Technology is ubiquitous and palpable in all aspects of modern life. This phenomenon is now all the more entrenched as Covid-19 has rapidly accelerated digital transformation, dramatically and permanently altering the manner of our work, business and social activities. As the most common business form, the corporation is situated at the forefront of this revolution. Businesses must inevitably innovate to protect and acquire market share. Indeed, the adoption of technology to these ends is increasingly an existential necessity given the remarkable shifts in consumption patterns and in sales and distribution channels. When they succeed, efforts to innovate have spawned novel activities and business models that raise interesting and complex issues as to legality and regulation. Correspondingly, a growing body of legal scholarship has emerged to address these challenges. Consistent with its hegemony in innovating and adopting technological solutions, the financial sector has generated the most conspicuous surge in such scholarship. Much attention has been drawn, for instance, to the rise of FinTech, RegTech and crypto-assets as innovations that are rapidly and continuously reshaping our financial and economic landscape.More recently, the tidal waves of technological advances have also sparked critical reflections on their potential impact on various aspects of corporate activities. Significantly, the current technological age is characterised not by a single dominant technology but by an array of technologies including blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, robotics, big data analytics and cloud computing, the effects of which are further intensified by easy access to global connectivity (Internet) and high-performance computing. The convergence of these technologies produces 'amplification effects'; that is, they 'interact with each other and create synergies that greatly [increase]
This article re-examines the established principle that contract damages compensate but do not punish from the theoretical perspective of corrective justice and, in particular, the version advocated by Professor Ernest Weinrib. Weinrib argues that corrective justice a⁄rms the traditional view that contract damages should be circumscribed by compensatory functions, and the notion of punitive damages is inconsistent with the structure of corrective justice and hence contractual rights. The correctness of this conclusion depends, however, on what is understood by punishment. This article argues that punishment is not necessarily explicable only as a form of state punishment, but may (adopting the retributive idea of punishment expounded by Jane Hampton) also be understood as a form of correlatively-structured response that redresses the moral injury in£icted by one's conduct on another. If that is the case, punitive damages for breach of contract may be justi¢ed even within the framework of corrective justice.
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