Regulating Disruption: Blockchain, GDPR, and Questions of Data Sovereignty

The article discusses the nature of law in cyberspace. Topics discussed include distinction between regulation as infringement of private autonomy and regulation as a collaborative enterprise; blockchain regulatory conundrum; and neoliberal market-complementing regulation. Also being discussed is the regulation for economic efficiency and consumer choice

The Castrated Trustee: Jouissance and Breach of Trust

As a highly prolific legal mechanism that both predated and subsequently found form amid the development of Anglo-American capitalist societies, the modern-day trust operates across manifold private, commercial, domestic and international spheres. As a consequence of their complex legal, economic and political significance that informs, for example, the worlds of global corporate finance as well as public pensions, trusts play a remarkably important role in helping shape the wider socio-cultural domain of Anglo-American jurisdictions and beyond. Yet trusts remain under- or ill-considered juridical sites in terms of continuing critical-legal dialogues, and especially the dialogue between equity and psychoanalysis. This article will explore how the trust mirrors or recreates in an external juridical form the internal regulation of desire and enjoyment that occurs within the psychic space of the subject-as-trustee. In particular, via duties and obligations a trustee holds on behalf of the subject-as-beneficiary, and the resultant breach that is said to occur when such duties and obligations are not met. Using two key formulations this article will aim to assess the trustee as castrated by means of a (re)interpretation and (re)imagination of some fundamental and formal aspects of breach of trust from the perspective of psychoanalysis. The first formulation relates to the continuous force of unconscious desire (the death drive) that pushes the subject-as-trustee ever onwards towards the thing (das Ding) and surplus enjoyment (jouissance), thus producing an (inevitable) affective paradox or trap in which the trustee finds themselves caught. The second, albeit intimately connected with the first, relates to the internal regulatory or prohibitive psychical mechanisms that prevent or seek to prevent the subject-as-trustee from pushing past the limit on enjoyment imposed by the pleasure principle. To be exact, a limit that has been consciously and deliberately recreated in the trust mechanism, and by extension the so-called “onerous” duties of the subject-as-trustee, as a means of preventing a breach of trust

Equity fetishism : an analysis and theory of civil justice in modernity

This thesis argues that the law of Equity is a means to complete justice for stakeholders of capitalism with a desire for and need to believe in the certainty and perfectibility of the symbolic of capitalist reason and logic. By applying a Marxist Freudian reading I claim that stakeholder desire for and insistence on certainty and perfectibility within contexts of Anglo-American, Western, capitalist civil justice is both characteristic of subjugation to the reason and logic of capital, and symptomatic of the power of the unconscious and of fantasy on subjectivity within capitalism. Starting with an account of the Tudor jurist, statesman and Lord Chancellor Thomas More in the sixteenth-century, this thesis explores the long durée of Equity and civil justice, including analyses of the role a neurotic legal community has in defining conscience, discretion and flexibility within the principles, substance and procedures of civil justice upon which the stakeholder relies. Equity, therefore, provides a means for stakeholder’s to express their desire for what is missing, what they lack, in the symbolic, and the response to this desire is, I claim, the construction of an elaborate fantasy: Equity fetishism. As a theory of civil justice predicated on a conjunction of law, political economy and psychology, Equity fetishism explains Equity, as a body of jurisprudence, form of private law reasoning, and mode of adjudication, within domains of capitalist civil justice as being determined by fantasy and desire as it is defined by the normative discourses and processes of case-law, legislation and civil justice reform. As a structure in fantasy within civil justice Equity fetishism works in and through institutions such as private property and trusts in order to maintain stakeholder belief in the limitless possibilities of capital accumulation, which in turn maintains stakeholder disavowal of the realities of castration, subjective longing, loss, and limitation in the symbolic. Finally, this thesis aims to demonstrate that Equity fetishism is a vital consideration for critical and mainstream legal scholarship, as both a complementary and countervailing legal theory and discourse that is able to contribute to practical and theoretical legal thinking and education. Specifically, I argue, Equity fetishism accounts for and explains the influence of the vagaries of subjective psychic life on the development of institutions, concepts and practices in Equity and civil justice and, in particular, how these parallel and occur in harmony and agreement with capitalism

Equity fetishism : an analysis and theory of civil justice in modernity

This thesis argues that the law of Equity is a means to complete justice for stakeholders of capitalism with a desire for and need to believe in the certainty and perfectibility of the symbolic of capitalist reason and logic. By applying a Marxist Freudian reading I claim that stakeholder desire for and insistence on certainty and perfectibility within contexts of Anglo-American, Western, capitalist civil justice is both characteristic of subjugation to the reason and logic of capital, and symptomatic of the power of the unconscious and of fantasy on subjectivity within capitalism. Starting with an account of the Tudor jurist, statesman and Lord Chancellor Thomas More in the sixteenth-century, this thesis explores the long durée of Equity and civil justice, including analyses of the role a neurotic legal community has in defining conscience, discretion and flexibility within the principles, substance and procedures of civil justice upon which the stakeholder relies. Equity, therefore, provides a means for stakeholder’s to express their desire for what is missing, what they lack, in the symbolic, and the response to this desire is, I claim, the construction of an elaborate fantasy: Equity fetishism. As a theory of civil justice predicated on a conjunction of law, political economy and psychology, Equity fetishism explains Equity, as a body of jurisprudence, form of private law reasoning, and mode of adjudication, within domains of capitalist civil justice as being determined by fantasy and desire as it is defined by the normative discourses and processes of case-law, legislation and civil justice reform. As a structure in fantasy within civil justice Equity fetishism works in and through institutions such as private property and trusts in order to maintain stakeholder belief in the limitless possibilities of capital accumulation, which in turn maintains stakeholder disavowal of the realities of castration, subjective longing, loss, and limitation in the symbolic. Finally, this thesis aims to demonstrate that Equity fetishism is a vital consideration for critical and mainstream legal scholarship, as both a complementary and countervailing legal theory and discourse that is able to contribute to practical and theoretical legal thinking and education. Specifically, I argue, Equity fetishism accounts for and explains the influence of the vagaries of subjective psychic life on the development of institutions, concepts and practices in Equity and civil justice and, in particular, how these parallel and occur in harmony and agreement with capitalism

