Laws — Open Access Journal

The fashion industry has to play an important role in the path towards sustainability and the circular economy. Indeed, the fashion industry is a sector with a high environmental impact; it involves a very long and complicated supply chain, which is associated with large consumption of water and energy, use of chemical substances, water and air pollution, waste production and finally microplastic generation. In particular, textiles and clothing waste has become a huge global concern. Against this background, this paper aims at analysing the existing EU measures that have an impact on the development of sustainable practices and the transition to a circular economy in the fashion industry, with a particular focus on the EU revised legislative framework on waste adopted within the Circular Economy Action Plan of 2015. Full article

Activists and academics are returning to the 1980s for clues and context concerning the modern Right in the United States, oftentimes with the hope of deriving insights that can be wielded against the legal agenda of the Trump administration. This is a worthwhile historical endeavor, which must not ignore the essential position of feminist legal theorists. This article reveals the foundational role of feminist critical legal scholars, or “Fem-Crits”, to the progressive resistance against conservative legal thought during the 1980s. By highlighting the work of Fem-Crits in the academy and within the critical legal studies movement, this article identifies the Fem-Crits as a valuable source of movement inspiration and theoretical influence for leftist law professors, lawyers, and activists in the twenty-first century. Full article

The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (“Refugee Convention”) defines ‘persecution’ based on five enumerated grounds: race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, and political opinion. This list of protected groups has not changed in the nearly 70 years since its inception, although the political and social context that gave rise to the Refugee Convention has changed. This article examines how ‘membership in a particular social group’ (“MPSG”) has been interpreted, then surveys international human rights law, transnational criminal law, international humanitarian law, and international criminal law instruments to determine whether MPSG can encompass the broader protections afforded under other international law regimes. It concludes that the enumerated grounds are largely consistent with other instruments and protects, or at least has the potential to protect, many of the other categories through MPSG. However, as this ground is subject to domestic judicial interpretation and various analytical approaches taken in different countries, protection could be enhanced by amending the Refugee Convention to explicitly include additional protected groups from these other areas of international law, specifically international human rights law and international criminal law. Full article

Through its rapid production methods that supply the latest catwalk styles almost instantaneously to the high street, the fast fashion model has revolutionized the fashion industry, while generating a significant carbon footprint and a host of social concerns. Yet, the law is either slow or ineffective in promoting sustainability in a world obsessed with image and social connectivity, while outdated notions of companies continue to dominate the legal academy. This chapter initially examines the fashion industry’s environmental footprint. Then, it examines the rise of the fast fashion model and law’s inadequacy to prevent the model from undermining intellectual property rights or effectively address the model’s detrimental impact on environmental and social sustainability. The chapter then challenges traditional notions of corporate personality, calling for more responsible corporate behavior and greater legal scrutiny. Finally, the chapter considers various issues to enhance ethical behavior in companies, arguing that the slow fashion movement provides an alternative paradigm to the fast fashion model, since the slow fashion movement connects suppliers and producers more closely with consumers, thereby enhancing sustainability and corporate responsibility. Full article

Sustainability is a central challenge of the fashion industry. In an era where Internet and social networks allow information to spread quickly, more consumers are familiar with the call for “ethical fashion” as disasters such as Rana Plaza resound worldwide. However, consumers interested in buying “ethical” clothing could have a hard time orienting themselves amongst the abundance of brands claiming to be ethical on the market. Consumers might make purchasing decisions based on their knowledge of a brand. In this context, it is imaginable that corporate social responsibility (CSR) communications, including codes of ethics, could constitute one way a consumer can learn more about a company’s values. These codes may serve a variety of purposes—they are undoubtedly one of the ways a brand communicates its commitment to ethical principles. Indeed, by analyzing the codes of ethics of some of the industry’s well-known brands, it is evident that they primarily focus on employment and workers’ rights (including equality and discrimination issues), labor safety standards, bribery and anti-corruption, counterfeiting and unfair business practices, as well as respect for (and sometimes improvement of) the environment. A company’s code of ethics is also a powerful tool for improving brand image by adopting a code that responds to the issues that consumers care about. It is therefore necessary to distinguish between companies that are truly ethical and those that merely appear so. In order to protect consumer confidence in such documents, a fil rouge across legal systems may be found (although the specific characteristics may vary greatly) in the laws that protect consumers from misleading advertising. Full article

