We are delighted to announce the first issue of the 番茄社区 Law School’s Legal Studies Working Paper Series for 2025.
Cressida Auckland () explores the implications of the Law Commission’s expected proposal to align the test for testamentary capacity with the test for capacity under the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) 2005 in cases involving mental disorder, arguing that such cases cannot be easily accommodated within the framework of the MCA and reforms to the test for capacity in the MCA are thus needed before it ought to be applied to the testamentary context; Nafay Choudhury () revisits the Cotterrell-Nelken debate within law and society research, arguing that the debate remains useful in helping socio-legal scholars reflect on how the boundaries of the discipline of sociology of law are formed and on how their political commitments often implicitly structure their understandings of what law is; Grégoire Webber () argues that, contrary to Aileen Kavanagh’s claim in her recent book The Collaborative Constitution, even institutional arrangements which prioritise either judicial or legislative supremacy – such as the Dworkinian or Waldronian models respectively – are instances of collaborative constitutions; Grégoire Webber () examines opposition between the branches of government, highlighting how each institution acts as a constitutional guardian by checking and restraining the others’ powers, and introduces the norm of responsible opposition to distinguish between constructive opposition and obstruction, emphasising how opposition should challenge and scrutinise rather than paralyse government; Philipp Paech () examines the principles that underpin the scope of the MiCA Regulation, the EU’s new legal instrument for the regulation of crypto-asset markets, finding that while the novel design of the Regulation’s scope is in principle conducive to achieving its regulatory goals, it nevertheless opens up room for regulatory arbitrage, thereby pushing definitional considerations from the rulemaking to the enforcement stage; Sarah Paterson () offers a qualified defence of the ‘rule in Gibbs’, which provides that a debt is only discharged in a foreign insolvency proceeding if the contract is governed by the law of that proceeding, arguing that while the rule could be abandoned in true insolvency cases as part of a detailed cross-border insolvency regime, it remains the right rule in the cross-border corporate restructuring context;