Desire Lines

Desire lines occur wherever we find human and animal movement. Desire lines dissect the planned spaces of Milton Keynes and have done since its creation 50 years ago, and they will continue to show us how people use, abuse, and manipulate the spaces of Milton Keynes long into the future. Accompanying Robert Herian’s chapter is a short video installation bringing together local council planning documentation, bureaucratic theory, personal accounts, storytelling, photography, and music to describe the nature and power of desire lines in our lives and imaginations

Influence of Juvenile Wood on Dimensional Stability and Tensile Properties of Flakeboard

The purpose of this study was to determine if juvenile wood adversely affects the linear expansion, water adsorption, and thickness swell of aligned flakeboard. Literature on juvenile wood properties and their effects on product performance was reviewed. Veneer and lumber cut from 35-year-old plantation-grown loblolly pine were segregated by age and used to manufacture plywood and flake-board. As expected, longitudinal linear expansion of the juvenile (0 to 12 years old) veneer was greater than that of mature (13+ years old) veneer. At several levels of humidity exposure, linear expansion of symmetrical cross-laminated plywood made from the juvenile veneer was greater than that of plywood made from mature veneer. Significant increases in the linear expansion of three-layer cross-oriented flakeboard were also attributed to juvenile wood. Differences in the linear expansion of single-layer directional aligned flakeboards made from juvenile wood and from mature wood were not statistically significant for the most part. Analysis did show that test results were affected by tree-to-tree variation in wood age and sample variations. Accurate predictions of dimensional stability in three-layer cross-aligned panels were made using tensile and linear expansion properties derived from the directional flakeboard

Acoustic Sorting Models for Improved Log Segregation

In this study, we examined three individual log measures (acoustic velocity, log diameter, and log vertical position in a tree) for their ability to predict average modulus of elasticity (MOE) and grade yield of structural lumber obtained from Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii [Mirb. Franco]) logs. We found that log acoustic velocity only had a moderate correlation with average MOE of the lumber produced from the logs (R2 = 0.40). Log diameter had a weak correlation with average lumber MOE (R2 = 0.12). Log vertical position in a tree was found to have a relatively good relationship with lumber MOE (R2 = 0.57). Our analysis also indicated that the combinations of log acoustic velocity and log diameter or log acoustic velocity and log position were better predictors of average lumber MOE and lumber visual grade yield than log acoustic velocity alone. For sorting best quality logs, multivariable models were more effective than the velocity-alone model; however, for sorting poorest quality logs, the velocity-alone model was as effective as multivariable models

Taking Blockchain Seriously

In the present techno-political moment it is clear that ignoring or dismissing the hype surrounding blockchain is unwise, and certainly for regulatory authorities and governments who must keep a grip on the technology and those promoting it, in order to ensure democratic accountability and regulatory legitimacy within the blockchain ecosystem and beyond. Blockchain is telling (and showing) us something very important about the evolution of capital and neoliberal economic reason, and the likely impact in the near future on forms and patterns of work, social organization, and, crucially, on communities and individuals who lack influence over the technologies and data that increasingly shape and control their lives. In this short essay I introduce some of the problems in the regulation of blockchain and offer counter-narratives aimed at cutting through the hype fuelling the ascendency of this most contemporary of technologies

NFT – Legal Token Classification

This report is the first of a series of brief papers relating to the main legal aspects of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The aim is to highlight NFT characteristics and provide an extensive but not exhaustive overview of the legal classification and frameworks across the globe. The report places a special focus on EU laws, but it is not limited to this

'How long do you intend to stay?': Desire meets proscription in the subject in Henry Miller's Via Dieppe-Newhaven.

This paper uses Henry Miller's account, 'Via Dieppe-Newhaven', concerning the Parisian-based author's barred attempt to visit London in order to satisfy a desire 'to hear English spoken twenty-four hours of the day', as a means of exploring the intersection of language and proscription in the psychic space of the subject. Like Miller, people often undertake a journey, physical or metaphorical, in order to search for that which they presume to be lacking from their lives; that illusive thing capable of satiating desire and making their world a better, more tolerable place. But are all such journeys forever condemned to fail, and to what extent does law play a role in that failure? Within a psychoanalytical framework and with particular emphasis on the association between language, law and the subject formulated by Jacque Lacan, this paper will first examine the relationship language has with desire and its architect lack in order to explore the subject's motivation for undertaking the quest or journey, 'the bon voyage' as Miller refers to it, and ask whether or not it ever has an end as such. Secondly, consideration will be given to law (as proscription) and the manner in which it intersects the subject en route and helps to shape the many linguistic bumps, barriers, obstacles and hurdles that constitute the subject's 'road'; an intervention which inevitably disrupts, deforms, frustrates, even terminates, their journey