Merging self-driving cars with the law

Self-driving cars are gradually being introduced in the United States and in several Member States of the European Union. Policymakers will thus have to make important choices regarding the application of the law. One important aspect relates to the question who should be held liable for the damage caused by such vehicles. Arguably, product liability schemes will gain importance considering that the driver's fault as a cause of damage will become less likely with the increase of autonomous systems. The application of existing product liability legislation, however, is not always straightforward. Without a proper and effective liability framework, other legal or policy initiatives concerning technical and safety matters related to self-driving cars might be in vain. The article illustrates this conclusion by analysing the limitation periods for filing a claim included in the European Union Product Liability Directive, which are inherently incompatible with the concept of autonomous vehicles. On a micro-level, we argue that every aspect of the Directive should be carefully considered in the light of the autonomisation of our society. On the macro-level, we believe that ongoing technological evolutions might be the perfect moment to bring the European Union closer to its citizens.     

Transnational law as a framework for law clinics

Jindal Global Law Review - As the law becomes increasingly globalised and online education is increasingly emphasised, clinical legal education presents new opportunities for transnational...     

Between accumulation and immiseration: The partiality of fieldwork in rural India

This article examines the dilemmas faced when pursuing fieldwork in rural India‐and, by extension, in the rural areas of any poor country ‐ in circumstances of sharp opposition between dominant and subaltern classes. Such research is all too likely to be geared to the concerns of dominant classes. The author has conducted extensive research, as a participant observer, in the Indian state of Gujarat, and has concentrated upon the poor, and especially upon agricultural labourers and rural migrant labour. He here considers the extreme difficulties associated with research which takes subordinate classes as its focus. When introductions take place via the locally powerful, such research faces formidable obstacles: both because of the mistrust of the poor and the opposition of dominant classes. The problems he himself has faced and his own research procedures are discussed in detail. From these certain general methodological lessons are drawn.     

A Conversation About Q. D. Leavis

Mary Ellen Mark's photographic collection Twins (2003) raises provocative questions about performance, contingency and the relativity of difference, self and other. Her images complicate notions of individuality and foundational difference and challenge both self-recognition and recognition by others. They require viewers to observe closely, to spend time studying her subjects and to address the relativity—sometimes the radical relativity—of difference but also of sameness. Difficult questions about where ‘you’ end and ‘I’ begin are raised. Though Twins contains images of fraternal twins and triplets, Mark's subjects are, overwhelmingly, identical twins. She usually photographs them standing together, dressed in precisely the same way, in carefully constructed poses. This recreates the carnivalesque, performative aspect of Twins Day, held each year in Twinsburg, Ohio, in which the fact of being a twin (or in some cases triplet) is affirmed. Some identical twins choose to represent themselves as twins rather than solely as individuals, or as siblings who are also twins, in order to test out the limits of individuality. Here, I consider the ways in which such a chosen celebratory representation challenges different ways in which identical twins have been conceived of, which emphasise instead alterity and uncanniness.