking technology is neither of particular interest nor concern, this book treats modern technologies as doubly significant, both as major targets for regulation and as potential tools to be used for legal and regulatory purposes. It explores whether our institutions for engaging with new technologies are fit for purpose. Having depicted a legal landscape that includes legal rules and principles, regulatory frameworks, technical measures and technological governance, this thought-provoking book presents further exercises in rethinking. These exercises confront communities with a fundamental question about how they are to be governed-by humans using rules or by technical measures and technological management? Chapters rethink the traditional arguments relating to legality, the rule of law, legitimacy, regulatory practice, dispute resolution, crime and control, and authority and respect for law. Examining the role of lawyers and law schools in an age of governance by smart technologies, Rethinking Law, Regulation, and Technology will be a key resource for students and scholars of law and technology, digital innovation and regulation and the law.

This book analyses discontent with law and assesses the prospect of better governance by technology. In the first part of the book, where the context is ‘low tech’, the range of discontent with law is examined; the underlying reasons for such discontent are identified (namely, the human nature of the legal enterprise, its reliance on rules, and the pluralistic nature of human communities); and the reasonableness of such discontent is assessed. In the second part of the book, where the context is ‘high-tech’ (with new tools becoming available to undertake governance functions), the question is whether discontent with law is further provoked or, to the contrary, is eased. While new technologies provoke further discontent with law’s claimed authority, its ineffectiveness, and its principles, positions, and policies, they also promise more effective and efficient ways of achieving order. The book closes with some reflections on the ambivalence that humans might experience when faced with the choice between law’s governance and apparently better performing governance by technology. That law’s governance is imperfect is undeniable; that humans should quest after better governance is right; but, the shape of our technological futures is unclear. This accessibly written book will appeal to scholars and students who are working in the broad, and burgeoning, field of law, regulation and technology; as well as to legal theorists, political scientists and sociologists with interests in the impact of new technology.

This book analyses discontent with law and assesses the prospect of better governance by technology. In the first part of the book, where the context is ‘low tech’, the range of discontent with law is examined; the underlying reasons for such discontent are identified (namely, the human nature of the legal enterprise, its reliance on rules, and the pluralistic nature of human communities); and the reasonableness of such discontent is assessed. In the second part of the book, where the context is ‘high-tech’ (with new tools becoming available to undertake governance functions), the question is whether discontent with law is further provoked or, to the contrary, is eased. While new technologies provoke further discontent with law’s claimed authority, its ineffectiveness, and its principles, positions, and policies, they also promise more effective and efficient ways of achieving order. The book closes with some reflections on the ambivalence that humans might experience when faced with the choice between law’s governance and apparently better performing governance by technology. That law’s governance is imperfect is undeniable; that humans should quest after better governance is right; but, the shape of our technological futures is unclear. This accessibly written book will appeal to scholars and students who are working in the broad, and burgeoning, field of law, regulation and technology; as well as to legal theorists, political scientists and sociologists with interests in the impact of new technology.

Putting technology front and centre in our thinking about law, this book introduces Law 3.0: the future of the legal landscape. Technology not only disrupts the traditional idea of what it is 'to think like a lawyer,' as per Law 1.0; it presents major challenges to regulators who are reasoning in a Law 2.0 mode. As this book demonstrates, the latest developments in technology offer regulators the possibility of employing a technical fix rather than just relying on rules - thus, we are introducing Law 3.0. Law 3.0 represents, so to speak, the state we are in and the conversation that we now need to have, and this book identifies some of the key points for discussion in that conversation. Thinking like a lawyer might continue to be associated with Law 1.0, but from 2020 onward, Law 3.0 is the conversation that we all need to join. And, as this book argues, law and the evolution of legal reasoning cannot be adequately understood unless we grasp the significance of technology in shaping both legal doctrine and our regulatory thinking. This is a book for those studying, or about to study, law - as well as others with interests in the legal, political, and social impact of technology.

