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‘Reading Weber’s Sociology of Law’ is a review essay of Hubert Treiber’s Reading Max Weber’s Sociology of Law. It is an exploration and evaluation of Treiber’s splendid analysis of Weber’s legal philosophy. Treiber addresses the question of the dating of Weber’s manuscripts on the sociology of law and he clarifies Weber’s four stages in the development of the law and legal practices. This review essay concludes with a comparison between Treiber’s book and those by Werner Gephart and by Michel Coutu. The assessment is that Treiber’s book is an indispensable companion to the understanding of Max Weber’s sociology of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do inconsistent laws, which are in the form of inconsistent legal obligations, provide us with good reasons for accepting the possibility of legal gluts, which are true legal statements whose negations are also true? Given the contingencies of the law, it is unlikely that many will deny the possibility of inconsistent legal obligations, but it remains an ongoing debate whether these lead to any legal gluts. In a recent debate, Graham Priest [Priest, G. 2006. In 'Contradiction'. In First printed by Martinus Nijhoff in 1987. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Priest, G. 2017. 'Where Laws Conflict: An Application of the Method of Chunk and Permeate'. In Law and the New Logics, edited by H. Glenn, and L. Smith, 168–180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] has argued from inconsistent obligations to legal gluts and JC Beall [Beall, JC 2017. 'On inconsistent laws and gluts'. In Law and the New Logics, edited by H. Glenn, and L. Smith, 199–207. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.], while he has acknowledged that there are inconsistent obligations, has argued against Priest's arguments for legal gluts. In this paper, after reviewing the debate, I adjudicate it and provide reasons for resisting Beall's arguments again Priest thereby providing a possibility for legal gluts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise in Africans involvement in cybercrimes globally due to increased access to the internet has prompted some African governments to enact ICT and Cybercrime related Laws. Unfortunately, some provisions of these laws, criminalize some expressions and are likely to stifle and restrict online activities and freedom of expression of Africans. This paper argues that the criminalization of certain expressions by these laws are contrary to the expectations of international and regional instruments on freedom of expression. It recommends the adaptation of the experiences and jurisprudence of the European and Inter-American Courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Essay examines debates surrounding Qu Tongzu's 'Confucianization of law' theory. Qu's theory claims that Chinese law underwent a process of 'Confucianization' starting in the Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD) and ending and culminating in the Tang dynasty (618–907), where the Confucian concept of li and other Confucian moral teachings were introduced and incorporated into the written law. I argue that Qu's theory should be properly characterised as a theory of descriptive jurisprudence and also a form of the mirror thesis. In light of this characterisation, this Essay then lays out the possible counterarguments that could be raised against Qu's theory and then situates existing scholarship in the debate in these categories. I then test Qu's theory using a case study about kinship concealment in traditional Chinese law The Essay then concludes by urging that the debate should include more jurisprudential approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is the field of general jurisprudence catching up – or is it simply getting distracted? Whereas legal philosophy has always featured claims about the content of the folk concept of law, it is only in the last few years that it has begun to self-consciously test those claims. Kenneth Himma's recent review of this effort in Jurisprudence is a milestone: it reveals X-Jur as having progressed to the point of attracting broader philosophical attention, and it challenges X-Jur's practitioners to persuade those not already convinced of the potential of alternatives to the analytic method. I take Himma's critique as an opportunity to sketch some preliminaries for a theory of experimental jurisprudence, considering, in turn, the nature of jurisprudential truth, the role of expertise, and how empirical data might best be interpreted to help adjudicate claims about the content of the folk concept. I conclude with a brief discussion of the field's future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on ethical dilemmas surrounding adolescent boarding in Emergency Departments (EDs), specifically addressing autonomy, nonmaleficence, and distributive justice. Topics include whether minors such as Bethany can make their own medical decisions, the duty of caregivers to protect minors from potential harm upon discharge, and the responsibility for ongoing care and support for patients in similar situations.

