This article explores some of the changes that the 4th Industrial Revolution brings to our understanding of money. Our analysis does not suggest that the only valid form of money is that provided or backed by the state.We rather argue that it is unlikely that money-like means of payment will prove sustainable in the long-term if not perceived as being vested with some form of legality. Still, mere legality will not prove to be sufficient for the new payment instruments to qualify as money. They must also prove to be able to serve as means of exchange/payment. A sharp reduction in value will diminish the credibility of the payment promise and thus user confidence/trust. Like acceptance of payment on sight, the use of money as a common measure of value is one of the most important properties of fiat (and metallic) money. Retention of value in times of stress is fundamental as regards the new assets' ability to act as a measure of value and its ability to fit with common perceptions of money. The requisite enquiry should be based on empirical studies of the intertemporal behaviour of the instrument. We suggest that fiat money aside, instruments that could eventually qualify as_x000D_ “money" ought to pass the dual test of legality and relative retention of value. This approach does not suggest a return to the metallic rule, which would limit free circulation of money. It is rather a pragmatic reformulation of the characteristics that means of payment, which do not enjoy the backing (will) of the state, must exhibit to enjoy quasi-money or money-like status. Assets that display high volatility are, thus, unlikely to fulfil the functions of “money" and should instead be dealt under the law of investments if they qualify as such.

One of the biggest lessons I learnt in law school was that the law never happens in a vacuum, and in these times of geopolitical tension, economic uncertainty, societal stress and technological acceleration, context matters more than ever. Therefore, I hope in this keynote to provide some context to the discussions that will take place over the next two days.

In Fundamentals of Criminal Law, Andrew Simester offers a limited defence of the use of negligence in criminal law. Simester does not claim that negligence – nor any mens rea element – is inherently culpable. Rather, Simester claims that negligence – with all other mens rea elements – provides evidence from which we may infer culpability. I will retrace Simester’s account to consider how (and why) we may infer culpability from mens rea in general (Part 1), then how we may infer culpability from negligence specifically (Part 2), and finally, how we may infer culpability from the underlying traits which cause us to become negligent (Part 3). Ultimately, I think that the evidence of culpability to be derived from negligence is too weak to meet Simester’s requirements.

As comparative lawyer Otto Kahn-Freund observed in the mid-1970s, there is a "far reaching free trade in legal ideas. Far reaching, not all embracing". We see this manifested in the law of privacy, whether understood in the traditional sense of freedom from intrusion into private life or some more extended sense of, for instance, control over personal information or physical or sensory integrity stretching beyond the enjoyment of an intimate interior private life. On the one hand, there is a great deal of cross-fertilisation across jurisdictions as elements of the law of one are copied in others, allowing certain broad groupings to evolve. On the other hand, there are still many differences between and within these groupings which may be partly due to the different legal contexts of the laws, but are also partly due to factors having to do with different social-cultural histories and norms, as well as different political environments within which laws are developed, interpreted, and enforced. These tensions have ongoing implications for the protection of privacy in the digital century. Yet there are hopeful signs of the possibility of convergence around legal standards of privacy protection in the future, as in the present and past—for all the legal, social-cultural and political differences that remain and for all the new challenges to privacy that we can expect to see.