In the context of the technological disruption of law and, in particular, the prospect of governance by machines, this book reconsiders the demand that we should respect the law, simply because it is the law. What does 'the law' need to look like to justify our respect? Responding to this question, the book takes the form of a dialectic between, on the one side, the promise of the prospectus for law and, on the other, the discontent provoked by the performance of law in practice; this is followed by a synthesis. Four pictures of law are considered: two are traditional pictures - law as order and law as just order; and two are prompted by the technological disruption of law - law as governance by machines and law as self-governance by humans. These pictures are tested in five performance areas: contract law, criminal law, biolaw, information law, and constitutional law. The synthesis, revealing the complexity of the demand for respect, highlights three particular points. First, the only prospectus for law that clearly commands respect is one that is committed to protecting the global commons (the preconditions for humans to form their own communities with their own forms of governance); second, any form of governance by humans will invite reservations and push-back against the demand for respect; and, third, governance by machines is not so much a superior form of governance as a radically different form in which questions about respect are redundant. This book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in the broad and burgeoning field of law, regulation and technology, as well as to legal theorists, practitioners, and others interested in the impact of new technology on law.

In the context of the technological disruption of law and, in particular, the prospect of governance by machines, this book reconsiders the demand that we should respect the law, simply because it is the law. What does 'the law' need to look like to justify our respect? Responding to this question, the book takes the form of a dialectic between, on the one side, the promise of the prospectus for law and, on the other, the discontent provoked by the performance of law in practice; this is followed by a synthesis. Four pictures of law are considered: two are traditional pictures - law as order and law as just order; and two are prompted by the technological disruption of law - law as governance by machines and law as self-governance by humans. These pictures are tested in five performance areas: contract law, criminal law, biolaw, information law, and constitutional law. The synthesis, revealing the complexity of the demand for respect, highlights three particular points. First, the only prospectus for law that clearly commands respect is one that is committed to protecting the global commons (the preconditions for humans to form their own communities with their own forms of governance); second, any form of governance by humans will invite reservations and push-back against the demand for respect; and, third, governance by machines is not so much a superior form of governance as a radically different form in which questions about respect are redundant. This book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in the broad and burgeoning field of law, regulation and technology, as well as to legal theorists, practitioners, and others interested in the impact of new technology on law.

Law and the Technologies of the Twenty-First Century provides a contextual account of the way in which law functions in a broader regulatory environment across different jurisdictions. It identifies and clearly structures the four key challenges that technology poses to regulatory efforts, distinguishing between technology as a regulatory target and tool, and guiding the reader through an emerging field that is subject to rapid change. By extensive use of examples and extracts from the texts and materials that form and shape the scholarly and public debates over technology regulation, it presents complex material in a stimulating and engaging manner. Co-authored by a leading scholar in the field with a scholar new to the area, it combines comprehensive knowledge of the field with a fresh approach. This is essential reading for students of law and technology, risk regulation, policy studies, and science and technology studies.

Maps the landscape of contemporary informational interests. Of considerable interest to those working at the intersection of law and technology, as well as others concerned with the legal, political, and social aspects of our information society.

Putting technology front and centre in our thinking about law, this book introduces Law 3.0: the future of the legal landscape. Technology not only disrupts the traditional idea of what it is 'to think like a lawyer,' as per Law 1.0; it presents major challenges to regulators who are reasoning in a Law 2.0 mode. As this book demonstrates, the latest developments in technology offer regulators the possibility of employing a technical fix rather than just relying on rules - thus, we are introducing Law 3.0. Law 3.0 represents, so to speak, the state we are in and the conversation that we now need to have, and this book identifies some of the key points for discussion in that conversation. Thinking like a lawyer might continue to be associated with Law 1.0, but from 2020 onward, Law 3.0 is the conversation that we all need to join. And, as this book argues, law and the evolution of legal reasoning cannot be adequately understood unless we grasp the significance of technology in shaping both legal doctrine and our regulatory thinking. This is a book for those studying, or about to study, law - as well as others with interests in the legal, political, and social impact of technology.