The evaluation of the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in legal decisions still has unsolved questions. These may refer to the perceived degree of seriousness of the possible errors committed, the distribution of responsibility among the different decision-makers (human or artificial), and the evaluation of the error concerning its possible benevolent or malevolent consequences on the person sanctioned. Above all, assessing the possible relationships between these variables appears relevant. To this aim, we conducted a study through an online questionnaire (N = 288) where participants had to consider different scenarios in which a decision-maker, human or artificial, made an error of judgement for offences punishable by a fine (Civil Law infringement) or years in prison (Criminal Law infringement). We found that humans who delegate AIs are blamed less than solo humans, although the effect of decision maker was subtle. In addition, people consider the error more serious if committed by a human being when a sentence for a crime of the penal code is mitigated, and for an AI when a penalty for an infringement of the civil code is aggravated. The mitigation of the evaluation of seriousness for joint AI-human judgement errors suggests the potential for strategic scapegoating of AIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mia Couto is a Mozambican writer known for an aesthetics of the fantastic in his numerous works. In most of his writings, he blurs the distinctions between the human and the non-human, land and water, the natural and the supernatural. This is particularly evident in his 2006 novel Sleepwalking Land, set in the context of the Mozambican civil war. This paper argues that the elusive figure of the water spirit is an ideal lens by which to read Sleepwalking Land to capture the complexity of the horrendous civil war. Drawing on magical realism, I consider Couto's use of water-based indigenous beliefs to underscore ideas of flexibility and mobility in a land ravaged by war, while revising the myth of powerful water spirits in line with the raging civil war. The chaos of war is amplified in the novel through actions of spirits that encroach on the human world, influencing events and problematizing the laws of logic, time and space. Their intractability enables Couto to foreground ambiguity and hybridity with characters who assume different forms at different stages of the fragmented plot, mirroring the raging war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Godot is a Woman" is a play that challenges Samuel Beckett's decision to exclude women from performing "Waiting for Godot" and explores the tension between artistic freedom and copyright law. It serves as a legal educational tool, critiquing gender biases in law and copyright. The play effectively communicates legal issues to a general audience and addresses moral arguments for excluding certain groups. Overall, "Godot is a Woman" is a comedic and thought-provoking production that examines the role of copyright law in perpetuating gender discrimination. [Extracted from the article]

Scott Hershovitz's Law is a Moral Practice develops a bold, novel, and comprehensive account of law: the moral practice picture. Its central thesis is that legal relations (rights, duties, powers, etc.) are moral. They are real, full-fledged normative relations, connected to genuine reasons for action, and endowed with robust normativity. Nothing less than ordinary moral relations. The account is compounded with a deflationary view of theories in general jurisprudence and of the debates about them. In this vein, Hershovitz recommends that we move away from theorising about law (understood as a set of legal norms), and focus on the nature of legal relations instead. In this paper, I pursue two interrelated objectives. First, I address Hershovitz's main arguments for the view that legal relations are moral. Second, I take the issue with the asymmetry between the deflationary and inflationary stances he advocates for legal norms and relations, respectively, arguing that this different treatment is unwarranted, because the deflationary stance is, and because this very combination of attitudes is unstable. Properly understood, questions about the nature and determination of legal norms and relations can't but be seen as complementary aspects of a unified legal metaphysics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Law as a Moral Practice, Scott Hershovitz defends the pluralist view that there are many sets of legal norms which we can validly employ for different purposes, none of which qualifies as uniquely legal. He claims, further, that there is no set of moral rights and duties that is distinctly legal either, because the domain of morality is unified. I argue, against Hershovitz, that the existence of different sets of norms within legal practice does not mean that no set is basic, or fundamental. There is arguably one set (the actual moral rights and duties that law re-arranges) which is fundamental, and from which all the other sets are derivative. I argue, moreover, that we have strong deontological reasons to doubt that the domain of morality is unified. If political morality comprises distinct domains, not collapsible to a single moral concern, then the possibility of a distinctively legal domain of morality remains open. