Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040091

Authors: Simon Lester

As part of their broad commentary on U.S. trade policy and the world trading system, the U.S. Trade Representatives during each of Donald Trump’s terms in office have offered a public critique of specific aspects of the WTO as a “contract”. In doing so, they offer a vision of the system that is very different from the current understanding. Along with these personal views put forward by individual Trump administration officials, as part of WTO reform discussions, the U.S. government is making formal proposals that would reshape the system in practical terms. Is the vision presented by the U.S. trade leadership, in both their personal and official capacities, workable? This article considers the implications of these high-level informal critiques and formal proposals for the future of the trading system.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040090

Authors: Nirmala Pillay

In May 2025, a new and welcome Pandemic Treaty was signed. The success of this treaty for the management of future pandemics depends on a re-evaluation of the importance of previous well-established treaty-based international human rights norms in controlling health crises. During the COVID-19 pandemic, public health responses globally were characterised by poor preparation, uncertainty, and hasty and sometimes perverse decisions. International human rights norms, especially health rights, and other treaty obligations were honoured more in their breach than their observance. The lessons learned from public health strategies that had integrated international human rights norms into the control and management of the HIV/AIDS pandemic were either ignored or forgotten. Early public health attempts to control the HIV/AIDs pandemic were hobbled by data breaches, travel restrictions, compulsory reporting, stigma, and misinformation about how the virus spread. This was replaced by a more successful human rights-based approach (HRBA) that used health rights indicators to identify groups susceptible to the disease but difficult to reach with conventional public health policies. The efficacy of health rights indicators and HRB methodology to remove barriers to treatment and suppress pandemics should have been seriously considered in strategies to control COVID-19. The article claims that failure to do this meant that more lives were lost than necessary and more people were left with serious long-term health effects. This article explores the practical significance of the international human rights legal framework, especially health rights, as trialled during the HIV/AIDS pandemic, for the management of COVID-19 and other pandemics.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040089

Authors: Berkant Akkuş

This article examines the legal implications of civilian intelligence applications used during armed conflict, focusing on smartphone-based reporting systems deployed in the Russian–Ukrainian war. Applications such as Ukraine’s e-Enemy feature integrated into the Diia platform and the standalone ePPO application have enabled civilians to provide real-time geolocated information concerning troop movements, missile trajectories, and military activities. While these technologies provide substantial operational advantages, they simultaneously challenge foundational principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), particularly the distinction between civilians and combatants. The article critically evaluates whether civilians using such applications engage in direct participation in hostilities (DPH) under Article 51(3) of Additional Protocol I, analysing the criteria of threshold of harm, direct causation, and belligerent nexus. It argues that although certain forms of real-time operational reporting may satisfy the DPH threshold in limited circumstances, existing doctrine remains insufficient to address the broader systemic implications of state-organised digital civilian mobilisation. The article further contends that embedding military intelligence functions within civilian digital infrastructure transforms such platforms into potential dual-use objects, thereby engaging state obligations under Articles 48, 52, 57, and 58 of Additional Protocol I, as well as Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions. Through doctrinal analysis and the Ukrainian case study, the article proposes the development of a “duty of digital separation” requiring states to maintain clearer distinctions between civilian services and military intelligence systems. It additionally advocates enhanced precautionary duties, informed consent mechanisms, risk disclosure obligations, and governance frameworks for civilian intelligence applications. Ultimately, the article demonstrates that while IHL remains technologically adaptable in principle, interpretative refinement is necessary to preserve civilian protection in the context of digitally mobilised warfare.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040088

Authors: Dang Thi Thu Huyen Nguyen Duy Dzung

Children are a particularly vulnerable group in the global flow of human trafficking and face persistent barriers in accessing justice. This article examines how the United Kingdom (UK) ensures justice for Vietnamese child victims of human trafficking through a three-pillar framework on access to justice: the legal protection framework, the institutional framework, and the capacity to provide and demand effective remedies. Employing a qualitative single-case-study design based on documentary analysis of international human rights instruments, UK legislation, official statistics, policy documents, and peer-reviewed research, the article argues that a progressive legal framework alone does not guarantee substantive access to justice: whether justice is realized depends on the interaction of all three pillars. Framed in rights terms, the failure runs through a sequence of guarantees: the child’s right to be recognized as a victim rather than an offender, their right to be heard in the decisions that follow, and their right to an effective remedy once the harm is done. The UK case, in which a highly developed legal and institutional framework coexists with documented protection failures affecting Vietnamese children, reveals where the gap between formal legal guarantees and substantive justice opens up. On this basis, and with explicit attention to the differences in legal tradition, resources, and institutional structure between the two countries, the article draws policy lessons for Vietnam in implementing its 2024 Law on Prevention and Combat of Human Trafficking.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040087

Authors: Selina Wai-Ming Robinson

This article examines the legal inadequacy of traditional piracy frameworks in responding to contemporary maritime threats. The legal definition of piracy, rooted in Articles 101 and 105 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), was designed for a narrower category of maritime violence than now exists, and this definitional gap produces enforcement failures across criminal, international, and maritime governance law. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature spanning maritime security, criminology, international law, cybersecurity, and organised crime research, the article identifies five principal threat categories that fall outside existing piracy law: organised maritime crime, maritime terrorism, cyber-enabled disruption, illegal fishing, and state-linked hybrid maritime activity. It further identifies structural legal vulnerabilities, including jurisdictional fragmentation, the high seas/territorial waters divide, the private gain requirement, and the absence of a unified cyber–maritime legal instrument, that prevent existing frameworks from adequately regulating contemporary maritime criminality. The article concludes with a normative argument for an expanded, adaptive legal framework integrating cybersecurity, grey zone activity, and organised crime into maritime law, alongside improved international coordination, intelligence-sharing obligations, and governance capacity. The paper contributes directly to ongoing debates about the fitness for purpose of UNCLOS and the need for supplementary legal instruments to address twenty-first-century maritime threats.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040086

Authors: Géraldine Chapus-Rapin Antoine Eigenmann

Swiss inheritance law is increasingly confronted with profound social and legal transformations that challenge its traditional foundations. This article analyzes how Swiss inheritance law is striving to adapt to these contemporary developments, particularly the diversification of family structures, the growing emphasis on individual autonomy, globalization, and the rise of alternative dispute resolution methods. The study first highlights the increasing mismatch between classical legal categories and modern realities, especially with regard to blended families and cohabiting partners. It then examines the persistent tensions between the freedom to dispose of one’s estate upon death and the protection of close relatives through the system of forced heirship, in a context where the testator’s margin of discretion is expanding. The analysis continues with an exploration of the increasingly international nature of inheritance situations and the significant challenges this poses in terms of legal coordination and predictability. Finally, the article underscores the growing role of mediation and arbitration in resolving inheritance disputes. It concludes that, despite significant developments, Swiss inheritance law still struggles to fully reflect social realities, calling for greater flexibility while preserving legal certainty and fairness.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040085

Authors: Rebecca C. K. Ward John S. Croucher

Spitting is commonly treated in legal contexts as a minor physical or public health offence; however, this classification reflects a broader doctrinal tendency to prioritise contact-based and biohazard models of harm. This paper argues that contemporary assault doctrine often privileges visible and measurable injury, resulting in the under-recognition of symbolic and dignity-based harms. Using a purposive doctrinal and sociolegal analysis of selected legal authorities, the analysis advances the central claim that spitting may produce legally significant harm through its communicative function as an act of humiliation, degradation, and social exclusion. Drawing on dignity jurisprudence, vulnerability theory, trauma scholarship, and comparative legal analysis, the paper conceptualises spitting as a form of symbolic violence capable of producing psychologically significant impacts and legally relevant forms of harm independent of physical injury. Across custodial, clinical, and public settings, selected authorities suggest that legal reasoning often prioritises infection risk and physical contact while giving comparatively limited attention to humiliation, identity threat, and other non-physical dimensions of harm. The paper argues that existing legal and human rights principles may provide a doctrinal basis for recognising communicative and dignity-based harms, but that these principles remain inconsistently operationalised within assault law. Reframing spitting within a communicative and dignity-based model of harm may enhance doctrinal coherence and align legal interpretation more closely with the lived and relational realities of harm. In doing so, the paper contributes to broader sociolegal debates concerning dignity, vulnerability, and the recognition of non-physical injury within contemporary legal frameworks.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040084

Authors: Alfonso Renato Vargas-Murillo Rafael Fortunato Supo Hallasi Carlos Alberto Cueva Quispe Ilda Nadia Monica de la Asuncion Pari-Bedoya Regis André Junior Fernández Argandoña Carlos Alberto Pajuelo Beltrán

