Oxford Business Law Blog had a mini-symposium on coronavirus issues in business law, which they've now collected into a single document on SSRN:
The COVID-19 Pandemic is the biggest challenge for the world since World War Two, warned UN Secretary General, António Guterres, on 1 April 2020. Millions of lives may be lost. The threat to our livelihoods is extreme as well. Job losses worldwide may exceed 25 million.
Legal systems are under extreme stress too. Contracts are disrupted, judicial services suspended, and insolvency procedures tested. Quarantine regulations threaten constitutional liberties. However, laws can also be a powerful tool to contain the effects of the pandemic on our lives and reduce its economic fallout. To achieve this goal, rules designed for normal times might need to be adapted to ‘crisis-mode’, at least temporarily. Business Laws in particular fulfil an important function in this context. Our livelihoods depend on how well businesses are able to navigate through the current crisis.
Beginning in early February 2020, the Oxford Business Law Blog has published posts on how Business Laws could contribute to containing the effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and on how they need (or need not) to be adapted to achieve the desired effect. This working paper collects the posts published throughout March in chronological order. Thematically, the focus is on finance, financial regulation and insolvency laws. This is not surprising as the most pressing problem businesses face right now is to manage their cash flow. We hope that the contributions in this paper inspire more work by scholars and help policymakers worldwide to adopt the right measures to reduce the damage caused by the Pandemic.
Boon, Gert-Jan and Brunnermeier, Markus Konrad and Eidenmueller, Horst G. M. and Enriques, Luca and Gurrea-Martínez, Aurelio and Judge, Kathryn and Landau, Jean-Pierre and Pagano, Marco and Reis, Ricardo A.M.R. and van Zwieten, Kristin, The COVID-19 Pandemic and Business Law: A Series of Posts from the Oxford Business Law Blog (April 11, 2020). Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper No. 15/2020. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3573419 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3573419