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the 'eliminativist' character of Hershovitz's non-positivist theory. Focusing on chapter 5 of Law Is A Moral Practice, we ask whether Hershovitz's theory takes full advantage of the explanatory advantages of viewing non-positivism in explicitly eliminativist terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here I distinguish two things jurisprudence might take itself to explain. A theory of law can be either concept-first or practice-first. Concept-first theories investigate the concept we implicitly deploy to label some things as law and not others. Practice-first theories investigate directly, and uncover interesting features of, a particular social practice. That practice could be, for instance, the practice of lawyers and officials which prevails in the United States. I identify Hershovitz's Law Is a Moral Practice with a practice-first approach. Then I elaborate on the distinction and show that a practice-first approach is more defensible than many assume. Finally, I argue a practice-first approach rules out predictive theories of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Western jurisdictions take a split approach to protecting the economically vulnerable party in private relationships. In the family sphere, many jurisdictions are reluctant to intervene in intimate partner relationships, particularly outside the marital context. This lack of legal protection often leaves the economically vulnerable partner in a precarious financial position at the end of the relationship. By contrast, legal protections for vulnerable parties are much more common in the economic sphere. This article explores this split approach to protecting the vulnerable partner in private relationships through the lens of the market/home dichotomy. It focuses on the Belgian regulation for unmarried cohabiting partners on the one hand, and for tenants, consumers, and employees on the other hand. The article concludes that the dichotomy has value as an explanatory framework for the divergent norms of cohabiting and economic relationships, but that it is most useful as a heuristic framework for challenging the ideologies that inspire the market and the family. Incorporating the viewpoint of non-traditional families only adds to that conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jiří Levý's article Translation as a decision process (1967), one of the earliest contributions to the topic of decision-making in translation, anticipates a model that was proposed more than two decades later: Optimality Theory. This linguistic theory offers a framework for resolving conflicts in grammar by replacing absolute rules with violable constraints whose interaction leads to the selection of an acceptable output. The philosophy of Optimality Theory can be successfully applied to the process of translatorial decision-making, which consists in proposing a set of candidates and selecting the best one by virtue of constraints imposed by the translation strategy adopted. The article shows how such a constraint-based approach can be used in legal translation. A tentative set of constraints (Minimum equivalence, Near-equivalence, Literal, Identity, Functional, Transparent, Neutral) is used to evaluate French translation candidates for an English legal term, applying two different strategies: documentary (source-culture oriented) and instrumental (target-culture oriented). The formalism of Optimality Theory, while mimicking real-life decision-making processes, makes the selection of optimal equivalents more transparent and coherent. However, it is only one of the possible tools that legal translators and translation students have at their disposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses articles within the issue on topics including innovation and reform in the law of trusts, jurisprudence on statutory trusts, and reform of charitable trusts and corporations in England, Wales and Australia.

The anthology Collective Action, Philosophy and Law brings together two key strands of philosophical inquiry: social ontology and jurisprudence. Most of the papers use collective agency as a starting point to get a better grasp on collective entities and activities in the legal domain, but others reverse the approach and use legal examples to refine theories of collective agency. The introduction provides a comprehensive overview of the literature on collective agency, emphasizing issues in jurisprudence and legal practices where collective agency plays a central role. It also offers a detailed overview of the anthology’s structure and contents. With thirteen papers organized into four parts, the anthology covers a broad spectrum of topics. While each paper deserves in-depth exploration, this review will provide a brief summary of all the papers, followed by concise discussions of the contributions of Sara Rachel Chant and Bill Wringe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In August 2022, the Association of Social Work Boards released a long called for pass rate analysis that revealed significant disparities. While many states look to cease the requirement of the Bachelors, Masters, and Advanced Generalist exams in their licensure process, status quo bias leads to hesitancy to remove the requirement of the Clinical exam. A critical review was undertaken to identify possible alternatives to the current multiple-choice competency-based exam which yielded three assessment formats (oral exams, portfolios, and performance assessment/simulations) and two alternatives (jurisprudence exams and provisional licensure). Informed by an Afrocentric lens, we undertook a social and racial policy analysis to examine alternative pathways for licensure from the perspective of a social work board member. We centered our analysis on the impacts on (1) Black social workers, who currently have the highest pass-rate disparities; (2) social workers whose primary language is not English, and (3) social workers with disabilities who have anecdotally reported difficulty with getting testing accommodations. We rated each alternative on four social equity analysis criteria of procedural fairness, access, quality, and outcomes. These ratings were computed into an overall rating for each alternative from equitable to inequitable. We found jurisprudence exams and provisional licensure have the best possibility of being equitable pathways to licensure, with potential impacts on the regulation of supervision and continuing education. Anti-racism and social justice as praxis require social work as a profession to divest from competency-based testing to eliminate racism in our own professional policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial womb technology for extracorporeal gestation of human offspring (ectogenesis or ectogestation) has profound ethical, sociological and religious implications for Muslim communities. In this article we examine the usage of the technology through the lens of