This article examines how the right to mental health has been constitutionalized in Peru through the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court. Using doctrinal constitutional analysis, the article combines the interpretation of international human rights standards, domestic legislation, and the Court’s leading cases with a targeted review of recent scholarship on community mental health reform, disability rights, and coercion. It argues that the Peruvian Court has transformed mental health from a predominantly medical or welfare concern into a constitutionally enforceable right by recognizing its connection to dignity, psychological integrity, equality, and the right to health. The article further argues, however, that this constitutionalization remains incomplete: the Court has been stronger in recognition and remedial activation than in fully confronting coercion, legal capacity, and the structural determinants of unequal enjoyment. The Peruvian case therefore illustrates both the promise and the limits of judicially driven rights-based mental health reform. Its broader contribution lies in showing that constitutionalization should be assessed not only by rights recognition, but also by doctrinal elaboration, institutional remedies, and the extent to which courts reshape the underlying legal model of care.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040083

Authors: Bo Long Zilong Han Yukun Yue Yulin Tong

The development of large artificial intelligence models relies on the integrity and accuracy of training data. Malicious contamination of training data introduces false information. This information becomes fixed as parameter bias during model training. Consequently, it affects judgment logic and model output. Therefore, data contamination has become a primary method for attacking the security of large models. Despite this threat, legal regulations concerning data poisoning lack systematic research. This paper employs a normative analysis method. It systematically reviews regulatory rules regarding data poisoning. These rules are found within Chinese criminal and data security laws. Current legislation primarily enforces general data security duties. It also relies heavily on accountability after an incident occurs. This approach makes early intervention difficult. Risks often evolve into model defects and cause damage before effective measures are taken. Therefore, the main contribution of this paper is moving beyond the current retrospective regulation model. We advocate establishing a risk control mechanism for the entire training process. This mechanism spans from prior review to continuous monitoring and subsequent accountability. Furthermore, it clearly divides the responsibilities among four main entities. These entities include data providers, model developers, service providers, and regulatory agencies. This mechanism helps resolve practical difficulties associated with data poisoning. These challenges include multiple participants, complex causal relationships, and unclear responsibilities. The proposed framework responds to the genuine needs of data security. It aligns with the governance goal of improving hierarchical and classified security supervision. Ultimately, it provides a feasible analytical framework for protecting training data.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040082

Authors: Yasmín Stefani Franco Bermúdez Carlos Alberto Echeverría Mayorga

This article examines how sexual violence against Indigenous women and girls is compounded by intersectional discrimination and secondary victimisation within state institutions. It conducts a structured, focused cross-regime comparative jurisprudential analysis of Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Case 11.565 (González Pérez et al. v. Mexico) and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) Views in Camila v. Peru. The cases are purposively paired because they share a common legal phenomenon—sexual violence against Indigenous survivors followed by rights-relevant institutional responses—while differing in age, immediate perpetrator, institutional pathway and international regime. The study combines doctrinal analysis with a normatively traceable benchmark framework derived from the American Convention on Human Rights, the Convention of Belém do Pará, CEDAW, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ILO Convention No. 169, UNDRIP and international investigation standards. Six domains are assessed categorically: language and cultural accessibility; secondary victimisation and survivor-centred treatment; investigation and evidentiary practice; health and informed consent; protection from reprisals and displacement-related harms; and reparations and guarantees of non-repetition. The comparison identifies recurring failures in linguistic access, institutional treatment, protection and implementation of structural remedies. It argues that intersectionality is constitutive of the legal harm, not merely contextual, and that it modifies the content of due diligence by requiring enhanced, intercultural and child-sensitive institutional safeguards. The framework does not quantify harm or rank violations; it makes the legal and institutional basis of the comparison transparent and offers actionable benchmarks for institutional design, litigation and monitoring.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040081

Authors: Larisa Pătru Oana Andreea Diaconu Maria Cristina Bezna Gabriela Boldeanu Ciprian-Laurențiu Pătru Adrian Bogdan Elena Cristina Andrei

Background: The rapid digitalisation of healthcare, the expanding use of artificial intelligence, and the development of cross-border medical services have significantly transformed medical practice. These developments have also intensified medico-legal risks and professional liability exposure for healthcare professionals. Despite these changes, legal education remains insufficiently integrated into medical training, creating a gap between regulatory requirements and clinical practice. Methods: This study is based on a narrative analysis of the international literature addressing medico-legal challenges in healthcare, including medical errors, malpractice litigation, patient safety, digital health, and artificial intelligence. Drawing on international regulatory standards and educational frameworks, a conceptual model was developed to support the integration of legal education into medical curricula. Results: The analysis highlights persistent deficiencies in legal literacy among healthcare professionals, regardless of speciality or level of experience. Evidence from the reviewed literature suggests an association between lower levels of legal knowledge and increased professional vulnerability, including reported malpractice litigation and patient safety incidents. The proposed conceptual framework outlines a structured and longitudinal approach to integrating legal education into medical training, based on horizontal and vertical curricular integration, alignment with regulatory standards, and continuous professional development. Conclusions: Integrating legal education into medical curricula may represent a relevant strategy for supporting patient safety, strengthening medico-legal risk awareness, and promoting professional accountability. The proposed framework offers a conceptual and adaptable structure for medical schools and healthcare institutions.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040080

Authors: Anél Gildenhuys

This article considers the exclusion of parents to inherit under section 1(1)(d) of the South African Intestate Succession Act 81 of 1987 (ISA) in cases of complete abandonment. It is based on a desktop study of the ISA, relevant case law (primarily Wilsnach v TM 2021 (3) SA 568 (GP) (hereafter Wilsnach) and Jacobs v Adams [2025] 4 All SA 655 (GJ) (hereafter Jacobs)), and academic commentary, with brief reference to foreign parent-bar provisions. The article shows that South African courts have recently followed two different approaches in such cases: The Wilsnach approach, where the meaning of “parent” was interpreted in the light of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 and the South African Children’s Act 38 of 2005, and the Jacobs approach, where the court retained the ISA’s status-based framework but excluded the abandoning father through the doctrine of unworthiness to inherit. The article argues that, although the Wilsnach approach may appear fair and child-centered, it risks weakening the certainty of the intestate succession system. By contrast, the Jacobs approach fits more comfortably within the structure and purpose of the ISA, even though some uncertainty remains about extending unworthiness on broader public policy grounds. The article ultimately concludes that statutory reform would not easily solve the problem in the South African system of estate administration, and that the judicial application of the doctrine of unworthiness to inherit currently offers a more practical response in clear cases of complete parental abandonment.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040079

Authors: Kayode Akintola

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a transformative phenomenon for global economies. Corporate insolvency regimes, equally, are economically significant as they promote preventive measures, company rescue/restructuring, liquidation of inefficient enterprises, and actions against errant directors. However, corporate insolvency is typically stymied by high costs and complexities associated with tasks such as asset management, investigations, and resolving creditor claims. These challenges are acute for stakeholders, such as Insolvency Practitioners (IPs), who often manage corporate insolvencies under information, time, and liquidity constraints. This paper presents and analyses findings from a survey (the survey was conducted by the research team of Akin Business Constructs and led by the author. All Figures/images used in this paper were generated by Akin Business Constructs.) on the use of AI in corporate insolvency proceedings. The objectives of the survey are to determine the existence, volume, and type of/rationale for AI use in corporate insolvency. This paper will, therefore, highlight the following: there is evidence of some usage of AI for varying tasks to support corporate insolvency proceedings; such usage points towards the adaptability of AI for simple and more complex corporate insolvency tasks; while the rationale for AI use in this context is predicated on efficiency gains, arguments against its use are principally centred on the accuracy of AI outputs; and the preponderance of AI use in this context is based on generic/non-specialised generative AI tools.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040078

Authors: Lubica Saktorová Andrea Barancová

The judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Case C-713/23, Wojewoda Mazowiecki, constitutes a significant development in the Court’s case law concerning the recognition of personal status acquired in another Member State. While the decision has primarily been discussed in the context of civil registration and the free movement of Union citizens, its implications for cross-border succession have received little scholarly attention. This article examines the consequences of the judgment for the application of Regulation (EU) No. 650/2012 on succession, with particular emphasis on Slovak succession law, which neither recognises same-sex marriage nor registered partnerships. Using doctrinal legal analysis and a contextual interpretation of the Court’s jurisprudence, the article argues that the judgment should be understood through the concept of functional recognition. Although Member States remain competent to regulate marriage, they may be required to recognise the legal effects of a same-sex marriage lawfully concluded in another Member State where such recognition is necessary to ensure the effectiveness of EU law. The article demonstrates that this approach may influence the determination of heirs, the status of the surviving spouse, matrimonial property settlement, and the legal effects of the European Certificate of Succession. It concludes that Slovak authorities should apply a functional, case-by-case assessment that reconciles national constitutional identity with the effective protection of rights guaranteed by EU succession law, thereby contributing to the broader debate on the interaction between national family law and European private international law.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040077