This paper is a case study of the use of cultural experts, broadly defined as including mediators and academicians with a variety of backgrounds, in Sweden. It draws on data collected through qualitative interviews with cultural experts, by following court cases through legal documents, mass media and other printed material, and by my own experience as a cultural expert. The paper provides a context to the potential application of the concept of cultural expertise regarding the appointment of such experts by lawyers, prosecutors and courts. It analyzes cases concerning the Sami, the Roma and recent immigrants from Africa and Asia. The Sami cases revolve around conflicts with the Swedish state over rights and ownership. The Roma cases revolve around questions of ethnic discrimination. Cases of immigrants from outside Europe consist of individual criminal cases and asylum. I argue that Swedish ideas—and ideals—of sameness and equality have had an impact on the legal cases that I discuss in this paper. While the legal issues in each of these cases differ, the paper argues that they demonstrate a similarity in how Swedish-majority society manages and even creates cultural differences. I conclude by showing the ways culture, rights, and obligations are understood in courts reflect mainstream trends of Swedish society and suggest the need for cultural expertise in the form of interdisciplinary collaboration. Full article

The importance of digital marketing is continuously growing, at least in the present economic phase. Within this sector, fashion bloggers play a crucial role, which reflects the relevance of fashion on an economic and a social level, as already highlighted in Georg Simmel’s pioneering study. New communication opportunities made available by the development of digital technologies shed more light on this phenomenon. One of the main concerns is the need to guarantee the transparency and the correctness of commercial communications shared through social media in order to ensure the consumers’ full freedom of choice. However, can traditional rules on advertising be considered sufficient, or is there a need for ad hoc rules? Can consumers’ protection be reconciled with other values such as the creative freedom of advertisers and, more generally, the freedom of expression? Thus far, interventions by self-regulatory bodies and independent authorities, both at national and international levels, have proven to be effective, even if more “classic” regulatory interventions may occur in the future. After a short reference to the literature concerning fashion as a social phenomenon, the contribution focuses on the main solutions adopted in Italy and in Europe. Full article

Refugee children are identified as rights-bearers by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), but their rights are not uniformly honored in the policies and practices of contemporary states. How the CRC’s safeguards for refugee children’s rights are honored depends partly on what it means to be ‘a refugee child’ and partly on how the claims of refugee children’s rights are recognized, respected, and implemented in international and national legal and bureaucratic systems. We examine the CRC’s affirmation of the rights of the child and analyze the CRC’s articles in relation to the rights related to the life circumstances of refugee children and state responsibilities. Following an analysis of resistance to the CRC’s mandates by contemporary states, we relate refugee children’s rights to their refugee and developmental experiences and argue for repositioning refugee children into the center of protection dialogue and practice, internationally and nationally. Full article

Based on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), several UN bodies, among them the High Commissioner for Human Rights, have argued for a complete ban of all coercive interventions in mental health care. The authors conceptualize a system for mental health care based on support only. Psychiatry loses its function as an agent of social control and follows the will and preferences of those who require support. The authors draw up scenarios for dealing with risk, inpatient care, police custody, and mental illness in prison. With such a shift, mental health services could earn the trust of service users and thereby improve treatment outcomes. Full article

This article explores how care homes—and, specifically, their common features such as dementia care units and locked doors and gates—impact on the human rights of people living with dementia. We suggest that congregation, separation and confinement of people living with dementia by the care home built environment constitute ‘segregation’. In the specific context of residential aged care facilities in Australia, we draw on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (‘CRPD’) to frame this segregation as an injustice. We focus on the rights to non-discrimination (Article 5), liberty and security of the person (Article 14), equality before the law (Article 12), accessibility (Article 9), and independent living and community inclusion (Article 19). Our analysis shows that addressing segregation must involve structural and resource reforms that are transformative in bringing about new ways of living and relating to each other. Such reforms are directed towards providing meaningful alternatives and appropriate supports to make choices from a range of alternative residency and support options, and building communities that are free from ableism, ageism and other systems of oppression that contribute to confinement and segregation. Full article

This paper focuses on the politics of the Bondo—the competition among social groups for an exclusive influence on the National strategy for the reduction of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). In the first part, this paper shows how the Bondo—a women’s only secret society—has become a site of contestation for not only pro- and anti-FGM/C advocates, but also elite male politicians who have, since independence in 1961, continued to use the Bondo space for political gains. The use of the Bondo for political leverage and influence pre-dates independence and is as old as the society itself. The second part of this paper discusses the legitimacy of expertise as central to this debate, in which each group competes to become the leading expert. Thus, even though human rights/choice discourse currently dominates the FGM/C debate, traditional expertise remains valid in the formulation of community by-laws as well as state policies and laws. This can be seen in the recent attempt by the state to develop a National Policy for the Reduction of FGM/C in which the expertise of all three groups was sought. Using data from existing literature and personal interviews, this paper interrogates this contention by describing how the role of cultural experts—especially the Soweis—has been politicized in the stalemate over the enactment of the National Policy for the Reduction of FGC. This paper concludes with considerations about the complexity of Bondo expertise, in which opposing parties use similar arguments to evoke the human rights discourses on women’s rights and bodily integrity/autonomy. It argues that a better knowledge of these dynamics as they develop in Sierra Leone and other African countries would be useful to the European jurisdiction. Full article

