Private Law, Digital Assets, and Infrastructure

This book addresses perhaps the most pervasive, topical and unsettled collection of themes and questions in the contemporary legal world, subsisting in private law and emergent technologies such as digital assets, blockchain and cryptocurrency. Private law frameworks across the globe are struggling to keep pace with rapid technological developments that typify the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This sluggishness is triggering a swathe of important but unanswered practical and theoretical legal questions. These questions concern critical matters of legality, practicality, utility, appropriate regulation, and the underlying theoretical basis for state intervention.

This book uniquely combines a variety of themes which have not been the subject of significant writing and which are sure to inform live discourse and regulatory efforts in the space of digital assets and infrastructure, blockchain, cryptocurrency and related emerging technologies. Private law currently finds itself at a crossroads, and governments and courts are frantically searching for guidance as to how to approach the themes and questions addressed in this book. Legal practitioners, scholars and students of the law are equally perplexed as to private law's current and future directions in this space. The book therefore offers essential perspectives that will appeal to legislators, regulators, judges, lawyers, scholars, and students alike.

P T Babie is Bonython Chair in Law and Professor of Law, Associate Dean of Law (International), and Director of the Research Unit for the Study of Society, Ethics, and Law, Adelaide Law School, The University of Adelaide, Australia.  He holds a BA (Calgary), a BThSt (Flinders), a LLB (Alberta), a LLM (Melbourne), and a DPhil (Oxford).  He is Barrister and Solicitor of the Court of King's Bench of Alberta, Canada, and an Associate Member of the Law Society of South Australia.  He is also Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Detroit Mercy School of Law (USA), and Research Fellow, O.P. Jindal Global University (India).

Dr Mark Giancaspro is a Senior Lecturer at the Adelaide Law School of the University of Adelaide and Special Counsel with DW Fox Tucker Lawyers. He holds an honours degree in Laws and Legal Practice from Flinders University and a PhD from the University of Adelaide. His teaching and research expertise are in contract law, competition and consumer law, and sports law, and he has published widely on matters including issues with the formation and renegotiation of contracts, consumer protection, and smart contracts. He provides training and advice to domestic and international commercial law firms, industry bodies and governments, and is a member of the Law Council of Australia (Business Law Section, Digital Commerce Committee and Competition and Consumer Committee), the ACCC’s Small Business & Franchising Consultative Committee, the International Association of Consumer Law, and the Adelaide Law School’s Research Unit on the Regulation of Commerce, Corporations, Insolvency and Taxation (ROCCIT).