Authors: Wei Xiao

As an inherent part of Chinese indigenous legal tradition, dian originated from customary practices and was gradually incorporated into the national legal framework, reflecting a distinctive historical evolution, structural composition, and value orientation. Historically, dian evolved from a simple customary transaction into a formalized legal institution. It first took shape during the Tang Dynasty and matured through the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Structurally, long-term practice produced unique concepts and rules that embodied the dual nature of both usufructuary and security rights. In terms of value, dian was not merely an economic transaction tool but also reflected ethical norms and pragmatic wisdom of traditional society. It played a vital role in protecting the interests of the mortgagor, promoting circulation of land, and alleviating financial shortages. In the Civil Code era, the value of dian lies particularly in its ability to reconcile individual interests with social needs and to enhance the efficiency of property utilization.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040076

Authors: Tommaso Spasari Paolo Bailo Giuliano Pesel Giovanni D’Alessandro Giovanna Ricci

The digitalisation of healthcare is transforming not only clinical practice but also the legal architecture through which health rights are protected, coordinated, and operationalised. Using Italy as a doctrinal case study within the European Union (EU) framework shaped by the General Data Protection Regulation, the European Health Data Space, and artificial intelligence (AI) regulation, this article argues that digital healthcare is moving beyond consent-centred protection toward governance-based safeguards. The Italian trajectory is especially revealing because regionalised healthcare governance intersects with centralised digital coordination through the Fascicolo Sanitario Elettronico, the Ecosystem of Health Data, and EU rules on the secondary use of health data. The article contends that this shift does not displace consent as a legal or constitutional value, but requires stronger substitute and complementary safeguards when consent can no longer operate as an effective practical control mechanism. These include clear legal bases, differentiated access regimes, data minimisation, secure processing environments, meaningful patient information, democratic accountability, human oversight, anti-discrimination duties, and clearer allocations of responsibility among clinicians, institutions, and technology providers. AI-mediated care is treated as a downstream test case for whether governance-based legality remains compatible with autonomy, dignity, and responsibility in clinical care.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040075

Authors: Boleslaw Z. Kabala Kelli Neel

Scholarship on civic engagement and democratic culture has long emphasized dialogue, inclusion, and the recognition of marginalized voices, yet the legal and civic status of individuals with disabilities—particularly those with Down syndrome—remains insufficiently examined within this literature. This article addresses that gap by exploring how civic education and civic engagement, as supported by law at public universities, can better account for disability as a matter of democratic membership, dignity, and participation. Drawing on historical and contemporary analysis, the article examines the persistence and transformation of eugenic narratives supported by law as one underappreciated mechanism through which exclusion and devaluation continue to shape civic life. Historically, eugenic ideas influenced law, culture, and public policy by normalizing hierarchies based on health, appearance, and perceived ability. Contemporary forms of such reasoning, while often less explicit, continue to surface across legal and cultural divides, raising important questions for civic education and public deliberation. By situating disability within broader debates about civic inclusion, empathy, and democratic formation at institutions supported by law, this article argues for a more robust and balanced paradigm of civic engagement—one that critically confronts exclusionary narratives while affirming the civic agency, legal rights, and perspectives of individuals with disabilities, including those with Down syndrome and with respect to comprehensive considerations in prenatal contexts.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040074

Authors: Jing Ma Jingyi Chen Tianhao Hu Mingyu Deng Xuesong Li

Given the current global trend of actively exploring the integration of AI into dispute resolution, we contend that, under existing theoretical and normative frameworks, there is as yet no sound basis for incorporating AI—least of all for replacing judges—into these processes. This is not to dismiss AI’s contribution to dispute resolution; rather, we seek to clarify how AI can be responsibly strengthened in this field. Rather than adopting simplistic technological skepticism, we develop a comprehensive theoretical framework that integrates perspectives from computer science and jurisprudence. By tracing the logical sequence of dispute resolution—goal setting, data input, subject identification, algorithmic processing, and the output and attribution of responsibility—we identify five fundamental issues. First, at the goal-setting stage, a fundamental conflict arises between algorithms, which aim to optimize efficiency, and the judiciary, which pursues multiple values (such as a just resolution and a swift one). Second, at the data-input stage, the principle of “garbage in, garbage out” manifests as the intractable and dynamically interactive problem of “algorithmic bias.” Third, at the subject-identification stage, allowing AI to replace human adjudicators—whether fully or partially—alters the judicial proceedings and undermines procedural justice. Fourth, at the algorithmic-processing stage, the black box and the hallucinations of deep learning are in sharp tension with the judiciary’s exacting demands for certainty and reasoned explanation. Finally, at the accountability stage, outsourcing judicial authority to private developers creates a supervisory vacuum and weakens the state’s liability for compensation. We therefore propose that the legal responses and rule-making needed to address these foundational issues be put in place before, not after, technological implementation.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040073

Authors: Tamás Dezső Ziegler Thomas Buijnink Reiner Diederik Duvenage Sarolta Szabó Gergely Gosztonyi

The article critically examines the emergence of technofeudalism within the European Union’s legal framework, drawing on the theoretical contributions of Yanis Varoufakis, Alfred C. Yen, and Katrina Geddes. We argue that the EU’s historically market-oriented regulatory architecture contributed to conditions that facilitated the rise of dominant technology companies exercising quasi-governance functions over digital environments, extracting value from users while evading meaningful democratic accountability. Our analysis distinguishes between two categories of enabling legislation: structural rules, which govern corporate status, taxation, and market consolidation; and action-oriented rules, which regulate platform behavior, algorithmic governance, consumer relations, and data protection. We demonstrate how fragmented national tax regimes, ineffective merger control, under-regulated algorithms, asymmetric consumer protections, unclear liability frameworks for online content, exploitable private international law mechanisms, and inadequately enforced data protection standards collectively reinforce Big Tech’s dominance. While recent regulatory interventions such as the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act represent important steps, they remain embedded in a market-oriented paradigm that insufficiently addresses the broader social, cultural, and democratic implications of platform power. The article concludes by calling for a more coherent, democratically grounded approach to digital regulation—one that moves beyond fragmented, reactive policymaking toward a comprehensive framework capable of strengthening democratic accountability and public oversight within the digital sphere.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040072

Authors: István Szijártó

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the case law of the European Court of Justice related to the rebuttal of the principle of mutual trust in the process of judicial cooperation in criminal matters. It analyses ten judgements of the Court, which were delivered in preliminary ruling procedures that concerned the ground for refusal—established by the Court in its jurisprudence, hence referred to as unwritten ground—in cases when the execution of the judicial decision would have possibly jeopardised the protection of fundamental rights. This article provides a thorough analysis of the cases, shedding light on the gradual extension of the scope of the unwritten refusal ground, the Court’s resolve to protect the original structure of the Aranyosi test, the exceptional derogations from this resolve, and the various procedural aspects of carrying out the Aranyosi test. It argues that the rules governing the application of the unwritten refusal ground have been clarified, so much so that they may be ready to be translated into secondary legislation. As such, the aim of this article is to provide a legislative proposal for implementing the unwritten refusal ground into secondary sources of EU law based on the case law analysis.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040071

Authors: Hatice Kubra Ecemis Yilmaz

Sea-level rise has its gravest effects in low-lying States and coastal communities. Yet the legal obligations engaged by those effects remain dispersed across the law of the sea, climate treaty law, international human rights law, and the general law of State responsibility. This article examines what the advisory opinions of ITLOS, the International Court of Justice, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, read together, clarify in that setting. It argues that their principal significance lies in clarifying how existing duties of prevention, cooperation, regulation, and due diligence operate across different legal regimes without effacing the legal distinctions between them. It further contends that these opinions render the law of State responsibility more workable in a context where harm accumulates over time, multiple actors contribute to it, and serious risks arise for affected persons and communities. Finally, the Kiribati–Tuvalu illustration is used to briefly show what this clarified framework can explain, and where its limits remain, in relation to the stability of maritime entitlements, continuity concerns, and the protection of persons.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040070

