Conferences
September 11-12, 2020, Columbia University, New York
The field of Law and Economics has undergone major transformations over the past 50 years. During that time, scholars have addressed many of the critiques of the early scholarship. Some of the progress in using economic reasoning to explain and critique legal rules are happy consequences of major deliberative moments, in which many of these challenges were raised and discussed. We believe that the time is ripe for another major deliberative event.
The Center for Contract and Economic Organization at Columbia Law School and The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Tel-Aviv University Faculty of Law will convene a conference on New Challenges for Law and Economics at Columbia Law School in September 11-12, 2020, in which we will bring together law & economics with legal theorists in order to address what we believe are the frontier issues of law and economics, focusing mainly on its methodology and normative foundations:
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The early work in law and economics was largely theoretical, mapping the coincidence between basic private law doctrine and economic reasoning. Subsequently, scholars began to use economic analysis as a critical tool, providing trenchant normative critiques of basic doctrines. More recently, the energy has turned to empirical studies, using sophisticated econometrics to validate some of the basic theoretical claims. But the divide between those who do theory and those who are empiricists seems to have grown wider. Many theorists question the relevance of empirical studies that use sophisticated data sets to study relatively narrow questions. Similarly, many empiricists regard theoretical speculations as, just that, speculations without foundation. The question, then, is whether it is possible to propose ways to integrate theoretical and empirical approaches in a more productive way.
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While some law and economics scholars subscribe to welfarism as a foundational normative theory, many do not. This causes no difficulty in work that deals with areas of law (or questions within areas of law) that are amenable to a monist welfarist analysis. But it does raise interesting questions and challenges outside these domains. These challenges are also, we think, an opportunity, partly because the tools of economic analysis may significantly contribute (if they can be properly fine-tuned) to these non-welfare accounts. A focal question here is how can law and economic scholars adjust their normative premises so as to offer rigorous analyses of legal doctrines that can or should focus (or focus also) on values such as autonomy and equality, as well as to acknowledge and address the possibility of value incomensurabilities.
Please check here for the website
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Automation and the Impacts of a Transforming Labor Market - Annual Conference
May 14-15, 2020, Tel Aviv University, Buchmann Faculty of Law
Automation and digitalization are widely viewed as sources of transformation and potential upheaval in labor markets worldwide. In particular, rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology, including machine learning, virtual agents and autonomous robotics, are leading experts to project major economic shifts, though the nature of the shifts is very much contested. In part due to lack of data, in other parts to due to uncertainty about the speed and breadth of the expected change, questions abound about the economic, social and political ramifications of digitalization.
With respect to the economic transformations, questions pertain primarily to the nature of change the labor market will experience. To what extent will automation directly displace labor in certain jobs, create new job opportunities, or reorient the type of tasks and functions the jobs entail? On the political front, if disruption to traditional jobs becomes widespread, how will heightened job insecurity affect mass preferences on issues such as government intervention and labor market regulation, social protection or even immigration policy? Will a sharp transformation in the labor market decrease popular trust in the political system and bolster authoritarian and populist parties?
The workshop will bring together of a group of scholars and practitioners that have worked on or thought about issues related to the labor market impacts of automation and their economic, social and political repercussions. The chief aim is to help develop our understanding of these interconnected issues that arise from automation by engaging people with different professional backgrounds and expertise relevant for studying this topic.
November 17, 2019, Tel Aviv University, Buchmann Faculty of Law
New technologies keep challenging the law, and now it is the turn of Artificial intelligence (AI). The promise is that it will be a disruptive technology that will affect many aspects of our daily lives. The concern is that the changes might not all be for the better. The law has a role here, to assist us in promoting the good, separating it from the bad, and adjusting to the new situations, yet to be seen. The relationship between law and technology has been a complex one, with some holding a technological deterministic view which renders the law irrelevant and inhibiting; others see the potential of the law in promoting new technologies by regulating their use; and yet others argue that the relationship is dialectic and more complex than either version.
This one-day conference, co-sponsored by WU and TAU Law (Safra, SHIIP) will focus on the issue of agency: is AI technology agency-less, like previous technologies such as the Internet at large, or is it akin to corporations and other artificial legal entities? The question arises in a variety of legal issues, ranging from tort liability to copyright authorship, data protection and criminal law.
Co-Sponsored by Universität Würzburg, Germany and S. Horowitz Institute for Intellectual Property, TAU Law.