The purpose of this article was to attempt to shed light on the taxation of activities or actions related to cryptocurrencies. For this purpose, a small analysis was carried out on the nature, operation, and characteristics of cryptocurrencies. Subsequently, from the point of view of the Spanish tax system, the tax implications of the use, actions, and operations carried out with this virtual medium were discussed. The most recent information derived from the binding inquiries issued by the general directorate of taxes in Spain, an institution under the Ministry of Finance, was reviewed. This article analyzed whether the activities related to Bitcoin should be declared for the purposes of personal income tax, property tax, inheritance tax and finally, in the tax on transmissions of assets and documented legal acts. Finally, special mention was made of activities, such as the mining of Bitcoins in “Bitcoin farms” and the exploitation of websites for buying and selling cryptocurrencies and vending machines. Other collateral situations were also analyzed, such as the system to be used. Full article

This paper analyzes the state of cultural expertise in Italy and then focuses on how it can be improved through a kind of cultural expertise that Italian academics, judges, and lawyers are currently debating: the so-called “cultural test”. This is a legal test for dealing with culture, which originally emerged as judicial tool in Northern American courts: It consists of a set of pre-established questions that a judge has to answer in order to decide whether or not to accept a cultural claim made by a migrant or by a person that belongs to minority communities. Whereas some questions of the cultural test refer to typical legal balancing between rights, other questions incorporate anthropological knowledge within the trial, requiring the judge to analyze the cultural practice at issue, its historical origin, the importance it has within the community, and other information about which the judge would not be sufficiently knowledgeable without resorting to anthropology. In this sense, the “cultural test” is a form of standardized cultural expertise that helps both the judge and the cultural expert in their tasks. The paper reveals both the arguments against and those in favor of the adoption of the “cultural test” and how they are currently unfolding in the Italian debate. Full article

While this article aims to explore the connections between citizenship and ‘race’, it is the first study to use fictional tools as a sociological resource in exemplifying the deviation between citizenship in principle and practice in an Austrian context. The study involves interviews with 73 Austrians from three ethnic/racial groups, which were subjected to a directed approach to qualitative content analysis and coded based on sentences from George Orwell’s fictional book, ‘Animal Farm’. By using fiction as a conceptual and analytical device, this article goes beyond the orthodox particulars of citizenship to expose the compressed entitlements of some racial/ethnic minorities. In particular, data analysis revealed two related and intertwined central themes: (a) “all animals are not equal or comrades”; and (b) “some animals are more equal than others”. All ‘animals’ may be equal in principle, whereas, in practice, their ‘race’ serves as a critical source of social (dis)advantage in the ‘animal kingdom’. Thus, since citizenship is a precondition for possessing certain rights that non-citizens are not granted, I argue that citizenship cannot only be judged by whom it, in theory, excludes (i.e., non-citizens), but also by how it treats the included (i.e., citizens) on the basis of their ‘race’. I conclude that skin colour is a specific aspect of the hierarchy of citizenship in Austria, which reinforces that ‘some animals are more equal than others’. Full article

This article traces the rise and fall of psychiatric evaluation in criminal trials from the School of Criminal Anthropology of the late nineteenth century to the current Italian justice system. Influenced by positivism and by specific theories on human evolution, Cesare Lombroso considered criminal action as the result of organic causes excluding any kind of legal autonomy and responsibility of the accused. The Positive School of Penal Law he founded with Enrico Ferri and Raffaele Garofalo profoundly inspired the Rocco Code, on which the current Italian Penal Code is still based, albeit with revisions and repeals. Drafted in 1930 during the fascist government (1922–1943), the latter has also suffered from racial ideology. In order to assess potential mental illnesses that would exclude the responsibility of the accused, to determine their level of dangerousness and to establish the corresponding security measures introduced by the Rocco Code, Italian criminal justice consolidated the link between penal law and psychiatric instruments. Such faith in psychiatric evaluation, however, has been particularly questioned by the increasing frequency of judicial processes involving members of different cultural communities in Italy since the 1970s. Thus, the predominantly pathological aspects evaluated by forensic psychiatrists have often proved to be conceptually and methodologically inadequate to take fully into account the differences between cultures, as well as the different social and cultural conditions affecting the defendant’s behaviour. This paper argues that cultural anthropology is particularly suited as an instrument capable of disclosing the cultural implications of the legal process and encourages the use of cultural expertise as an important tool for the inclusiveness and understanding of diversity. Full article