Authors: Robert Wyllie

The Advance Ohio Higher Education Act of 2025 legally requires public universities in Ohio to teach students specific economics content but bans instructors from addressing controversial topics in a biased manner. Rather than avoid controversial issues, civic education should focus on contested fundamental economic principles for two reasons. First, it is a safer strategy for legal compliance. Second, teaching contested principles is a pedagogical boon for the education of citizens in which no single disciplinary perspective can be authoritative. There are both practical dilemmas and pedagogical upsides to the new regulatory environment that are unforeseen in the scholarly literature related to law and economics and the economics of civic education. The contested-principles approach to civics-focused economic education, developed here, is relevant beyond Ohio: to new public institutes of civic education across the United States, to universities that anticipate similar legal requirements, and to anyone interested in unforeseen pedagogical benefits of higher-education law.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040069

Authors: Rinata Kazak Denys Shyhal Greta Česnaitytė

This article examines the comparative method in environmental law through a systematic bilateral analysis of the foundational environmental protection laws adopted in Ukraine in 1991 and in Lithuania in 1992. The overarching aim is to contribute to the underexplored field of Ukraine-Lithuania comparative research by identifying similarities and differences and situating them within post-Soviet legal development and European integration processes. The study adopts a mixed methodological design combining a scoping-oriented literature review, consisting of a targeted narrative review using Google Scholar and a systematic review in accordance with PRISMA 2020 guidelines using the Scopus database (n = 23), with a structured doctrinal comparison of the two legal acts. The literature review identifies four main rationales for comparing Ukraine and Lithuania in academic scholarship: shared Soviet historical heritage, post-socialist transition processes, cultural and societal similarities, and the identification of research gaps. The paper further demonstrates that comparative environmental law studies predominantly rely on broader post-Soviet or regional frameworks, with limited direct bilateral comparison between these two countries. The doctrinal analysis of environmental laws reveals both convergence and divergence. However, Lithuania exhibits a more dynamic and EU-integrated legislative trajectory characterised by continuous amendments and alignment with EU environmental acquis, whereas Ukraine demonstrates a more stable but less systematically EU-oriented legal evolution and comparatively gradual reform processes. The findings indicate that Europeanisation plays a key role in shaping divergent post-socialist environmental legal development. Lithuania represents a model of sustained EU-driven legal integration, while Ukraine reflects a more incremental adaptation path. The study contributes to the literature by providing a structured bilateral comparison of Ukraine and Lithuania in environmental law and by linking doctrinal differences to broader processes of post-Soviet transformation and Europeanisation.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040068

Authors: Shawn Bayern

This article charts the legal and technological developments that have enabled nonhuman systems, such as artificially intelligent software, to take actions that have significant consequences under private law, such as the making of contracts, the management of companies, and the incursion of tort or restitutionary liability. Because of these developments, it is important to recognize that while the law still serves human ends, “participants” in the legal system are no longer exclusively human; developments in organizational law have driven a shift so that, in a meaningful sense, nonhuman systems are more than the direct instrumentalities of the human beings who have set them in motion. The article gives an overview of the relevant legal and technological developments, evaluates pressures that they may put on the doctrines and concepts of private law, and considers their broader future possible effects on legal theory and on the goals that commentators suppose that law is to adopt.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040067

Authors: José Alexander Velásquez Ochoa Rafael Alejandro Betancourt Durango Luis Fernando Garcés Giraldo José Luis Castilla Cabezudo David Alberto Garcia Arango Marcela Giraldo Giraldo Natalia Isabel Jaramillo Gómez

Legal transplants have consolidated as a core issue of contemporary comparative law, although their study remains marked by significant theoretical and methodological tensions. This article presents a PRISMA-informed structured systematic review of 25 studies published between 2008 and 2025 and retrieved through SciSpace, Google Scholar, PubMed, and Web of Science-supported searching, with the aim of identifying conceptual frameworks, recurrent conditions of validity, and practical limitations in recent legal-transplant scholarship. The search yielded 960 exported records; after deduplication and screening, 30 articles were assessed in full text, of which 25 were available and included. The revised article identifies the 25 studies individually and links the descriptive claims to a study-by-study coding table. The findings show five recurrent theoretical lenses: positivist transfer models, culturalist critiques, diffusion mechanisms and multicausal models, communicative metaphors, and mixed transplant concepts. The corpus covers studies in Europe, China, Asia-Pacific, Vietnam, Japan, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Hungary, Brazil, Africa, Latin America, and transnational settings. The evidence does not support universal causal claims, but it consistently suggests that contextual compatibility, institutional capacity, local legitimacy, and interpretive adaptation shape the effectiveness of legal transplants, while linguistic barriers, interpretive mismatches, coercive imposition, and weak implementation capacity constrain them. The corpus remains concentrated in corporate law, intellectual property, constitutional law, criminal law, and drug policy, with a predominance of comparative, doctrinal, case-study, and conceptual methodologies.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040066

Authors: Guanglei Chen Yulin Tong Zilong Han

This article studies the question of copyright ownership for works produced by artificial intelligence. Taking China, the United States, and the European Union as the research subjects, a systematic analysis of the legislative provisions, administrative practices, and judicial precedents in each jurisdiction is conducted, concerning the copyrightability of AI-generated works and the question of rights attribution. On the basis of comparative analysis, this paper offers a theoretical review of the core disputes from the standpoints of the Lockean labour theory, the Hegelian personality theory, and the utilitarian theory. It constructs an analytical framework for distinguishing AI-assisted works from works generated autonomously by AI, with the substantiality of human participation as the core criterion, and puts forward a system of recommendations centered on a hierarchical ownership model. It advocates attributing copyright to the users of AI-assisted works that involve substantial human participation, establishing a special rights system with a shorter protection term for purely AI-generated works, and promoting the achievement of international coordinated consensus within the framework of the World Intellectual Property Organization, in keeping with the call of the Initiative for open, fair, and effective governance of artificial intelligence by all states.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040065

Authors: Enikő Kovács-Szépvölgyi Szilvia Horváth

Media representations play a key role in shaping how cyberbullying is understood, problematized, and regulated, particularly in relation to children and young people in the digital environment. While legal scholarship has extensively examined the criminalisation of cyberbullying, less attention has been paid to how these legal developments are reflected in media discourse. This study addresses this gap by analysing the relationship between criminal-law responses and media representations of cyberbullying in Hungary within a broader European context. The research combines a qualitative media discourse analysis of 82 articles from leading Hungarian online news portals (2024–2025) with a comparative legal analysis of criminalisation patterns across EU Member States and a descriptive examination of the Hungarian offence of “online aggression”. The findings identify three dominant media narratives—child protection and social problem framing, criminal justice framing, and regulatory discourse—of which the first is the most prevalent. The results also reveal a limited alignment between legal regulation and media representation, as criminal-law approaches to cyberbullying appear only marginally in media narratives, which instead emphasise prevention, awareness, and institutional responses. These findings suggest that media discourse not only reflects but also shapes societal understandings of cyberbullying, highlighting the importance of considering media narratives in the development and evaluation of legal and policy responses.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040064

Authors: Maria Anna Iosifidou Irini Stamatoudi

This article examines the impact of the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on stolen or illegally exported cultural objects thirty years after its adoption, placing the emphasis on the legitimacy of acquiring cultural goods. The Convention has reshaped the allocation of risk, responsibility, and evidentiary burden in the international art market, redefining the relationships among possessors, intermediaries, and source states under an affirmative standard of due diligence. In doing so, it departs from the traditional focus on transactional security that characterizes both civil-law and common-law systems. The article further considers the Convention’s capacity to address the traditional reluctance of courts in market-state jurisdictions to enforce foreign public law on cultural property. Despite these achievements, the Convention’s limited ratification by a substantial number of states has constrained its overall effectiveness. The article concludes by reflecting on potential strategies to enhance its reach, including broader ratification and harmonized implementation measures, underscoring the Convention’s continuing role in shaping the jurisprudence of cultural property disputes over the past three decades.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040063