Islamic ethico-legal frameworks specifically the legal maxims (al-Qawaid al-Fiqhiyyah) and higher objectives of Islamic law (Maqaṣid al-Shariah). Our analysis suggests that its application may be contingently permissible (halal) in situations of dire need such as sustaining life and development of extremely premature newborns, for advancing fetal medicine and avoiding maternal co-morbidities during fetal treatment, and for enabling motherhood for women without functional wombs, or who face grave medical risks in pregnancy. However, its application may be proscribed (haram) for enabling healthy women to avoid pregnancy and childbirth, or to achieve parenthood equity. Specification of these views to particular policy, legal contexts and Fatwa will require multidisciplinary Shariah-based bioethical deliberations between jurists, policymakers, and scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that Abu Abdullah al-Muhajir and his book, 'Issues in the jurisprudence of jihad' (Masāʾil fī fiqh al-jihād), has likely been a major source of influence on the formation of the jurisprudential aspect of a new form of the Jihadi Salafi ideology which was epitomized by the practices of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the first place and of ISIS afterwards. I point out the similarities between al-Muhajir's ideas and fatwas issued in his book and ISIS's views and actions espoused and enacted later on in order to demonstrate how the book contributed to the making of the jurisprudential aspect of ISIS's ideology. I pick three main themes, which I deemed to be representative of ISIS's traits, to that purpose. The suicide attacks and civilian casualties that showed a dramatic rise after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 make up the first. The second one is the anti-Shia sentiment and attacks as they follow from it. The last one, maybe an ISIS signature among various intellectual lines and currents of Jihadi Salafism, consists of 'savage' or 'brutal' acts. Based on these three main themes, I aim to display the influence of al-Muhajir's standpoints on ISIS's ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introduction, we first outline the background to this collection of papers and recall some of the conversations that were its genesis, before introducing the questions we wish to address through it. We then situate the collection within scholarship on Hindu majoritarianism and suggest that a nuanced understanding needs to take into account both its institutional and everyday dimensions. To do so, we focus on both jurisprudence and geography which, we argue, are crucial sites for the making of contemporary Hinduism but have not previously been brought together analytically. Through the work of six scholars of diverse disciplinary backgrounds (Law, Anthropology, Indology and Religious Studies) the special issue theorises the spatial and legal dimensions of contemporary Hinduism as cross-fertilising, and as crucial sites for the formation and functioning of Hindu majoritarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how Hindu deities and places of worship are understood as legal persons in the Supreme Court of India's (2019) and the Allahabad High Court's (2014) verdicts concerning the 'Ayodhya Dispute' – M. Siddiq v. Suresh Das. It discusses the Courts' interpretations of a specific Sanskrit maxim attributed to the sixteenth Century Sanskrit jurist, Raghunandana Bhaṭṭācārya, in the specific context of their distinction between the juridical personality of the deities Rām Lalla Virajman (the infant form of Rāma worshipped at the Babri Masjid/Ram Janmabhumi site) and Asthan Rām Janmabhūmi (the deification of the contested site itself). The Allahabad High Court invoked Raghunandana to justify a faith-based application of Sanskrit jurisprudence (Dharmaśāstra) to expand the Hindu community's constitutionally-protected rights to freedom of religion into a legal weapon with which to assert control over India's contested geography. The Supreme Court, however, rejected this majoritarian 'Trojan Horse' by reframing Raghunandana's maxim – as cited in a body of judicial precedent – to support the legal personality of Rām Virajman merely as the pious purpose of worship at Ayodhya. Legal debates about the juristic personality of Hindu deities are inseparable, I argue, from determinations about the ownership of some hotly-contested religious sites in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2016, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a stunning legal opinion that challenged the Supreme Court's ruling in Utah v. Strieff and marked a watershed moment for her voice of dissent. In this essay, I argue that Justice Sotomayor's Strieff dissent was animated by a praxis of rebellious knowledge production – disruptive moves of legal opinion writing that rework interpretive traditions of context, authority, and lived experience to center an episteme of race-consciousness in the law. This study points to the possibilities of outsider jurisprudence as a rhetorical praxis of legal opinion writing and illuminates the democratic promise of Sotomayor's judicial voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Augustine is typically interpreted as having believed that temporal laws cannot help people become virtuous and thus are not deficient for failing to do so. In this respect, he is seen as out of step with much of ancient political philosophy and a precursor to modern liberal legal theory. However, examining Augustine's analyses of two temporal legal systems – Roman law and Mosaic law – reveals this interpretation to be false. Augustine believed that laws should help their followers become virtuous and offered a mechanism by which this happens. The standard interpretation has overlooked these concrete analyses in favor of Augustine's programmatic claims about law. This paper therefore not only corrects a misreading and proposes a novel reading; it also suggests an alternative method for studying ancient legal thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking a coordinated approach to promoting the rule of law at home and in matters involving foreign parties stands