Legal Studies Research Paper Series Vol. 11, No. 4

The Faculty has published Volume 11 Number 4 of the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series on SSRN.

This issue includes the following articles:

Martin Dixon: Williams v Hensman (1861) and the Law of Severance: Janus Personified (10/2020)

An examination of the law of severance of joint-tenancies through the medium of Williams v Hensman. A critique of severance in the modern law.

Martin Dixon: Dishonest Strangers (11/2020)

Discusses the circumstances in which a stranger may be held to be a constructive trustee.

David Erdos: Accountability and the UK Data Protection Authority: From Cause for Data Subject Complaint to a Model for Europe? (14/2020)

European data protection has long emphasized the role of the Data Protection Authority (DPA) in ensuring relief for data subjects. However, taking the UK case an example, this article demonstrates that authorities can often adopt a highly discretionary and selective approach to data subject complaints. Although such a stance may appear justified by both the myriad types of potentially impactful processing and often generally poor compliance, it is precisely this environment makes a reasonably comprehensive approach regulatory important. However, whilst both the General Data Protection Regulation and increasingly Court of Justice jurisprudence specify important procedural and substantive duties for DPAs as regards complaints, a severe practical accountability gap may remain. It is argued that, notwithstanding disappointing case law to date, the UK’s recent empowerment of its accessible tribunal system to order the DPA to progress complaints could if robustly and broadly interpreted provide a valuable model of European DPA accountability going forward even after Brexit.

Sharath Srinivasan & Sarah Nouwen: Peace and Peacemaking in Sudan and South Sudan (18/2020)

Opening 'Making and Breaking Peace in Sudan and South Sudan', this chapter introduces the book’s key concepts: peace and peacemaking. The contributions in this volume show that ideas of peace have been contested in the Sudans, and that different modalities of peacemaking have both gone together and have competed with each other. This chapter draws on these contributions in order critically to interrogate diverse ideas of peace and practices of peacemaking that have been prevalent in the Sudans. It connects them to their roots in major traditions in political thought and sets out why they are often problematic when applied to complex conflicts such as in the Sudans. Rather than arguing for one specific understanding of peace or modality of peacemaking, this chapter explains why the volume has taken a perspectival approach. Adopting the vantage points of multiple different actors, a perspectival approach foregrounds on-the-ground contestations over different ideas of peace and modes of peacemaking. Understanding what peacemaking has come to mean in the Sudans – how different understandings of peace have been deployed, but also contested, in the processes of ‘making’, and with what effects – allows scholars and practitioners to reconsider prospects for peace in the region, and well beyond.

Kathleen Liddell, Jeffrey M. Skopek, Stephanie Palmer, Stevie Martin, Jennifer Anderson, and Andrew Sagar: Who Gets the Ventilator? Important Legal Rights in a Pandemic (19/2020)

At some point during this pandemic or next, all countries will need to answer hard questions about whether and when scarce ICU resources (such as ventilators, beds and staff) should be either withheld or withdrawn from certain groups of patients solely for the purpose of providing them to others. Attempts to answer these hard questions can be found in ICU triage protocols and ethical guidance documents, many of which embrace the foundational principle of ‘save the most lives’. Unfortunately, this worthwhile goal has generated many suggestions that could violate the law. This article identifies 10 ways in which the withholding or withdrawal of a clinically indicated ventilator might violate a patient’s rights, along with recommendations on how to avoid doing so. While our analysis is based on UK law, its lessons are relevant for other countries with similar legal systems. If the issues we identify are not addressed, doctors may act unlawfully. Worse, patients may die unlawfully.

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