Authors: James C. Simeon

Canada played a pivotal role in the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and it was the first country in the world to incorporate the Rome Statute in its domestic law when it passed the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act (CAHWCA) on 24 June 2000. The CAHWCA allows the application of universal jurisdiction for the prosecution of those persons responsible for “atrocity crimes” who are present in Canada. Yet, Canada’s record for the prosecution and conviction of those who are responsible for “atrocity crimes” under CAHWCA is far from enviable. Rather than taking a leadership role in the prosecution of those responsible for “atrocity crimes,” Canada has avoided doing so. Thus far, Canada has prosecuted only two atrocity crimes cases under universal jurisdiction: R. v. Munyaneza 2009 QCCS 2201 [2009] QJ No 4913 conviction and the denial of its appeal in R. v. Munyaneza 2201. (Quebec Court of Appeal, 7 May 2014); and an acquittal in the R. v. Mungwarere (Superior Court of Ontario, 5 July 2013) case. This article will analyze the ratio decidendi in these two precedent-setting cases that rest on the credibility and trustworthiness of the testimonial evidence presented. It also considers other factors that militate against the criminal investigation and prosecution of those who are allegedly responsible for atrocity crimes. This raises the fundamental question of whether it will be possible to “end impunity for international crimes” and advance international justice when States, such as Canada, are failing to prosecute and convict those who are responsible for atrocity crimes through universal jurisdiction. It calls on States to allocate adequate funding for criminal investigations and prosecutions under universal jurisdiction and to develop more rigorous, detailed, and refined methods for gathering and adducing credible and trustworthy testimonial evidence for the prosecution of cases involving these serious international crimes.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040062

Authors: Zeynep Ardıç

This article critically examines Türkiye’s ongoing peace process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Initiated by the ruling bloc in October 2024, the process has been conducted through an illiberal approach primarily aimed at achieving negative peace. The government maintains that its central objective is to end terrorism by disarming and dissolving the PKK. At the same time, democracy, the rule of law, and human rights have been in significant decline in Türkiye. In parallel with global democratic backsliding, authoritarian practices have intensified, shaping both the structure and the substance of the peace process. Drawing on the illiberal peacebuilding literature, the article analyses the ongoing initiative through three dimensions: the governance of the process, the understanding of conflict and peace, and the political implications of the process. The article further argues that illiberal peacebuilding and authoritarianism have a reciprocal relationship in the Turkish case. While authoritarian governance shapes the conduct and substance of the peace process, the process itself may contribute to the further consolidation of authoritarian rule. This article explores whether positive and sustainable peace can be achieved through illiberal peacebuilding under conditions of deepening authoritarianism.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040061

Authors: Gururaj Devarhubli

Digital activities of statutory bodies are an emerging area in environmental governance and green information systems (Green IS) research. Copyright societies in India, under Section 33 of the Copyright Act, 1957, are crucial gatekeepers of the cultural economy and manage royalties on behalf of millions of creators through vital web portals. In this study, we examine the interface between their statutory role and digital environmental accountability, filling a research void at the interface of information management, sustainability, and policymaking. The researcher undertook website carbon auditing to determine the emissions of all seven registered copyright societies and found that 66.7% have high-emitting websites, with an average emission rate of 2.49 g CO2 per page view, compared to the benchmark of 0.615 g CO2 per page view for compliant websites. Significantly, there is a policy void: while societies are subject to detailed rules on financial and tariff matters, there is no statutory requirement on the sustainability of their digital operations. Our analysis shows that green hosting is insufficient and that there is a risk of symbolic compliance, thereby extending Green IS theory to statutory digital ecosystems. The researcher recommends theoretically informed interventions that include amending the Copyright Rules to require digital carbon statements, using existing corporate social responsibility (CSR) requirements, green procurement, and developing a Green IS governance model that is applicable to digital infrastructure in the public sector.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040060

Authors: Daniel Irwin Yacolca-Estares Elsa E. Choy-Zevallos Jorge M. Chavez-Díaz Marco Antonio Huamán-Sialer

Peru’s tax dispute system—administrative claim, Tax Court appeal, and contentious-administrative review—has increasingly migrated toward electronic files, e-invoicing, interoperable databases, and data-driven oversight. This article examines whether artificial intelligence can reduce avoidable tax litigation without weakening taxpayers’ rights and identifies the institutional conditions required to reconcile administrative efficiency with due process, reason-giving, and effective contestation. Using a legal-doctrinal and policy-analytical design, the study analyzes Peru’s tax dispute architecture, digital evidence environment, and AI-related risks in compliance and administrative litigation. The findings show that only bounded decision-support applications are institutionally appropriate, including audit triage, anomaly detection, document classification, workflow prioritization, compliance assistance, and consistency checks, provided that they do not replace legally attributable human judgment. AI is compatible with digital tax justice only when six safeguards are institutionalized: legally meaningful explainability, evidentiary and computational traceability, meaningful human oversight with override authority, lifecycle auditability, effective contestation, and distributional equality. The analysis further demonstrates that facially neutral digital requirements and risk models may generate unequal effects when disparities in connectivity, digital literacy, record-keeping capacity, and access to professional assistance translate into differences in audit exposure, compliance costs, evidentiary burdens, and practical contestability. The article proposes a rights-compatible framework for AI-supported tax enforcement in Peru.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15040059

Authors: Hannelore Thijs Alain-Laurent Verbeke

Since 2018, the Belgian legislator has created several substantial exceptions to the traditional prohibition on agreements concerning future estates. Succession agreements make it possible to create, modify or terminate rights to a person’s future estate among the parties involved. A central innovation of the 2018 Belgian reform is the ‘global succession agreement’, also referred to as a family pact, which allows parents to establish and agree upon an individualized and subjective equilibrium with all of their children, taking into account both prior and present donations to the children, and several other elements deemed relevant to them. The equilibrium is subjective as it is not defined by objective, quantitative criteria, but rather by how the parties qualitatively, together as a family, feel about what constitutes a fair and balanced solution for them. This family confirmation of their own specific equilibrium constitutes a core condition for the validity of the global succession agreement. This contribution first examines how this equilibrium should be understood and how families can effectively attain it in practice, with particular attention to the role of family dynamics. Second, this article explores how global succession agreements can accommodate non-traditional family structures and complex family situations, with the aim of achieving a fair and equitable regulation that reflects the specific wishes and needs of all family members involved.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030058

Authors: Hülya Kocagül Melik Kartal

AI systems are entering criminal proceedings as evidence producers, risk assessors, and decision shapers, yet the procedural architecture of adversarial and mixed systems was built on the assumption that evidence originates from human actors whose reasoning can be reconstructed and challenged. This article introduces the concept of evidentiary authority—the power to determine what counts as reliable evidence and how much weight it carries—and argues that this authority is migrating from human decision-makers to algorithmic systems without adequate procedural safeguards. The article draws on forensic linguistics and comparative criminal procedure to examine two domains where this migration is most visible: generative AI, which can fabricate or manipulate the texts on which forensic authorship analysis depends, and predictive AI, which feeds opaque risk scores into judicial decisions at stages where adversarial scrutiny is weakest. A structural phenomenon, which the article terms the “inferential catalyst”, is identified: AI outputs that shape proceedings without entering the formal evidence record. These two domains are tested against seven principles of criminal procedure: free evaluation of evidence, immediacy, judicial independence, the right to a reasoned decision, adversarial proceedings, the right of confrontation, and the presumption of innocence. At each principle, the same structural problem recurs: the system presupposes human reasoning that AI outputs cannot provide and that existing procedural mechanisms cannot compel. Six safeguards are proposed as conditions for admissibility: algorithmic transparency, independent auditing, defence access to algorithmic expertise, admissibility standards for algorithmic evidence, enhanced justification obligations, and capacity building.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030057

Authors: Jaume Tarabal Bosch

Population ageing is reshaping the assumptions on which succession law has traditionally rested. This article examines how Spanish succession law responds to this demographic shift through two closely connected dimensions: testamentary capacity and the growing role of succession agreements. The analysis adopts a doctrinal and comparative perspective within the Spanish legal system, taking account of the coexistence of the Spanish Civil Code and several autonomous succession regimes. It argues that testamentary capacity remains governed by a deliberately low and functional threshold, centred on the testator’s actual ability to form and express a testamentary intention at the time of execution, and that notarial ex ante control is central to preserving both autonomy and legal certainty. At the same time, relational vulnerability in later life requires distinct safeguards aimed at preserving testamentary freedom. The article further shows that succession agreements, often viewed as restrictions on testamentary freedom, may also operate as instruments of anticipatory autonomy. The central challenge is to make autonomy effective across time without confusing vulnerability with incapacity, or protection with constraint.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030056

