Just and sustainable economies
Just and sustainable economies is one of the four focal areas of research at the Faculty of Law. We examine how legal frameworks shape assets, ownership, and markets as our economies become subject to increasing ecological and technological pressures. We study property rights, intellectual property rights, and regulation of digital assets, as well as legal frameworks governing sustainability and land use. We analyze how law restructures economies, mediates competing claims, and produces legitimacy, power, and justice in global governance. In these ways, our research informs building equitable futures.
European and global legal frameworks increasingly shape how economic activity is organized, governed, and contested. These frameworks structure markets and define ownership and control, shaping affordances and distributive outcomes. The interplay of normative, political, and economic forces ultimately influences the conditions under which future societies – and the planet itself – can exist. As regulatory power shifts toward transnational and often opaque structures, fundamental questions arise about legitimacy, access, and control, particularly as economic regulation becomes a vehicle for managing data flows, technological infrastructures, and ultimately planetary boundaries.
We examine how legal regimes produce and regulate economic relations across a rapidly transforming global landscape. We explore how the relationship between territoriality and property is evolving, how intellectual property regimes shape the production, circulation, and enclosure of knowledge, how sustainability regulation reconfigures markets in response to climate and ecological pressures, and how land use and planning law mediate competing claims over space, resources, and social needs. We also study the legal and institutional dynamics of digital assets, including crypto-based instruments, tokenization, and emerging forms of value and ownership. Across these areas, our research interrogates the legal foundations of economic ordering and contributes to broader debates on power, legitimacy, and justice in the evolving architecture of the global economy.