In a community that takes rights seriously, consent features pervasively in both moral and legal discourse as a justifying reason: stated simply, where there is consent, there can be no complaint. However, without a clear appreciation of the nature of a consent-based justification, its integrity, both in principle and in practice, is liable to be compromised. This book examines the role of consent as a procedural justification, discussing the prerequisites for an adequate consent -- in particular, that an agent with the relevant capacity has made an unforced and informed choice, that the consent has been clearly signalled, and that the scope of the authorisation covers the act in question. It goes on to highlight both the Fallacy of Necessity (where there is no consent, there must be a wrong) and the Fallacy of Sufficiency (where there is consent, there cannot be a wrong). Finally, the extent to which the authority of law itself rests on consent is considered. If the familiarity of consent-based justification engenders confusion and contempt, the analysis in this book acts as a corrective, identifying a range of abusive or misguided practices that variously under-value or over-value consent, that fictionalise it or that are fixated by it, and that treat it too casually or too cautiously. In short, the analysis in Consent in the Law points the way towards recognising an important procedural justification for precisely what it is as well as giving it a more coherent application.

There remains an urgent need for a deeper discussion of the theoretical, political, and federal dimensions of the European codification project. While much valuable work has already been undertaken, the essays in this collection take as their starting point the proposition that further reflection and critical thought will enhance the quality and efficacy of the on-going work of the various codification bodies. The book's papers are written by: prestigious scholars on the foundations of European private law; representatives of the Common Frame of Reference, the Study Group, and the Acquis Group; and those who have not been involved in particular projects, but who have previously commented more distantly on their work - for instance, those belonging to the Trento Group and the Social Justice Group. With these groups' contributions, The Foundations of European Private Law represents the most comprehensive attempt so far to survey the state of the codification project; its theoretical, political, and federal foundations; and the future prospects for enforcement and compliance.

Rights, Regulation and the Technological Revolution confronts a central question facing modern government - how can regulators respond to both the challenges and opportunities presented by a technologically-driven society without sacrificing legitimacy for effectiveness, or weakening the essential conditions of a stable, aspirant moral community?
Analyzing developments across biotechnology, information and communications technology, nanotechnology and neurotechnology, the book explores the difficulties facing the public control of rapid technological change, focusing on the problems of regulatory effectiveness, connection, legitimacy and compliance. The book argues that as regulators struggle to find adequate frameworks to limit, license and support new technologies, they will increasingly rely on a technological approach to complement, enhance, and even replace traditional legal strategies.
The book breaks new ground by offering the first overarching commentary on the relationship between regulators, industry, and wider society as the new technologies of the twenty-first century achieve an ever-greater penetration in our daily lives.

Law and the Technologies of the Twenty-First Century provides a contextual account of the way in which law functions in a broader regulatory environment across different jurisdictions. It identifies and clearly structures the four key challenges that technology poses to regulatory efforts, distinguishing between technology as a regulatory target and tool, and guiding the reader through an emerging field that is subject to rapid change. By extensive use of examples and extracts from the texts and materials that form and shape the scholarly and public debates over technology regulation, it presents complex material in a stimulating and engaging manner. Co-authored by a leading scholar in the field with a scholar new to the area, it combines comprehensive knowledge of the field with a fresh approach. This is essential reading for students of law and technology, risk regulation, policy studies, and science and technology studies.