Authors: Anamarija Mladinic Ljerka Luić

Article 5 GDPR sets out the core principles governing the lawful processing of personal data and occupies a central place in the EU data protection framework. However, empirical evidence on how Article 5 is reflected in supervisory practice across the European Economic Area remains limited. This article addresses that gap through an empirical analysis of 790 national data protection authority decisions involving infringements related to Article 5 GDPR, drawn from an initial GDPRhub retrieval pool of 1660 publicly available decisions issued between 25 May 2018 and 15 September 2025. Using structured content analysis, the article identifies recurring infringement patterns, examines the co-occurrence of Article 5 with other GDPR provisions, and analyses selected sectoral, contextual, and outcome-related dimensions of supervisory practice. The findings show that Article 5-related infringements most frequently concern lawfulness, fairness and transparency, data minimisation, integrity and confidentiality, and accountability, and that they often appear alongside infringements of Article 6, Articles 12 to 14, and Article 32 GDPR. The analysis further points to meaningful sectoral variation, while organisation-size findings remain exploratory. Although only a limited subset of the analysed decisions was explicitly AI-related, the recurring legal weaknesses identified in the published decision record remain highly relevant for automated and data-intensive processing environments.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030055

Authors: Judit Glavanits Zsolt Fényes

While public sanitation is a fundamental component of urban infrastructure, it is often treated as a discretionary amenity rather than a core public service subject to legal standards of equality and dignity. This article challenges gender-blind approaches to urban planning by examining how inadequate public toilet provision constrains women’s everyday mobility and presence in public space, raising questions of indirect gender discrimination and regulatory responsibility. Drawing on an exploratory mixed-methods study (N = 97), the analysis combines quantitative assessment of access barriers, qualitative user narratives, and time-based measurement of total restroom use duration to examine patterns of use and waiting with particular attention to gender differences. The findings indicate that hygiene-related concerns are reported across both men and women, without clear evidence of a consistent gender-specific pattern, while women are disproportionately affected by throughput failures, long waiting times, and the absence of care-integrated facilities. At the same time, variation in support for gender-neutral toilet solutions suggests that user acceptance may not align with model-based proposals in the literature. These inequalities reflect an institutional accountability gap with legal implications in the governance of everyday public services. By shifting the focus from numerical potty parity to temporal inequality and responsibility, this article contributes to feminist legal scholarship by situating sanitation within questions of temporal inequality and institutional responsibility. While exploratory in nature, the findings offer empirically grounded insights into inequalities in everyday sanitation governance.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030054

Authors: Benjamin Slomski

This paper examines the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on the First Amendment protection of the Free Exercise of religion by focusing on the Court’s judicial role to provide civic education in America’s constitutional principles. It argues that the Court’s current Free Exercise jurisprudence has ignored the Court’s teaching role by favoring brightline tests that fail to apply constitutional principles to the circumstances of each case. In these cases, the Court has refused to model for citizens how to reflect on constitutional principles and carefully apply them to new circumstances. This hesitancy reflects a greater debate over whether the judiciary or the legislature is the best protection for religious liberty and the proper educator on constitutional rights. Despite the Court’s constitutional role as teacher on constitutional rights, there are inherent limits to its authority to educate on religion given the liberal nature of the American regime. The Court limits itself to legal questions affecting religion and leaves religious doctrine and its truth outside of its cognizance in order to restrain its educative function to the proper constitutional limits. The Court’s Free Exercise jurisprudence thus demonstrates the potential and limits for the Court to protect religious liberty and educate citizens on religious freedom.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030053

Authors: Yuan Lin Yue Zhao

As China rapidly transitions to a moderately aging society, the sustainable delivery of public elderly care services has emerged as a critical legal and governance challenge. Government procurement has become a pivotal mechanism through which the state engages both social and market actors in providing elderly care services. However, the sustainability of this service delivery mechanism remains constrained by fragmented legal norms, unstable fiscal guarantees, inconsistent service standards, weak supervision, and regional inequalities. This article examines how legal regulation can support the sustainable delivery of government-procured public elderly care services in China. Based on qualitative, desk-based legal and policy analysis, it reviews the evolution of China’s national and local regulatory framework, assesses the current system from the perspectives of institutional, fiscal, social, and governance sustainability, and identifies key legal and institutional dilemmas, arguing that China should construct a hierarchical legal framework, establish stable fiscal guarantee rules, develop unified service standards, strengthen whole-process supervision, and improve legal mechanisms for regional coordination. These reforms would enhance the rule-of-law foundation of government-procured elderly care services and provide a reference for other aging societies seeking sustainable public service delivery models.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030052

Authors: María Luisa Lara Ruíz Rosa Gallardo Cobos

The digital transformation of agriculture is rapidly turning the sector into a highly data-intensive domain. The European Union has responded with a broad horizontal framework encompassing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Data Governance Act (DGA), the Data Act, the PSI Directive and the AI Act. However, this framework remains sector-neutral: it does not define ‘agricultural data’ as a legal category, nor does it explicitly recognize the specific position of farmers as data providers. This article pursues three objectives: (i) to map the EU legal and policy framework on data and AI as it applies to agriculture and identify regulatory gaps; (ii) to synthesize key concerns from the literature on agricultural data governance, with particular attention to the position of farmers and data spaces; and (iii) to develop an outline of a Spanish ‘Law on Agricultural Data and Digital Agricultural Services’ as an example of sectoral data legislation. The proposed Act—structured around a Preliminary Title and seven substantive Titles—would define agricultural data, recognize farmers as data providers, establish mandatory contractual protections, govern agricultural data spaces and cooperatives, introduce sector-adapted AI rules, address data sovereignty, and set up an institutional framework and graduated sanctions. The analysis argues that sectoral data law can complement EU horizontal rules, enhance legal certainty, and empower farmers without fragmenting the internal market. The article employs a doctrinal legal analysis and normative design-oriented methodology, drawing on secondary literature, policy documents, and EU and Spanish law; it does not rely on original empirical fieldwork.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030051

Authors: Sarah Atkins

Whilst all asylum seekers find themselves in a difficult position while trying to be recognised as refugees, some are in more perilous situations than others. Those asylum seekers that are unaccompanied (UAS) children are manifestly in greater need of care and protection than most adult asylum seekers, given their minority (under 18) and being without the protection of a primary carer. Any child who is in the care of the state should always be placed in age-appropriate and safe accommodation and in the care of staff who are properly trained; UAS children are no different. Typically, these functions are performed by local authorities through their social work departments. However, the UK’s previous Conservative government’s practice of using hotels to accommodate UAS children in England from 2021–2024 fell short of its human rights obligations towards UAS children. This paper argues that through this and related policies, the government was actively involved in compounding the victimisation of already susceptible children who had fled their country of origin thinking (mistakenly) that their human rights would be respected here.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030050

Authors: Adrienn Őri Ida Ercsey Eszter Sallai Helga Judit Feith

The study examines judicial practice regarding claims for damages and non-pecuniary damages (hereinafter: NPDs) arising from violations of the duty to inform in healthcare by comparing two periods (2008–2010 and 2018–2020) in the context of patient self-determination and European trends in patient rights. The 193 final judgments selected from the Wolters Kluwer Law Database based on keyword searches underwent qualitative content analysis and quantitative processing using SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, SPSS version 25.0). A selection criterion was that the judgment should assess on its merits whether the duty to inform had been fulfilled or violated. The real value of the adjudged compensation was compared and normalized in relation to the minimum wage (multiplied by the minimum wage) in order to reveal the actual socio-economic weight of the compensation. The results show that while in 2008–2010, the lack of information was mostly considered an additional element of professional negligence, by 2018–2020, it was recognized as a separate violation of personality rights that infringed on the right to self-determination, and the rate of complete rejection of claims for NPDs decreased. However, the increase in nominal amounts was accompanied only to a limited extent by an increase in the real value of compensation. The findings suggest that Hungarian judicial practice is moving closer to the autonomy-centred European approach, while strengthening the reparative function of NPDs—ensuring compensation that is perceptible in real terms—remains an open task.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030049

Authors: Demet Asli Caltekin

This article examines how domestic violence victim-survivors in County Durham, the north-east of England, experience help-seeking across criminal justice systems (CJSs) and women’s organisations. County Durham, an area recording the highest rate of repeat domestic violence incidents in England and Wales yet among the lowest rates of protective order applications, makes the gap between national reform and victim-survivors’ experiences visible. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with thirteen women who experienced domestic violence and engaged with both statutory and community-based responses, the article employs a survivor-centred analytical framework informed by scholarship on coercive control and legal systems abuse. The analysis reveals four interconnected themes: (i) coercive control as a cumulative pattern of harm (ii) the continuation and escalation of abuse post-separation across emotional, digital, administrative, and legal systems; (iii) the reproduction of powerlessness and loss of agency through evidentiary demands, procedural disempowerment, and institutional disbelief within the CJS; and (iv) the contrasting role of women’s organisations, which restore agency. Building on these findings, the article argues that the CJS do not merely fail domestic abuse survivors; they may reproduce the conditions coercive control depends on. In this context, women’s organisations function not as supplementary services but as essential sites of interruption that restore agency.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030048