as one of the essentials of Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law. The profound essence of this concept is predominantly articulated through the dialectic nexus between the rule of law at home and in matters involving foreign parties and the foundational necessities and underlying principles for their coordinated advancement. This concept is intellectually rooted in the legal theory of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics, the theory of major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics, modern progressive theories of international law, and the exemplary facets of traditional Chinese culture. It is aligned with contemporary trends and in harmony with the need to take a holistic approach to imperatives at home and abroad. This philosophy underscores the approach to building a human community with a shared future through the rule of law, guaranteeing the fruition of national strategic aspirations. This resonates with profound contemporary, integrative, international, and strategic significance. Presently, the focus should be on fostering the development of foreign-related rule of law, maintaining the correct equilibrium between the dyad of rule of law in domestic and foreign-related matters. It is imperative to augment strategic design and institutional construction in the realm of rule of law on issues related to foreign parties, step up research on and practical application of international law, and reinforce the cultivation of legal professionals in this area to take a coordinated approach to advance the rule of law at home and in matters involving foreign parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disagreements are mounting between elite opponents of abortion with regard to constitutional interpretation. A rival interpretive method to originalism, common good constitutionalism holds that judges must invoke their own moral views when deciding legal questions, ushering the United States toward a "postliberal" future. Increasingly attractive to right-wing politicians in the US and Europe, postliberalism is a far cry from conservatives' familiar refrain that reviving the framers' wisdom will restore our polity's health. Unlike originalists, postliberals believe individual autonomy is a debased notion of human freedom because it seeks to expand rights instead of promoting substantive and common human goods. Feminists' justified distrust of the liberal state to secure safety, freedom, and access for all who can become pregnant sometimes manifests in similar sentiments. Yet, precisely in light of past and ongoing reproductive harms, intersectional feminists require a firm notion of individual agency as a moral good and a proper desideratum of government – especially in the wake of Dobbs. Without an affirmation of consent as the root of ethical care and community, feminist critiques of individual rights come perilously close to facilitating the oppressive logic of postliberalism, which unapologetically subordinates individuals to hierarchical collectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the prevalence and types of criminal justice content being offered in Council on Social Work Education programs. Data were collected through questions sent via e-mail to program administrators and content analysis of school websites for three hundred and eight MSW programs. Criminal justice content was measured in three main areas: (a) dual- or joint-degree options, (b) concentrations or specializations, and (c) courses. The results show that most MSW programs do not cover criminal justice content. Less than one-fourth of programs had a dual-degree or joint-degree program (n=54, 17.5%), a specialization or concentration (n=17, 5.5%), or a course specific to criminal justice (n=74, 24%). Social work education must do more to include criminal justice content in its MSW programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the Soviet contribution to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the interplay between the UDHR and Soviet legal system. The paper focuses on legal aspects of the Soviet Union's lack of interest in the UDHR and argues that, due to the nature of the Soviet political regime, which can be defined as a political religion, Soviet law itself was fully incompatible with any meaningful idea of human rights. In order to demonstrate this incompatibility, the paper explores three aspects of Soviet law: Marxist-Leninist philosophy of law as the ideological premise of Soviet legal system; Soviet understanding of human rights; and Soviet theory of international law. The paper ends with a discussion of the role the UDHR played in Soviet and post-Soviet law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberal egalitarian jurisprudence and critical legal studies have often been at odds, despite sharing a core of set of political and analytical commitments. This paper makes the case for their conciliation in the 21st century on the basis that both traditions have much to offer one another. Liberal egalitarians offer the theoretical tools for developing an egalitarian normative approach to law, and critical legal theorists offer a vital realism about power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Few investigations have focused specifically on engaging Spanish-speaking patients in early post-injury comparative effectiveness trials. The goal of this study was to identify and categorize hospitalized Spanish-speaking injury survivors' posttraumatic concerns. Method: A secondary analysis of baseline data collected as part of a larger randomized comparative effectiveness trial was conducted. Participants were 22 male and female Spanish, non-English, speaking survivors of intentional and unintentional injuries, ages ≥ 18. At baseline, while hospitalized, each patient was asked to describe the nature and severity of their post-injury concerns. Patient concern narratives were audio-recorded and later transcribed. Raters coded patients' transcribed concerns into content domains. The associations between patient self-reported concern severity and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms assessed with the PTSD Checklist and