Drawing on many revealing and sometimes colorful court cases of the past two centuries, Private Lives offers a lively short history of the complexities of family law and family life--including the tensions between the laws on the books and contemporary arrangements for marriage, divorce, adoption, and child rearing.

Privacy is one of the most urgent issues associated with information technology and digital media. This book claims that what people really care about when they complain and protest that privacy has been violated is not the act of sharing information itself—most people understand that this is crucial to social life —but the inappropriate, improper sharing of information. Arguing that privacy concerns should not be limited solely to concern about control over personal information, Helen Nissenbaum counters that information ought to be distributed and protected according to norms governing distinct social contexts—whether it be workplace, health care, schools, or among family and friends. She warns that basic distinctions between public and private, informing many current privacy policies, in fact obscure more than they clarify. In truth, contemporary information systems should alarm us only when they function without regard for social norms and values, and thereby weaken the fabric of social life.

This book provides a set of proposals for the new conceptual network required in order to establish civil law rules for a world permeated by Artificial Intelligence. These proposals are intended by their authors to push the debate on the new civil law forward. In spite of the natural conservatism of jurists, some innovative or even futuristic ideas are called for, also because the future, even this not-so-distant one, is difficult to foresee. Paradoxically, and unlike in the past, this lack of knowledge must not stop us from planning. If it does, humankind may, as some pessimists already claim, lose its chance to win the battle for control of the world. The rise and expansion of Artificial Intelligence and robotics in recent years has highlighted a pressing need to create a suitable legal framework for this new phenomenon. The debate on the subject, although wide-ranging and involving many new legal documents, is still quite general and preliminary in nature, although these preparatory works illustrate the very real need to develop appropriate new civil law arrangements. It is exactly the branch of private law where the necessity of these new rules appears to be the most imperative. Autonomous vehicles, medical robots, and expertise software raise fundamental questions on aspects of civil liability such as culpability; whereas the growth in popularity of automated, intelligent software systems for concluding contracts requires a new approach to many fundamental and deeply rooted elements of contract law, e.g. consciousness, intent, error, deception, interpretation of contracts and good faith. Ruling on these specific matters demands the identification and clarification of certain key points, which shall become the foundation for constructing AI/robot civil law.

This book brings together a wide range of contributors from across the common law world to identify and debate the principal moral and systemic challenges facing private law in the remaining part of the twenty-first century. The various contributions identify serious problems relating to complexity and overload, threats to research and education, the law's unintelligibility, the unsatisfactory nature of the law reform process and a general lack of public engagement. They consider the respective future roles of statutes, codes, and judge-made law (in the form of both common law and equitable rules). They consider how best to organise the private law system internally, and how to co-ordinate it externally with other public and economic systems (human rights, regulation, insurance markets and social security frameworks). They address the challenges for private law presented by new forms of technology, and by modern demands for the protection of new and intangible forms of moral interest, such as interests in privacy, 'vindication' and 'personal choice'. They also engage with the critical contemporary debates about access to, and the privatisation of, civil justice. The work is designed as a source of inspiration and reference for private lawyers, as well as legislators, policy-makers and students.

I wish I knew then what I know now! Don't get to the end of your law school career muttering these words to yourself! Take the first step toward building a productive, successful, and perhaps even pleasant law school experience...read this book! Written for students about to embark on this three year odyssey, by students who have successfully survived law school. Law School Confidential demystifies the life-altering thrill ride that defines an American legal education by providing a comprehensive, blow-by-blow, chronological account of what to expect. Law School Confidential arms students with a thorough overview of the contemporary law school experience. This isn't the advice of graying professors or battle-scarred practitioners decades removed from the law school. Fresh out of University of Pennsylvania Law School, Robert Miller has assembled a panel of recent law school graduates all of whom are perfectly positioned to shed light on what law school is like today. Law School Confidential invites you to walk in their steps to success and to learn from their mistakes. From taking the LSAT, to securing financial aid, to navigating the notorious first semester, to exam-taking strategies, to applying for summer internships, to getting on the law review, to tackling the bar and beyond...Law School Confidential explains it all.