This book considers the implications of the regulatory burden being borne increasingly by technological management rather than by rules of law. If crime is controlled, if human health and safety are secured, if the environment is protected, not by rules but by measures of technological management-designed into products, processes, places and so on-what should we make of this transformation? In an era of smart regulatory technologies, how should we understand the 'regulatory environment', and the 'complexion' of its regulatory signals? How does technological management sit with the Rule of Law and with the traditional ideals of legality, legal coherence, and respect for liberty, human rights and human dignity? What is the future for the rules of criminal law, torts and contract law-are they likely to be rendered redundant? How are human informational interests to be specified and protected? Can traditional rules of law survive not only the emergent use of technological management but also a risk management mentality that pervades the collective engagement with new technologies? Even if technological management is effective, is it acceptable? Are we ready for rule by technology? Undertaking a radical examination of the disruptive effects of technology on the law and the legal mind-set, Roger Brownsword calls for a triple act of re-imagination: first, re-imagining legal rules as one element of a larger regulatory environment of which technological management is also a part; secondly, re-imagining the Rule of Law as a constraint on the arbitrary exercise of power (whether exercised through rules or through technological measures); and, thirdly, re-imagining the future of traditional rules of criminal law, tort law, and contract law.

This book considers the implications of the regulatory burden being borne increasingly by technological management rather than by rules of law. If crime is controlled, if human health and safety are secured, if the environment is protected, not by rules but by measures of technological management-designed into products, processes, places and so on-what should we make of this transformation? In an era of smart regulatory technologies, how should we understand the 'regulatory environment', and the 'complexion' of its regulatory signals? How does technological management sit with the Rule of Law and with the traditional ideals of legality, legal coherence, and respect for liberty, human rights and human dignity? What is the future for the rules of criminal law, torts and contract law-are they likely to be rendered redundant? How are human informational interests to be specified and protected? Can traditional rules of law survive not only the emergent use of technological management but also a risk management mentality that pervades the collective engagement with new technologies? Even if technological management is effective, is it acceptable? Are we ready for rule by technology? Undertaking a radical examination of the disruptive effects of technology on the law and the legal mind-set, Roger Brownsword calls for a triple act of re-imagination: first, re-imagining legal rules as one element of a larger regulatory environment of which technological management is also a part; secondly, re-imagining the Rule of Law as a constraint on the arbitrary exercise of power (whether exercised through rules or through technological measures); and, thirdly, re-imagining the future of traditional rules of criminal law, tort law, and contract law.

This book analyses the concept of legal dignity employed in current bioethical debate and corresponding legal instruments. It develops a view of human dignity in existing regulation of activities such as pre-natal genetic selection, commodification of the human body, cloning, and euthanasia.

This introduction to human dignity explores the history of the notion from antiquity to the nineteenth century, and the way in which dignity is conceptualised in non-Western contexts. Building on this, it addresses a range of systematic conceptualisations, considers the theoretical and legal conditions for human dignity as a useful notion and analyses a number of philosophical and conceptual approaches to dignity. Finally, the book introduces current debates, paying particular attention to the legal implementation, human rights, justice and conflicts, medicine and bioethics, and provides an explicit systematic framework for discussing human dignity. Adopting a wide range of perspectives and taking into account numerous cultures and contexts, this handbook is a valuable resource for students, scholars and professionals working in philosophy, law, history and theology.

This work: presents a contextual overview of the English legal system; provides the groundwork for a critical understanding of legal institutions, processes and materials; places the study of law within a broader framework of inquiry focusing on the evaluation and explanation of legal decision making at all levels; examines the civil justice system after Woolf; looks at the impact of the Human Rights Act; analyses the globalisation of law; sets a distinctive manifesto for legal education that is in line with the ACLEC emphasis on "understanding" (rather than passive role learning) as the key to the initial stage of legal education.

In this unique volume, Roger Brownsword provides a thoughtful overview of the principal themes of the law of contract. He explores the context of the recent development of contract law, and considers the many changes the law has undergone given the ever-evolving nature of English law. This accessible text brings Brownsword's expert commentary to a wider readership, and has been fully updated and revised to include recent issues and cases, including the Europeanization of contract law and the Great Peace Shipping case.