depressive symptoms assessed with the PHQ-9 were also ascertained. Results: The concerns of Spanish-speaking patients were reliably categorized into previously described content domains (i.e., work and finance, physical health, social, psychological, medical, and legal domains). The composite Kappa statistic across domains was 0.83 (95% Confidence Interval = 0.74, 0.92). Spanish-speaking patients also expressed novel concerns, including immigration, discriminatory experiences, and Coronavirus pandemic, related concerns. The number of severe patient concerns was highly correlated with PHQ-9 depressive symptom levels (r = 0.52, p <.05). Conclusions: The concerns of Spanish-speaking trauma survivors can be readily elicited and reliably interpreted. Future research could integrate concern narrative elicitation and amelioration into stepped care intervention procedures in order to engage diverse Spanish-speaking injury survivors and advance equitable trauma care system service delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humility holds a modest but important place among the judicial virtues. But in spite of its growing popularity, it does not yet have a place on the 'central judicial virtues' lists. This paper provides an argument that judicial humility, especially institutional judicial humility, should be considered a necessary judicial virtue at least in common-law jurisdictions. This is because it is a necessary ingredient in precedent-based decisions that are fully justified from the point of view of the law and of political morality. Further, while it is sufficient that individual judges make decisions that a humble judge would have made, the judicial community must in fact be humble in order to produce fully justified common-law decisions – humility is therefore necessary as a community-virtue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the role of domestic courts in establishing transnational procedural guarantees in the context of the jurisprudence of the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC). Topics discussed include transnational procedural guarantees as constitutional requirement in Europe, transnational procedural guarantees as a barrier to the implementation of international obligations and international law, and implications of the FCC's jurisprudence on procedural safeguards.

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses articles within the issue on topics including links between due diligence obligations assumed by transnational institutions and access to justice, independent accountability mechanism in the context of the Caribbean Development Bank, and jurisprudence of the German Constitutional Court.

It has been widely argued that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 ("CAA") breaches Article 14's equality guarantee due to its under-inclusiveness i.e. it does not include within its ambit many migrants who faced persecution similar to the persons it covers. However, it is often argued that under-inclusive laws are subjected to a low standard of review, which increases the justificatory burden on those who challenge its validity. I argue that there is no support in principle or case law for the argument that under-inclusive laws are subject to lower scrutiny than over-inclusive ones. Linked to this is the question of constitutional remedies for under-inclusive laws, which I analyse drawing on jurisprudence from India and other jurisdictions. Contrary to dominant opinion, I argue that, were the CAA to be declared unconstitutional, the appropriate remedy would be to extend its benefits to those hitherto uncovered by it, rather than striking it down. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognition and citizenship issues play pivotal roles in understanding the complex interaction between different forms of inequalities. Citizenship should be treated as a practice intimately linked with individuals' identities and rights, their sense of belonging and their actual nature of participation in the different spheres of their life. Exclusion is not just deprivation from the more tangible economic and social processes but also denying people their voice and their right to be unique. In this context, the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act concerning India's transgender community lies within the crucial junctures of identity politics and the country's legal and social structures. This work critically analyses the TG Act and raises few questions on the nature of recognition given to transgender individuals. Does a transgender person get citizenship that guarantees representation and equality? To what extent does the new Act do justice to the transgender community in living as a member of the society and not just as a product of 'othering'? The paper concludes that recognition is not just for citizenship and identity rights – it is the right to be different but equal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy responses to COVID-19 have had dramatic impacts on children's human rights, as much as the COVID-19 pandemic itself. In the rush to protect the human right of survival and development, new policies and their implementation magnified the challenges of taking a children's rights approach in adult-oriented systems and institutions. This article explores these challenges, drawing on learning from the independent Children's Rights Impact Assessment (CRIA) on policies affecting children in Scotland during 'lockdown' in spring 2020. The article uses concepts from childhood studies and legal philosophy to highlight issues for children's human rights, in such areas as children in conflict with the law, domestic abuse, poverty and digital exclusion. The analysis uncovers how persistent constructions of children as vulnerable and best protected in their families led to systematic disadvantages for certain groups of children and failed to address all of children's human rights to protection, provision and participation. The independent CRIA illuminates gaps in rights' accountability, such as the lack of children's rights indicators and disaggregated data, children's inadequate access to complaints and justice, and