The Group has a broad body of research expertise which is demonstrated by its significant publication record.

Faculty within the group have authored major works on tort, contract, tax, property, and sport law. In addition, faculty continually publish in international law journals, such as the Common Law World Review, International Comparative Law Quarterly, Fordham International Law Review, Arbitration and the Tort Law Review, as well as nationally focused journals such as the Irish Jurist, Commercial Law Practitioner, and Conveyancing and Property Law Journal.

Commercial and Private Law

Broadly put, this research grouping deals with general areas of commercial/private law. Our current focus deals with technological innovation and social change. The rapid advances in scientific knowledge are increasingly putting existing legal frameworks under increasing stress providing uncertainty for companies and individuals.

Thus faculty and students in this group are currently undertaking research in a number of exciting new areas such as law, science, technology and innovation, employment and property law rights in a changing social environment, tort law, business organization, and animal welfare and the law.

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Our current areas of expertise and research in cutting edge topics include, but are not limited to:

  • The impact of science, technology, and innovation on traditional legal regulatory and liability frameworks, including autonomous driver assisted safety devices (part of a EU Horizon 2020 funded project), drones, 3D printing.
     
  • Intellectual property protection, management, and exploitation including the new Patent Court, valuation of IP assets, medical treatments, and innovation, the role of employees in IP development, tort based liability for IP infringement, and the role of data protection and manipulation across new technologies.
     
  • The changing nature of property law rights, including the case for and/or implications of property law reform in such areas as family property law including succession rights, the importance of adverse possession theories and practice, the treatment of business leases consistent with freedom of contract as well as shifting concepts of property to include data exploitation and trespass.
     
  • Tort law, focused on accident compensation and private actions for the enforcement of civil rights, encompassing analytical methodology in tort, compensation culture, violation of privacy and state liability, including vicarious liability for sexual abuse, police liability, and public authority liability.
     
  • The role and legal regulation of animals in sports, including the historical evolution of the law combined with the advances in understanding animal physiology and psychology and the economic impact and constraints to legal responses.
     
  • The shifting regulation of business activities, particularly through competition (anti-trust) law, in an increasing digital environment and the changing social environment which requires new approaches to commercial wrongdoing and the increasing criminalization of commercial malpractice through the regulatory process provides interesting avenues of collaboration between commercial lawyers and criminal justice experts.
     
  • The ‘Uberisation of the workforce’ a term coined in the US to describe the phenomenon of crowdsourcing, i.e. sourcing skills/supplies from individuals who are chosen from large groups, all of whom have made themselves available for selection. The key point is that the traditional workforce is being replaced by online fora where potential workers tend to congregate  and essentially promote the idea of the workers competing with each other for the available work. The European concept of flexicurity may provide answers.