Completed projects

Below, you can find information about our completed projects.

Extraterritorial regulation and modern slavery in shipping

Researcher: Max Usynin

Project description: The postdoctoral research project examines the relationship between public regulation with extraterritorial effects and private governance mechanisms as applied and implemented by shipping actors. The emerging regulatory framework for the prevention of modern slavery in maritime law represents one example of such shared public-private governance. The project aims at building a theoretical framework for the shipping actors’ compliance with the increasing number of regulatory acts of extraterritorial application, as well as studying their responses (modern slavery statements) in order to identify the common challenges of the industry.

Administrative contracts

Researcher: Rasmus Grønved Nielsen

Project description: This research project examines the use by administrative authorities of contracts as means of public management vis-à-vis private persons and enterprises with special regards to contracts related to the exercise of public authority (“administrative contracts”/“Verwaltungsverträge”/“contrats administratifs”). The primary object of the study is to assess whether it is possible on the basis of case law to construct a general legal framework regulating these sui generis contracts. The answer is affirmative, and the dissertation highlights the necessity of conducting an integrative private/public law analysis to grasp the concrete legal issues at hand. The dissertation focuses on Danish law, but also draws on foreign experiences and approaches, mainly Norwegian, German, and French law. Administrative contracts form a significant feature of the legal infrastructure supporting the type of Private Governance systems that depend on collaboration between the private and public sector. Particularly, to some extent administrative contracts can be seen as devices of self-regulation.

Project result: The result of the project is a doctoral dissertation published by Karnovgroup.

Soft Law Business as Usual? Fundamental labour standards in private and public commercial contracts

Researcher: Maria Edith Lindholm Gausdal

Project description: This PhD project concerns the integration of labour and labour related human rights clauses in both private and public commercial contracts. The primary purpose of the project is to explore legal differences and similarities of such labour related CSR-clauses in these two contractual settings in order to determine best contractual practices, to uncover the implications of such terms as regulators including their potential impact on basic contractual concepts.

Project result: The result of the project is a PhD dissertation (not published yet).

Vicarious Liability for Group Torts

Researcher: Sara Spiro Svendsen

Project description: This project examines the possibility to apply ordinary tort law rules, including vicarious liability theories, on the corporate group. The project analyses the existing methods of reaching the pockets of the parent company for the faults of the subsidiary and then asks whether tort law could play a bigger role in holding the corporate group responsible. This question is discussed on the basis of concurrency theory where the traditional veil piercing theory and tort law theories are treated as parallel routes for liability. It is concluded that there are no insurmountable obstacles in applying vicarious liability models on corporate groups although some adjustments are required to overcome the limits imposed by the general principle company law principle of limited liability.