the need for improved information to and participation of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Specialists in international tax law tend to adopt a legal positivism perspective. Although not without merit, legal positivism alone offers an incomplete understanding of international tax law for the purposes of legal theory, law-making and practice. In comparing new legal realism with legal positivism, this article will demonstrate how analytical frameworks that incorporate a new legal realism approach can enhance our understanding of international tax law and its concepts, by viewing it through the real-world lens. It will also outline some issues for future empirical analysis that could help to advance legal positivism theory and connect law-making and the practice of international tax law to the real world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In some Australian and international jurisdictions, coroners can deliver a legal determination of death whilst a person remains missing. Empirical attention to this unique area of law is sparse. Semi-structured interviews with 22 coronial professionals in New South Wales (NSW), Australia revealed their views about suspected death inquests, the impact of this judicial process on family well-being and measures to support and inform relatives in the coroner's court. Thematic analysis yielded five themes: (1) Information to the greatest extent possible; (2) Timeliness; (3) Opportunity to share their views; (4) In the public arena; and (5) Treat people like human beings. The professionals believed that relatives derive therapeutic benefit from timely, sensitive, comprehensible proceedings with opportunities for ritual, meaningful participation and fresh evidence whereas insensitive, incomprehensible and/or untimely proceedings magnify distress. Our findings promote understanding of trauma-informed practices which could mitigate harm to court participants and benefit other courts and jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, we analyze the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Amy Coney Barrett to identify and explain the interaction between religion and jurisprudential philosophy. By tracing rhetorical scholarship on religion, politics, and the Supreme Court, we highlight tension engendered by both the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Barrett herself in locating her Catholicism as a desirable attribute for a nominee while at the same time espousing the importance of judicial objectivity. We suggest Barrett and her supporters on the committee invoked the judicial philosophy of originalism to allay this tension while occluding conversations about Barrett's prior ideological commitments. We conclude by troubling the wide circulation of a simplified version of originalism and the (re)circulation of Christian victimhood narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his political thought, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italy's premier jurist, Gian Vincenzo Gravina, adopted a Hobbesian state of nature, a Hobbesian social contract, and a Hobbesian idea of law as collective will; he fused these ideas with the Roman legal tradition, a tradition that he trained in and later ordered when he wrote his masterpiece, the Three Books on the Origins of the Civil Law. But Gravina was more than a Roman Hobbesian. While he held a Hobbesian view of political legitimacy, he also held an anti-Hobbesian view of human life's true ends. Gravina set out to restore these true ends – reason, virtue, and internal tranquility – and to do that he turned to Plato. In synthesizing Hobbes's legal innovations with prior understandings of law, Gravina demonstrates just how far those innovations reached in eighteenth-century Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is concerned with Brian Leiter's so-called replacement naturalism, according to which the traditional methodology of conceptual jurisprudence 'should be replaced by reliance on the best social scientific explanations of legal phenomena.' I argue that, although the methodology of experimental jurisprudence is the only plausible replacement for the traditional methodology, it cannot can replace the philosophical methods traditionally used to address conceptual issues and, further, that experimental jurisprudence needs a theoretical foundation that properly locates its role relative to that of conceptual theorising and clarifies its methodology. To this end, I discuss three recent studies that attempt to ascertain the intuitions of competent speakers on three longstanding conceptual disputes about law: two attempt to show our folk concept of law is antipositivist, whereas the other attempts to show our folk concept of law is consistent with the existence of sanction-less legal systems. I argue that all three studies suffer from defects indicating the empirical methodology of experimental jurisprudence can supplement, but cannot replace, the traditional philosophical methodology for addressing conceptual questions. I argue, finally and far more worrisomely, that the last study calls into question its usefulness even in supplementing the traditional philosophical methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dworkin's philosophy of international law is distinct from other theories because it rejects five separations: a separability between international law and national legal orders, a separability between law and morality, a separability in the sources of political legitimacy of a state's government and of international law, a separability between the concepts of law and the rule of law, and a separability between theory and practice. This paper argues that the rejection of these assumptions makes Dworkin's legal monism well equipped to respond to a recent threat to the authority of international law, namely the practice described by Ginsburg as an 'authoritarian use' of international law. 