We are delighted to announce the second issue of the LSE Law Department’s Legal Studies Working Paper Series for 2021.
In this issue, Siva Thambisetty, Aisling McMahon, Luke McDonagh, Hyo Yoon Kang, and Graham Dutfield elucidate the legal issues surrounding the TRIPS waiver proposal in relation to Covid-19 vaccines, explaining that existing rules do not address the present pandemic adequately, and argue that both incentives and mandatory mechanisms are needed to achieve rapid and global equitable production to deliver global access to vaccines, with the TRIPS waiver being an essential and proportionate legal measure in this context (WPS 06/2021); Luke McDonagh,introducing his new book Performing Copyright: Law, Theatre and Authorship (Hart, 2021), shows that the theatre world, in the UK and abroad, presents a fascinating setting for exploring the legal concepts of the copyright work, of authorship and joint authorship, and of infringement and moral rights from a new and interdisciplinary perspective (WPS 07/2021); Niamh Dunne critically assesses the legal test of potential competition emerging from Generics, Lundbeck and other recent judgments of the EU Court of Justice as a relevant concept under Articles 101 and 102 TFEU (WPS 08/2021); Niamh Dunne also examines the application of competition law within markets already subject to alternative regulatory intervention, exploring the impact from three perspectives: where regulation forms part of the legal and economic context; where regulatory standards set the boundaries of competition on the merits; and where antitrust intervention functions as course correction for the underlying regulatory regime (WPS 09/2021); Dionysia Katelouzou and Eva Micheler comment on the 2020 UK Stewardship Code, which, more clearly than previous stewardship codes, articulates the concept of a market for stewardship, suggesting that the new focus on end-investors and beneficiaries will come to fruition fully only if the Government, too, acts as a steward in relation to its own investment and tailors tax credit to investments that are stewardship-active (WPS 10/2021); Eva Micheler analyses the advantages and disadvantages of the no-look-through approach adopted in the UK for the analysis of intermediated securities, finding that English law is currently unable to recognize indirect investors by allowing them to exercise the rights associated with their securities, and provides short term solutions for investors (contracting out of English law, holding securities directly through personal accounts with the CSD, or changes in technology) and long term solutions by suggesting ways in which the government could step in to attract a global pool of investors (WPS 11/2021); and Nicola Lacey analyses and historicises the conceptual debates about proportionality and its moral and political force, arguing that where the appeal to proportionality ‘works’ to define the parameters of state punishment, it does so not because of some natural equivalence between offence and sanction, but a contingent articulation of, and deeper resonance with, prevailing conventions, social mentalities, normative systems, and political institutions (WPS 12/2021).