Law, Business and Technology Interdisciplinary Hub

Legal regulation of business and business related technology affects how businesses of every conceivable type are constructed; the design, production and distribution of digital and other products and services; and the interface of business with the rest of society e.g. government, employees, customers, the environment, regulators and the courts!.

This Hub is founded partly on the conviction that we can only truly understand such legal regulation, it's challenges and how to shape its future development, by working with other disciplines. This improves our (legal) understanding of e.g. the nature and goals  of the business organisations being regulated; the economic, political, social and health consequences of different forms of regulation; the psychology of business organisations and those that interact with them; the technology that is being regulated and how technology can even play a part in regulation; the underpinning philosophies, political values and international relations challenges that underpin legal choices.

The Hub is also founded on the belief that we as lawyers have much to offer to these other disciplines: that these multiple other disciplines are surely enriched by understanding the legal framework and how it affects what is and is not possible and desirable. 

Research on legal regulation of business and of technology within the business marketplace, is a hugely significant part of the research in the Law School. In particular this takes place within the Business Law Cluster and the Law and Technology Cluster.

The work covers areas such as: national and transnational contracts; international and national sales; national and international trade law; EU trade law and UK trade relations post Brexit; professional and business liability for ‘negligence’; commercial property; company law and corporate governance; corporate social responsibility and human rights; insolvency; finance, insurance and banking; tenancies, mortgages and housing rights; new technology (e.g. internet law, cybercrime, 3D Pprinting, AI, machine learning, blockchain, fintech); consumer law (e.g. advertising, utilities, product and food safety and quality, standard contracts, pressure selling); intellectual property law (including . copyright; trade marks; confidentiality etc); privacy and data protection issues; regulation of the healthcare market; settling disputes involving businesses in different countries; arbitration and other forms of alternative dispute resolution.

Examples of some of our interdisciplinary work.

• Mohammed Alshaleel works on financial regulation, financial stability, financial management, efficiency, and productivity analysis with specific interest in the following areas: regulation (Basel III), competition, monetary policy. In this work he draws on work from business and management scholarship e.g. on financial regulation and bank risk/performance; banking and regulation and financial markets and market microstructure; Syndicated Loan Market and Relationship Lending; Bank Competition and Financial Stability.
• Alexandros Antoniou works on advertising standards and marketing communications; drawing on business and media ethics scholarship on these topics and also works on these issues with the Journalism department in LIFTS.
• Andrea Fejos has worked on the influence of political and philosophical concepts of social justice on EU financial services law and consumer protection.
• Andrea Fejos works on legal regulation of fintech: on how this technology continues to reshape how financial products and advice are provided to consumers; how this technology complies with existing legal standards; and how law may need to adapt its concepts or build new concepts to respond to the new forms of delivery brought by the technology.
• Lorna Fox O’Mahony works on application of policy-oriented, socio-legal and theoretical analyses to a range of property issues. Her work has explored the role of cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research into home meanings for creditor possession actions; feminist perspectives on the meaning of home; social and moral aspects of legal regulation of unlawful occupation; the role of the legal concept of home in analysing laws responses to the use of home equity by elderly homeowners and other financial transactions affecting the owned home; socio-legal perspectives on the exclusion of asylum seekers and failed asylum seekers from housing and home; and how English and Irish property law are influenced by historical conflict, ideology and culture.
• Onyeka Osuji works on corporate social responsibility, and how law interacts in this context with a range of other disciplines, including accounting, sociology, behavioural psychology/economics, development studies, financial regulation, management/organisational studies, political economy and public administration.
• Nikhil Gokhani’s works on public health law and this draws on various other disciplines e.g. public health, food and nutrition, business and marketing, sports science and psychology. Nikhil has recently been awarded funding by the Medical Research Council to hold an interdisciplinary workshop on obesity.
• Nikhil Gokhani and Chris Willett are currently working on post Brexit trade agreements that may allow/require the UK to take products such as chlorinated chicken. This work considers what behavioural economics teaches as to whether consumers can make rational choices as to the safety of such products.
• Audrey Guinchard and Marios Koutsias work on the use of data analytics to find patterns about Mondaq’s publication of legal articles (with Berthold Lausen in computer science)
• Audrey Guinchard works on a multi-stakeholder/disciplinary approach to computer misuse
• Anastasia Karatzia works on the role of the European Central Bank as banking supervisor in the European Union; and is developing projects on the impact of new regulatory and supervisory financial measures on EU Member States and third countries with relations to the EU; in particular on implementation of the Single Supervisory Mechanism and the Single Regulatory Mechanism and the need for regulatory and supervisory 'rethinking' and reforms. This creates potential for collaboration with academics working on financial supervision and regulation, financial stability, and monetary policy.
• Stavroula Karapapa works on the challenges that digital technologies pose for existing legal regimes, particularly intellectual property law and digital rights. She is interested in the legal regulation of digital networked environments, digital humanities research, big data, and artificial intelligence (in particular machine learning) and has focused much of her career on how the law has sought to regulate and otherwise shape information technology—as well as the impact of information technology on the law.
• Marios Koutsias’ work considers how corporate governance is influenced by cultural, historical and philosophical principles dominant in a given society; in particular how these elements have influenced and will be influenced by Brexit.
• Chris Willett works on consumer law and policy, drawing on how behavioural psychology and economics should shape the regulation of things such as business advertising and standard contract terms.
• Chris Willett works on the relationship between consumer law and rapid (potentially disruptive) technological change such as 3D Printing and Artificial Intelligence. These types of technology mean that goods, services and digital content are provided in novel ways, by different actors, and they perform novel functions. So how can the technology reflect legal requirements, and how must law adapt to these new technological realities while adhering to existing underpinning values (if it even remains appropriate to stick to these values in the new technological environment)?
• Chris Willett previously worked with sociologists on an EU project to better understand the responses of regulatory bodies to food and product safety emergencies.
• Lorna Woods is currently working on a Carnegie UK Trust funded project on reducing harm in social media, and the project has provided a specific regulatory proposal. This proposal is firmly based on law but it draws upon design and technology, as well as behavioural psychology and nudging.