This symposium, organised by Stavros Makris and Antonio Marzal, seeks to explore the rising centrality of claims over profits in various key areas of legal practice, how the law enables, apportions, conceptualises and limits or excludes such claims, and the overall significance of these developments from a law and political economy perspective. In a wide variety of legal regimes, disputes are increasingly framed as related to claims over streams of profits. We are witnessing the emergence and consolidation of a right to profits, which allows certain parties to capture the financial profitability attached to a certain asset or activity. Simultaneously, there is a growing concern about the excessive nature of such claims to profits, or more generally about their proper measure. This is evident in the emergence (or revival) of the notions of ‘fair’ or ‘reasonable’ vis-à-vis ‘excessive’ profits. Developments in various fields of law (competition law, IP law, international investment law, international tax law, regulatory law) reflect these tendencies well. How do current legal regimes enable certain actors to capture excessive levels of profitability (to the detriment of other private actors or the wider public)? Does law constrain this ability by utilizing notions of fairness, reasonableness or the public interest? Assuming that profits could on certain instances be unfair, what benchmarks and instruments could legal authorities use to determine their excessiveness or unfairness? These are some of the questions we will be exploring in this two-days’ workshop. The organization of the symposium is kindly supported by the Modern Law Review funding.
In addition to Stavros, CREATe contributors include Magali Eben and Ula Furgal. Check out the program below.
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