Analysis of the power of multinational corporations in moulding international law on intellectual property rights.

The aim of this edited collection of essays is to examine the relationship between private law and power – both the public power of the state and the 'private' power of institutions and individuals. It describes and critically assesses the way that private law doctrines, institutions, processes and rules express, moderate, facilitate and control relationships of power. The various chapters of this work examine the dynamics of the relationship between private law and power from a number of different perspectives – historical, theoretical, doctrinal and comparative. They have been commissioned from leading experts in the field of private law, from several different Commonwealth Jurisdictions (Australia, the UK, Canada and New Zealand), each with expertise in the particular sphere of their contribution. They aim to illuminate the past and assist in resolving some contemporary, difficult legal issues relating to the shape, scope and content of private law and its difficult relationship with power.

Cioffi argues that highly politicized reform of corporate governance law has reshaped power relations within the public corporation in favor of financial interests, contributed to the profound crises of capitalism, and eroded its political foundations.

Transnational merchant law, which is mistakenly regarded in purely technical and apolitical terms, is a central mediator of domestic and global political/legal orders. By engaging with literature in international law, international relations and international political economy, the author develops the conceptual and theoretical foundations for analyzing the political significance of international economic law. In doing so, she illustrates the private nature of the interests that this evolving legal order has served over time. The book makes a sustained and comprehensive analysis of transnational merchant law and offers a radical critique of global capitalism.

"This book discusses developments in scholarship dedicated to reinvigorating the study of the broad domain of private law. This field, which embraces the traditional common law subjects-property, contracts, and torts-as well as adjacent, more statutory areas, such as intellectual property and commercial law, also includes important subjects that have been neglected in the United States but are beginning to make a comeback. The book particularly focuses on the New Private Law, an approach that aims to bring a new outlook to the study of private law by moving beyond reductively instrumentalist policy evaluation and narrow, rule-by-rule, doctrine-by-doctrine analysis, so as to consider and capture how private law's various features fit and work together, as well as the normative underpinnings of these larger structures. This movement is resuscitating the notion of private law itself in United States and has brought an interdisciplinary perspective to the more traditional, doctrinal approach prevalent in Commonwealth countries. The book embraces a broad range of perspectives to private law-including philosophical, economic, historical, and psychological- yet it offers a unifying theme of seriousness about the structure and content of private law."--

New Private Law Theory is pluralist, comparative, application-oriented, transnational and reflects critical approaches.

This work explores the relationships between legal institutions and political and economic transformation. It argues that as law is enlisted to help produce the profound economic and sociotechnical shifts that have accompanied the emergence of the informational economy, it is changing in fundamental ways.

If legal scholar Richard Epstein is right, then the New Deal is wrong, if not unconstitutional. Epstein reaches this sweeping conclusion after making a detailed analysis of the eminent domain, or takings, clause of the Constitution, which states that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation. In contrast to the other guarantees in the Bill of Rights, the eminent domain clause has been interpreted narrowly. It has been invoked to force the government to compensate a citizen when his land is taken to build a post office, but not when its value is diminished by a comprehensive zoning ordinance. Epstein argues that this narrow interpretation is inconsistent with the language of the takings clause and the political theory that animates it. He develops a coherent normative theory that permits us to distinguish between permissible takings for public use and impermissible ones. He then examines a wide range of government regulations and taxes under a single comprehensive theory. He asks four questions: What constitutes a taking of private property? When is that taking justified without compensation under the police power? When is a taking for public use? And when is a taking compensated, in cash or in kind? Zoning, rent control, progressive and special taxes, workers’ compensation, and bankruptcy are only a few of the programs analyzed within this framework. Epstein’s theory casts doubt upon the established view today that the redistribution of wealth is a proper function of government. Throughout the book he uses recent developments in law and economics and the theory of collective choice to find in the eminent domain clause a theory of political obligation that he claims is superior to any of its modern rivals.