This paper explores the complex evolution of the role anthropologists have played as cultural experts in the regulation of the entheogenic use of the peyote cactus throughout the 20th century. As experts of the “peyote cult”, anthropologists provided testimonies and cultural expertise in the regulatory debates in American legislative and judiciary arenas in order to counterbalance the demonization and prohibition of the medicinal and sacramental use of peyote by Native Americans through state and federal legislations. In the meantime, anthropologists have encouraged Peyotists to form a pan-tribal religious institution as a way to secure legal protection of their practice; in 1918, the Native American Church (NAC) was incorporated in Oklahoma, with its articles explicitly referring to the sacramental use of peyote. Operating as cultural experts, anthropologists have therefore assisted jurists in their understanding of the cultural and religious significance of peyote, and have at the same time counseled Native Americans in their interaction with the legal system and in the formatting of their claims in appropriate legal terms. This complex legal controversy therefore provides ample material for a general exploration of the use, evolution, and impact of cultural expertise in the American legal system, and of the various forms this expertise can take, thereby contributing to the contemporary efforts at surveying and theorizing cultural expertise. Through an historical and descriptive approach, the analysis notably demonstrates that the role of anthropologists as cultural experts has been marked by a practical and substantive evolution throughout the 20th century, and should therefore not be restrictively understood in relation to expert witnessing before courts. Rather, this paper underlines the transformative and multifaceted nature of cultural expertise, and highlights the problematic duality of the position that the two “generations” of anthropologists involved in this controversy have experienced, navigating between a supposedly impartial position as experts, and an arguably biased engagement as advocates for Native American religious rights. Full article

The article highlights how the strategic use of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) by disabled people’s organizations (DPOs) in Iceland has produced a shift in the balance of power with regard to how, and by whom, disability legislation and policy in Iceland is developed. The article draws on a study examining the last stages of a consultative process between representatives of DPOs and policymakers in Iceland leading up to the adoption, in May of 2018, of core disability legislation, Laws pertaining to services for disabled people with long-term support needs (No. 38/2018). It examines the process from the perspective of representatives of DPOs through in-depth interviews and document analysis. This article draws on critical theory and the human rights approach in its analysis, with a particular emphasis on the roadmap to the coproduction of policy provided by the CRPD and the UN CRPD Committee through the issuance of guidance to States Parties to the Convention. It draws attention to the DPOs’ ongoing refocusing of their strategies, and their emphasis on harnessing the rights contained in the CRPD to gain recognition of their right to participation in the coproduction of policy and in changing process norms. Full article

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that a wide range of entities associated with the State and which engage in business or investment activities on behalf of the State have an important role to play in the promotion and implementation of the sustainable development goals found in the 2030 Agenda. The contribution starts with a background to the 2030 Agenda, followed by an introduction to the features of State-owned entities. Since the 2030 Agenda requires the ‘mobilization of all available resources’ to achieve its implementation, it is argued that entities that are owned by States could have a significant role to play in this context. Examples of good practices from a number of jurisdictions show how the development and implementation of domestic measures that cover State-owned entities have the potential to contribute to the promotion and implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Full article

The province of Quebec, Canada, seeks to implement relational alternate project delivery methods to achieve sustainability and energy efficiency in public construction. However, the relational differences between the formal written parts of different delivery methods have yet to be analyzed and understood, as is the case with the relational aspects of contracts and the achievement of sustainable and energy-efficient infrastructure. Using a hermeneutic interpretation of Macneil’s relational contract norms and grounded theory, 26 contracts involving Quebec’s largest public client of vertical infrastructure and representing three different types of project delivery methods (design–bid–build (DBB), design–Build (DB), and construction manager–general contractor/integrated project delivery (CMGC/IPD)) were analyzed using NVivo. It was found that CMGC/IPD is the most relational project delivery method available to Quebec’s public clients, namely because of the public client’s active involvement in the realization process, the increasing complexity of roles, the multitude of common management structures, and the internalization of sustainability measures and conflict resolution. Furthermore, Quebec’s CMGC/IPD was found to be an IPD-ish delivery method, lacking the early involvement of the construction manager and the risk/reward sharing mechanisms necessary to achieve pure IPD status. The findings and theoretical considerations discussed here will help policymakers, contract drafters, and public clients interested in implementing relational contracting practices in public construction projects. Full article