The variety, pace, and power of technological innovations that have emerged in the 21st Century have been breathtaking. These technological developments, which include advances in networked information and communications, biotechnology, neurotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics, and environmental engineering technology, have raised a number of vital and complex questions. Although these technologies have the potential to generate positive transformation and help address 'grand societal challenges', the novelty associated with technological innovation has also been accompanied by anxieties about their risks and destabilizing effects. Is there a potential harm to human health or the environment? What are the ethical implications? Do this innovations erode of antagonize values such as human dignity, privacy, democracy, or other norms underpinning existing bodies of law and regulation? These technological developments have therefore spawned a nascent but growing body of 'law and technology' scholarship, broadly concerned with exploring the legal, social and ethical dimensions of technological innovation. This handbook collates the many and varied strands of this scholarship, focusing broadly across a range of new and emerging technology and a vast array of social and policy sectors, through which leading scholars in the field interrogate the interfaces between law, emerging technology, and regulation. Structured in five parts, the handbook (I) establishes the collection of essays within existing scholarship concerned with law and technology as well as regulatory governance; (II) explores the relationship between technology development by focusing on core concepts and values which technological developments implicate; (III) studies the challenges for law in responding to the emergence of new technologies, examining how legal norms, doctrine and institutions have been shaped, challenged and destabilized by technology, and even how technologies have been shaped by legal regimes; (IV) provides a critical exploration of the implications of technological innovation, examining the ways in which technological innovation has generated challenges for regulators in the governance of technological development, and the implications of employing new technologies as an instrument of regulatory governance; (V) explores various interfaces between law, regulatory governance, and new technologies across a range of key social domains.

As developments in human genetics proceed apace,the regulation of genetic research and its applications is set to represent one of the major legal challenges of the next century. At every turn - in the fields of medicine and commerce, in insurance and employment, in the family and even in the criminal justice system - advances in human genetics threaten to transform our understanding of ourselves and the basis upon which we relate to one another. This special issue of the Modern Law Review addresses a range of key issues - conceptual, ethical, political and practical - arising from the regulatory challenge confronting the law in the face of the genetic revolution.

While it is a truism that emerging technologies present both opportunities for and challenges to their host communities, the legal community has only recently begun to consider their significance. On the one hand, emerging information, bio, nano, and neurotechnologies challenge policy-makers who aspire to put in place a regulatory environment that is legitimate, effective, and sustainable; on the other hand, these same technologies offer new opportunities as potentially powerful regulatory instruments. In this unique volume, a team of leading international scholars address many of the key difficulties surrounding the regulation of emerging technological targets as well as the implications of adopting technology as a regulatory tool. How should we rise to the challenge of regulating technologies? How are the regulatory lines to be drawn in the right places and how is the public to be properly engaged? How is precaution to be accommodated, and how can the law keep pace with technologies that develop ahead of the regulatory environment? How readily should we avail ourselves of the opportunity to use technology as a regulative strategy? How are we to understand these strategies and the challenges which they raise? To what extent do they give rise to similar policy problems accompanying more 'traditional' regulatory instruments or generate distinctive challenges? While the criminal justice system increasingly relies on technological assistance and the development of a 'surveillance society', is a regulatory regime that rules by technology compatible with rule of law values?

This book - one in the four-volume set, Global Governance and the Quest for Justice - focuses on human rights in the context of 'globalisation' together with the principle of 'respect for human rights and human dignity' viewed as one of the foundational commitments of a legitimate scheme of global governance. The first part of the book deals with the ways in which 'globalisation' impacts on established commitments to respect human rights. When human rights are set against, or alongside, potentially competing priorities, such as 'security' or 'economy' how well do they fare? Does it make any difference whether human rights commitments are expressed in dedicated free-standing instruments or incorporated as side-constraints (or 'collaterally') in larger multi-functional instruments? In this light, does it make sense to view a trade-centred community such as the EU as a prospective regional model for human rights? The second part of the book debates the coherence of a global order committed to respect for human rights and human dignity as one of its founding principles. If 'globalisation' aspires to export and spread respect for human rights, the thrust of the papers in this volume is that it could do better, that legitimate global governance demands that it does a great deal better, and that lawyers face a considerable challenge in developing a coherent jurisprudence of fundamental values as the basis for a just global order.