Law Commons^™

The Law Of The Platform, Orly Lobel

Faculty Scholarship

New digital platform companies are turning everything into an available resource: services, products, spaces, connections, and knowledge, all of which would otherwise be collecting dust. Unsurprisingly then, the platform economy defies conventional regulatory theory. Millions of people are becoming part-time entrepreneurs, disrupting established business models and entrenched market interests, challenging regulated industries, and turning ideas about consumption, work, risk, and ownership on their head. Paradoxically, as the digital platform economy becomes more established, we are also at an all-time high in regulatory permitting, licensing, and protection. The battle over law in the platform is therefore both conceptual and highly practical. …

A More Fundamental Distinction For The Contemporary Economy Between Employee And Independent Contractor Status, Michael C. Harper

Faculty Scholarship

The common law remains an intellectual battle ground in Anglo-American legal systems, even in the current age of statutes. This is true in significant part because the common law provides legitimacy for arguments actually based on policy, ideology, and interest. It also is true because of the common law's malleability and related susceptibility to significantly varied interpretations.

Mere contention over the meaning of the common law to provide legitimacy for modern statutes is most often not productive of sensible policy, however. It generally produces no more than reified doctrine unsuited for problems the common law was not framed to solve. …