Laws

This article examines whether Australian law provides an enforceable entitlement to adequate school-day nutrition and how legislation could establish one. Using doctrinal analysis, selected jurisdictional examples and a bounded comparison with Finland and Sweden, it distinguishes existing protective duties from a defined individual meal guarantee. It assesses direct Commonwealth provision under s 51(xxiiiA), grants to participating States under s 96 and Territory arrangements under s 122. The direct Commonwealth pathway remains contestable, while a cooperative scheme could combine national funding with State and Territory laws creating operative rights. The proposed model specifies a substantial meal without charge, public responsibility for delivery, legally adopted nutritional standards and accessible corrective remedies. It addresses staged commencement, dietary accommodation, voluntary participation, school-sector coverage and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authority over governance and data. Comparative evidence informs design but does not establish the effectiveness of the proposed Australian legal form. The article advances a framework requiring further participatory development, costing and evaluation, with national coverage dependent on cooperation or another valid constitutional pathway.

Digital labour platforms are often celebrated for offering flexible work, yet women platform workers remain marginal in both regulation and legal scholarship. This article asks a single doctrinal question: when the law recognises platform workers without treating them as employees, which gender-relevant labour entitlements actually reach women? India is the primary jurisdiction. We examine the Code on Social Security, 2020, the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, the Code on Wages, 2019 and the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013, as operationalised by the Social Security (Central) Rules, 2026. Bangladesh, which reformed its Labour Act, 2006 through the 2025 Ordinance and the Bangladesh Labour (Amendment) Act, 2026, serves as a comparator that entered platform regulation by the opposite route. Both are measured against the ILO Decent Work in the Platform Economy Convention, 2026 (No. 193), read with the Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No. 190) and the Maternity Protection Convention, 2000 (No. 183). Using a doctrinal comparative method with a stated source-selection protocol, and a three-step test for regulatory gender blindness, we analyse four criteria: personal scope, maternity protection, protection against violence and harassment, and equality in algorithmic management and collective voice. We find that India recognises platform workers through welfare schemes without status, while Bangladesh recognises them through collective rights without social insurance; in neither jurisdiction does statutory maternity benefit reach a woman platform worker, because it remains tied to the employer and the establishment. Facially neutral qualifying conditions, notably India’s 90/120-day engagement rule, operate to the particular disadvantage of women, and of women in home-based care and beauty work most of all. Convention No. 193 narrows but does not close these gaps, since its social security guarantee is one of parity within the same employment classification. We conclude with prioritised, instrument-specific reforms.

This paper examines whether the affiliation of a dysfunctional municipality with a neighboring municipality under Section 2aa of Slovakia’s Act No. 369/1990 Coll. offers an effective and constitutionally defensible response to the prolonged absence of elected municipal bodies. It distinguishes statutory dysfunctionality from other forms of institutional weakness and evaluates the mechanism against criteria of legal operability, procedural predictability, democratic legitimacy, proportionality and financial sustainability. A legal–dogmatic analysis is combined with a documentary case study of Ondavka, where municipal bodies were restored in October 2020 before affiliation was completed. The case documents the limits of implementation but does not establish that the threat of affiliation caused electoral mobilization. The article argues that Section 2aa closes a narrow legal gap without resolving wider problems of administrative fragmentation. It recommends binding procedural deadlines, meaningful consultation, a prior assessment of inherited liabilities, predictable financial support and a carefully delimited temporary alternative to dissolution.