'Authoritarian' international law disavowals some inferentially articulated commitments that are an important aspect of the rationality of law. Dworkin's monism enhances the intellectual attitude required by these commitments and resists some fragmentations that provide occasions and opportunities for authoritarian international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While contracts by minors are generally voidable in most common law jurisdictions, the apex court in India and in Malaysia has each held that such contracts are void ab initio, following a century-old Privy Council decision in Mohori Bibee (1903) 30 ILR Cal 539. This article explores minors' contracts through the lens of legal transplant—viewing transplanted laws on a continuum, from a 'Strong Watson' perspective where English common law was adopted by the Indian courts, to a 'Weak Watson' position following the Privy Council's interpretation of the law in the Indian Contract Act 1872. The authors conclude that the current Weak Watson transplant of laws on minors' contracts is a 'misfitted' transplant which is neither consistent with the original intent of the transplanted law nor fit for purpose in a modern context. Given minors' inability to enter into contracts or seek remedies, urgent legislative reform or judicial reinterpretation is required in India and Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Điển was a practice in ancient Vietnamese society that had counterparts across the Sinosphere. In the first part of this article, we study provisions on điển in ancient Vietnamese codes, together with relevant background such as Vietnamese jurisprudence and counterparts of điển. Then, we study điển in contractual practice by deconstructing legal descriptions into social behaviours to understand điển in everyday ancient Vietnamese practice and life. We argue that while ancient Vietnamese legislators did not define what điển was and what điển purported to be or to do, there was a range of uses of điển in reality, deriving from dynamic social needs and creative bargaining practice. In the second part of the article, we study French research on điển, comprising work by French academics and French-educated Vietnamese scholars. We argue that their analyses are problematic because they tried to fit điển into French paradigms despite the divergence of practice and the rich social meanings of điển. In the third part of the article, we argue that the problems with French scholarship can be understood (and thus sympathised with) in light of the need to compare across jurisdictions, with functionalism sometimes being inevitable. We call on functionalism to be reflexive and integrative to better serve comparative legal history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments across the globe to take infection-control actions by and large unforeseen and unforeseeable in their constitutional frameworks. Several measures forcing restrictions on travel, business operations, labour, healthcare and/or the education system have characterised public policy in most of them. A fair number of those restrictions adopted in the form of government or legislature decisions are labelled as 'lockdown measures'. This article examines two recent cases ruled upon by the Constitutional Court of Kosovo (CCK or Court), whose primary aim was to pronounce on whether the Kosovo government's lockdown measures were compatible with the criteria authorising a limitation of fundamental rights. These two cases present an outstandingly activist attitude of the Court in controlling government behaviour in times of a pandemic outbreak, by primarily questioning the state's negative obligations in the face of freedom of movement, right to private and family life, and freedom of assembly; whereas positive obligations of the state with regard to the right to life and its associated right, the right to health, were neglected altogether. The article concludes that the mechanical interpretation which the two Court cases drew neither contributes to a richer substantive human rights protection, nor functionally elevates the concept of human rights in times of pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, rumours of a European Super League (ESL), comprised of the major clubs from England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, have mounted. According to these rumours, this new league would break away from the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). Many clubs would operate outside the current European federative system, abandoning their national leagues and football federations. An ESL thus conceived would present a menacing alternative to the UEFA Champions League (UCL) and, depending on the format of the ESL, national competitions such as leagues and cups. In this article, we draw on literature in the fields of philosophy and sport law to identify legal and ethical challenges that would result from creating an ESL. Our goal is not to provide exhaustive analyses of the identified challenges. Rather, we aim to examine the challenges to uncover intersections among sport law, sport ethics, and European football. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing support, in international legal theory and advocacy, for water governance approaches that go beyond the technocratic, and recognise the reciprocal relatedness of water peoples and water places. Such an approach may seem logical within certain Indigenous law and belief systems, but can Western legal frameworks become more 'relational'? How can they evolve to be capable of meaningfully relating with Indigenous systems of law and governance for water? This article draws on a comprehensive survey of comparative legal developments affecting water across seven settler-colonial countries in Australasia and Latin America that attempt (or profess) to be relational. I critically evaluate these attempts against the 'yardstick' of relationality. In each jurisdiction there are unresolved calls for a social, cultural and constitutional transformation of some sort, in which Indigenous and environmental justice are key. The analysis here reveals the potential for constitutional law to drive relational water laws, although without place-based specificity and supporting institutions, resources and redistributions of power, constitutional approaches risk having little practical impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]