November 17-19, 2019, Tel Aviv University, Buchmann Faculty of Law
The workshop provides junior scholars with the opportunity to present and discuss their work, receive meaningful feedback from faculty members and peers and aims to invigorate the scholars’ active participation in the community of international junior scholars in law. The interface between law and boundaries is subject to ongoing debate amongst legal scholars. On one hand, the law may be perceived as setting a legal boundary in social life, for instance between normative and criminal behavior; On the other hand, the law may be perceived as an instrument used by different power groups in order to change, preserve or re-affirm the social order. The workshop seeks to offer a scholarly debate on law and boundaries, from various perspectives.
Check here for the call for papers.
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Justice in Transactions: A Theory of Contract Law – Book Launch
March 12, 2020, Tel Aviv University, Buchmann Faculty of Law
Can we account for contract law on a moral basis that is acceptable from the standpoint of liberal justice? To answer this question, Peter Benson develops a theory of contract that is completely independent of-and arguably superior to-long-dominant views, which take contract law to be justified on the basis of economics or promissory morality. Through a detailed analysis of contract principles and doctrines, Benson brings out the specific normative conception underpinning the whole of contract law. Contract, he argues, is best explained as a transfer of rights, which is complete at the moment of agreement and is governed by a definite conception of justice-justice in transactions. Benson's analysis provides what John Rawls called a public basis of justification, which is as essential to the liberal legitimacy of contract as to any other form of coercive law. The argument of Justice in Transactions is expressly complementary to Rawls's, presenting an original justification designed specifically for transactions, as distinguished from the background institutions to which Rawls's own theory applies. The result is a field-defining work offering a comprehensive theory of contract law. Benson shows that contract law is both justified in its own right and fully congruent with other domains-moral, economic, and political-of liberal society.
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The Seventh Annual Workshop on Privacy, Cyber and Technology
April 23, 2020, Tel Aviv University, Buchmann Faculty of Law
Privacy studies are an emerging cross-disciplinary field of study. The annual workshop on privacy and cyber studies is a platform for presenting and discussing cutting edge studies on privacy. Participants are typically from a broad range of disciplines: computer science, information systems, engineering, law, media studies, psychology and sociology, economics and more. The workshop is based on a call for papers, and submissions are carefully selected. Academic organizer: Prof. Michael Birnhack (TAU Law)
Please check here for the Call to the Workshop (in Hebrew).
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Technological Progress and the Future of the Corporation
Tel Aviv University, Buchmann Faculty of Law, TBD
Co-Sponsored by The Stewart and Judy Colton Foundation.
The evolution of the corporation, its ownership and structure have followed major business, market, and legal developments, including the antitrust legislation in the United States in the late 19th century, the dissolution of corporate pyramids in the 1930s and 1940s, and the unravelling of diversified conglomerates in the 1960s to the 1980s. Throughout, however, the basic structure of the corporation has remained the same. Today, new technologies—such as artificial intelligence, smart contracts, and computer vision—increasingly disrupt industries and revolutionize existing business models. This conference will discuss whether these changes are likely to affect the basic structure of modern corporations and the legal theories of the firm.
December 11-12, 2019 Tel Aviv, Toronto, London
Restitution – the return of property that was wrongly taken – is an old legal idea that is enjoying dramatic new life. At least since the Holocaust, questions surrounding the return of misappropriated art and meaningful cultural property have become increasingly important and increasingly fraught. From claims for the return of Nazi-looted artworks, books and archives, to the repatriation of Indigenous cultural property, to the return of objects taken during European colonization, growing demands to ‘give it back’ are making themselves felt across communities and institutions, and across the globe. As more and more individuals and groups seek the return of meaningful items that were wrongly taken, institutions, individuals, communities and governments struggle to respond. The Restitution Dialogues seek to cast new light on these difficult questions by bringing together issues across jurisdictions and reflecting on them with academics, practitioners, policy makers and those seeking return.
The Dialogues are a transnational collaboration between Tel Aviv University, the University of Toronto, and the Institute of Art and Law in the UK. They seek to provide a comparative, transnational and cross-practice framework to illuminate the issues surrounding claims for the restitution of art and meaningful cultural and other property, including human remains. They will begin in Tel Aviv in December 2019, moving to Toronto in the fall of 2020 and to London in the spring of 2021. Each location will connect local and transnational issues. For a more detailed description of this innovative collaboration, please see this link.
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