Authors: Bernadett Solymosi-Szekeres Nóra Jakab

Central European, especially the Hungarian and Polish experiences, reveal a profound paradox, anti-immigration policy narratives, yet immigration laws and policies support reliance on migrant workforce (non-EU migrants). The question arises: why is that? The aim of this research is to examine the ways in which Poland and Hungary have managed the challenges of labor migration in the region, arising from the demographic crisis and labor shortages in the region. The research will use a socio-legal approach in the analysis of the changes in the laws of the two countries, government strategies, statistics, and political discourse in the period from 2023 to 2025. The assessment of the two countries will reveal a contrast in the political narrative and the implementation of the laws. Hungary maintains a narrative of strict migration and quotas, while at the same time liberalizing economic migration. Poland, on the contrary, has adopted a liberal yet selective migration strategy in the new laws that incorporate digital administrative tools, integration, and a points system for economic migrants. The research will reveal that both countries have moved from being net emigration countries to being net immigration countries, despite the political narrative. The research will conclude that the migration policies of the two countries have been influenced by the need to address the structural labor shortages in the region and not political ideologies. Experiences in Central Europe, specifically those of Hungary and Poland, show a unique contradiction of having anti-immigration politics and legislation providing for easier access to the countries’ borders to non-EU workers to solve problems of labor shortages. This paper will discuss the approaches of these two countries to dealing with labor migration in light of declining populations and increased need for migrant workers. Comparative socio-legal research is conducted in the course of this project, where recent legislative amendments, policies, statistics, and political discourse in relation to labor migration are reviewed within the period from 2023 to 2025. The research shows that while maintaining its conservative and securitized narrative, Hungary makes some concessions for economic migration through specific legal channels. Meanwhile, Poland has managed to build up an open and selective approach by combining labor market demands with digitization and points-based policy making. The results suggest that both nations operate in an environment of net immigration despite their official rhetoric implying otherwise. In conclusion, policies towards labor migration in Central Europe remain economic in nature, which produces contradiction between politics and reality.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030047

Authors: Enikő Kovács-Szépvölgyi Kata Franciska Vági

The criminal law assessment of consensual sexting between minors requires interpretation within a child-rights framework that accounts for children’s evolving capacities and the ultima ratio principle of criminal law. Although child self-generated sexual images and videos (CSGIV) may, in many jurisdictions, conceptually fall within the scope of offences relating to child pornography or child sexual abuse material (CSAM), consensual peer-to-peer sharing typically lacks the classical elements of sexual exploitation. This article provides a structured comparative overview of how the criminal law systems of the twenty-seven European Union (EU) Member States regulate consensual minor-to-minor sexting, identifying three regulatory models and assessing their compatibility with child-rights standards. The research is based on a structured comparative legal analysis drawing on the report and country reports of the second monitoring round of the Lanzarote Committee, complemented by a primary analysis of the relevant criminal law provisions of the Member States. The analytical framework relies on a coding manual developed by the authors along thematic dimensions. The findings identify three regulatory models: systems that provide explicit differentiation and safeguards; systems that formally criminalise the conduct but operate with implicit mitigation; and systems that entail a broad risk of criminalisation. The analysis reveals considerable normative fragmentation and demonstrates that the absence of explicit differentiation may expose forms of adolescent self-expression to criminal liability. The article concludes that, to comply with child-rights standards, explicit normative safeguards and a consistent application of the exceptional character of criminal law are required.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030046

Authors: Andrej Semenov

This article revisits the debate on whether the Brussels Agreement and the Ohrid Agreement, including its Implementation Annex, are legally binding. It develops a three-test framework that separates international-law binding force from EU-law legal effects. Tests A and B adapt the International Court of Justice (ICJ) indicators of animus contrahendi and acceptance through subsequent conduct, acquiescence and silence. Test C examines whether the agreements produce legal effects through EU enlargement conditionality, monitoring and reporting. The analysis finds that the treaty status of both instruments remains contestable. The Brussels Agreement is textually specific, yet intent signals are mixed, practice remains reversible and treaty-type obligation structures are weak. The Ohrid Agreement is drafted in a more treaty-like register, but references to a future “legally binding agreement” and the politics of non-signature leave inter se binding force unsettled. Nonetheless, both agreements can produce EU legal effects. They operate as enlargement benchmarks that shape assessments of Serbia’s and Kosovo’s progress, while Commission reporting and standardised compliance indicators may indirectly bind EU institutions through consistency, equal treatment and legitimate expectations.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030045

Authors: Andrew Leyden

The Court of Justice of the European Union’s Grand Chamber judgement in Public.Resource.Org v Commission (“Malamud”) raises fundamental questions about the relationship between EU law and the European standardisation system. By holding that harmonised standards referenced in the Official Journal must be accessible to the public free of charge, the Court reaffirmed the principle that individuals must be able to know the norms governing their legal rights and obligations. While widely welcomed as a victory for transparency and the Rule of Law, the judgement poses significant challenges to the longstanding governance and funding model of European standardisation, which relies heavily on copyright-based revenues generated by European Standardisation Organisations and national bodies. This article examines the practical and institutional consequences of the Malamud ruling and explores viable compliance pathways for the EU standardisation system. After outlining the role of harmonised standards within the New Legislative Framework and their growing importance in regulatory regimes such as the Artificial Intelligence Act, it analyses the judgement’s implications for access to law and the copyright status of standards. The article then evaluates a range of implementation models, including Commission-hosted publication, read-only access portals, licencing buyouts, and expanded use of common specifications. It argues that a Commission-hosted publication model, supported by revised funding arrangements, offers the most coherent pathway to reconcile open access with the continued functioning of the European standardisation infrastructure, and proposes corresponding reforms to Regulation 1025/2012.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030044

Authors: Eneja Drobež David Bogataj Valerija Rogelj

The article examines how recent developments in EU copyright law affect Slovenian legislation. The Slovenian system of collective management of copyright and related rights is currently under scrutiny by the European Commission, which has initiated infringement proceedings for failure to correctly apply the InfoSoc Directive and the Collective Rights Management Directive. The forthcoming Streamz decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union, initiated by the Belgian Constitutional Court, may further influence Slovenian copyright rules, given that both Slovenia and Belgium have implemented the Digital Single Market Directive by similar means. A pressing issue in Slovenian copyright law—recently addressed by the Higher Court of Ljubljana—concerns the collection, management, and distribution of the private copying levy as a permissible limitation to exclusive authors’ rights under the InfoSoc Directive. A thorough analysis of these issues reveals a complex interplay between EU and national law regarding the collective management of exclusive authors’ rights and various remuneration rights. Adopting a legal-dogmatic approach and applying textual, purposive, systematic and comparative legal methods, the article provides an overview of Slovenia’s copyright protection system, identifies potential incompatibilities with EU law, and proposes legislative solutions.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030043

Authors: Dustin Gish

Thomas Jefferson, the Author of the Declaration of Independence and the Father of the University of Virginia, considered it a self-evident truth that our rights must be secured through government and that the people themselves are the only safe guardians of their liberty in a republican form of government. The civic education of the people is, therefore, imperative, in his view, if they are to be informed citizens. This article examines the ways that the first States sought to institute public universities, through both constitutional and legislative means, and highlights Jefferson’s vision for civic education against the activity of the States in establishing education. Surveying early State constitutions and university charters reveals, for those States instituting public education, a wide range of approaches, particularly with respect to three aspects: authorizing mode (constitutional or legislative mandates); civic rhetoric; and scope (tiered system or single institution). While several of the States recognize education as important to republican government, their commitments to public civic education vary. Against this backdrop, Jefferson’s views on education appear both comprehensive and constant, from his reform Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge and Notes on the State of Virginia, which envision a three-tiered public system, to his efforts in retirement to pass education reform and establish a new university, with his purpose being explicitly civic. While his State never adopted his full system, Jefferson continued to advocate for ward republics and public instruction throughout his life. The founding of the University of Virginia in 1819 partially fulfilled this pursuit, embodying the keystone in his educational architecture. Yet Jefferson’s broader system—grounded in local participation and universal civic instruction—remained unrealized. This survey further reveals that statesmen in early America did not always agree with Jefferson that States must have an enduring institutional commitment to public civic education, as the best means to inform the people and to secure republican self-government.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030042

Authors: Jungmi Bang

This study conducts a comparative legal analysis of South Korea’s Framework Act on Artificial Intelligence (enacted January 2025, effective January 2026) and the EU AI Act (effective August 2024), focusing on the structural implications of their divergent regulatory philosophies for sustainable digital governance. Employing legal interpretive analysis (textual, systematic, and teleological) and comparative legal methodology, supplemented by risk-based regulation theory and the theory of hardening of soft norms, this paper examines three interconnected dimensions: the conceptual distinction between “high-impact” and “high-risk” AI, the legal nature of self-regulatory structures, and the potential distortion of civil liability attribution. The analysis reveals that Korea’s adoption of the “high-impact” concept, while strategically reducing compliance costs and avoiding stigma effects, generates significant legal gaps, including potential violations of the constitutional principle of clarity, a “liability lightning rod” phenomenon transferring responsibility from AI operators to frontline practitioners, and insufficient institutional prerequisites for effective self-regulation. In contrast, the EU’s ex-ante preventive framework provides greater legal certainty through direct enumeration of high-risk sectors and mandatory conformity assessments. Drawing on the growing body of EU AI Act scholarship, this paper proposes a five-step legislative model for dynamic regulatory adjustment tailored to Korea’s constitutional structure, encompassing statutory core criteria, periodic re-evaluation with parliamentary oversight, phased mandatory enforcement, and a presumption of conformity system, thereby offering a co-regulatory framework that balances innovation promotion with fundamental rights protection.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030041

Authors: Gulnara T. Nurbekova Marco Greggi Lyazat K. Tussupova

In the era of global data exchange, banking secrecy is no longer absolute, becoming part of a more transparent tax administration system. International exchange of tax information has necessitated a legal analysis of issues related to tax secrecy and banking secrecy in Kazakhstan. The authors analyse the relationship between banking, tax and official secrecy, as well as international and national mechanisms for protecting confidentiality in the context of growing demands for tax transparency. The article discusses international initiatives, including CRS, FATCA and the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (OECD), as well as their impact on the legal framework governing financial information in Kazakhstan. Focusing on international standards, the article highlights the lack of legal clarity in Kazakhstani legislation regarding the mechanism for ensuring banking secrecy when transferring information to tax authorities. Measures are proposed to harmonise regulatory acts aimed at ensuring a balance between the confidentiality of taxpayer information and the obligation of banking organisations to assist the tax authority in performing its tax administration tasks, as well as legal certainty in the handling of confidential information.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030040

Authors: Dominik Skauradszun Paula Moffatt

This paper examines whether the brand-new EU Directive harmonising certain aspects of insolvency law (Insolvency III) with its Title III on asset tracing is fit for the digital age and whether it offers adequate tools for the tracing of digital assets, such as crypto-assets under the EU Markets in Crypto-assets Regulation (MiCAR). The study will demonstrate that Title III on asset tracing has been outdated since the inception of the Insolvency III as it has a ‘blind spot’ on tracing digital assets.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030039

Authors: Bolanle Adebola

The wholesale transplantation of foreign insolvency laws with minimal contextual adaptation—rule convergence—can be inimical to development in African states because it displaces the legal capacity through which insolvency systems become institutionally responsive over time. Situated within a transnational reform order shaped by overlapping developmental and market-integration logics, insolvency reform is frequently promoted through global scripts, technical assistance, and benchmarking regimes that reward rule convergence. This order and the discourse that supports it often operate within an implicit economic-growth development paradigm that treats legal development as achievable through the external supply of ‘best practice’ rules supported by enforcement capacity. This paper challenges that view, advancing a systematic conceptualisation of state legal capacity as the evolving institutional ability to formulate, adapt, interpret, implement, enforce and legitimate legal rules in response to societal legal demand. Applying this framework to corporate and insolvency reform trajectories in East and West Africa, the paper shows how rule transplantation produces capacity displacement, undermining endogenous legal development and development more broadly. Insolvency reform must therefore be understood as a project of legal capacity-building rather than of rule importation, enabling African states to act as co-producers in the evolution of global insolvency norms and models.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030038

Authors: Tung-Hu Tsai

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic necessitated unprecedented regulatory responses that enabled rapid therapeutic deployment. The integrated medico-legal framework—comprising the FD&C Act Section 564 (Emergency Use Authorization/EUA), PREP Act (liability immunity), and CICP (injury compensation)—facilitated emergency response while protecting all stakeholders. This normative legal and policy analysis examines nirmatrelvir/ritonavir (Paxlovid) as a case study, integrating emerging pharmacokinetic evidence demonstrating its passage across the blood–brain and blood–placenta barriers. The EUA-PREP-CICP framework achieved notable results: nirmatrelvir/ritonavir’s authorization enabled deployment approximately 1 year after trials began, demonstrating an 89% reduction in the risk of hospitalization or death and potentially preventing thousands of hospitalizations. The PREP Act enabled focused pharmaceutical development and protected frontline healthcare workers during the crisis, though access barriers and transparency concerns remain areas warranting ongoing attention. The CICP provided administrative compensation for qualifying injuries, with acknowledged limitations in filing timelines and causation standards. Pharmacokinetic studies published after authorization revealed biological barrier crossing, representing normal scientific progress through continued investigation. The EUA-PREP-CICP nexus functioned as an integrated system: EUA enabled rapid evidence-based access, PREP immunity facilitated development and deployment, and CICP provided injury remedy. Based on this experience, this study proposes targeted enhancements to further strengthen this framework: systematic post-authorization surveillance timelines, enhanced special population monitoring through registries, modest procedural refinements to CICP, and improved surveillance infrastructure. These evidence-based improvements would build on the framework’s demonstrated strengths, optimizing performance for future emergencies while preserving the essential functions that helped address the COVID-19 pandemic.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030037

Authors: Mohamed Morsi Abdou Ayman M. Zain Othman Aisha Obaid Alqaydi Mahmoud Fayyad

The AI-supported digitisation of bills of lading has become an important requirement for the maritime transport industry, because it accelerates maritime shipping operations and helps avoid the drawbacks of paper bills of lading. This importance prompted the UAE legislator to introduce a legal provision in the new Maritime Law expressly permitting the use of electronic bills of lading. Despite the significance of this legislative step, this study demonstrates that it suffers from regulatory shortcomings; accordingly, the study aims to bridge the legal gap arising from the deficiency and ambiguity that characterise the rules governing the use of electronic bills of lading. This research fills a gap in the legal literature, as the digitisation of bills of lading under the new UAE Maritime Law has not been deeply explored. It also examines the role of artificial intelligence as an auxiliary instrument in enhancing the efficiency and reliability of this digital transformation. The research adopts an inductive and analytical approach to the provisions of the Maritime Law and related legislation to extract the general legal principles governing dealings in electronic bills of lading. The study shows that the digitisation of maritime bills of lading raises several legal issues resulting from their subjection to more than one legal regime, which may lead to legislative conflict and divergence in judicial approaches. The study concludes that the effective use of electronic bills of lading requires issuance of implementing regulations that explicitly clarify the conditions for their issuance, recognising their possession and electronic negotiability.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030036

Authors: Alejandro Knaesel Arrabal Otávio Henrique Baumgarten Arrabal

This research considers, by a conceptual and philosophical–legal perspective, the tensions between the interest of harmonization of intellectual property and the protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Starting from the fact that the harmonization of IP has been promoted as a strategy of global legal integration, normative predictability, and legal certainty for transnational economic agents, this study underpins the challenges that cross this intention. ICH is also observed as a legal category grounded on collective, dynamic, and culturally situated logics. The article briefly remarks a critical reading regarding possible conceptual incompatibilities between these regimes, showing through pensée complexe that such tensions stem from deeper divergences, associated with the predominance of a unidimensional and reductive view of the relationship between IP and ICH.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15030035

Authors: Hyemin Shin Myunghee You

Tough-on-crime policies, including mandatory minimum laws, three-strikes statutes, and habitual offender laws, have contributed to prison overcrowding and the growth of aging prison populations. As incarceration costs for prisoners increase, policymakers have increasingly considered early release policies for older incarcerated adults who pose a low risk of recidivism. This paper reviews recent trends in late-life incarceration and evaluates the policy logic and practical conditions under which early release may serve as a response to aging incarceration. Drawing on existing legal scholarship and prior research, we argue that early release of aging inmates likely represents a feasible and cost-effective strategy for addressing prison overcrowding without compromising public safety. The analysis further identifies the legal, institutional, and policy conditions under which early release programs for older prisoners are most likely to gain legitimacy and political support. By situating aging-related release within broader debates on punishment, proportionality, and public safety, this study contributes to ongoing discussions of sustainable and normatively grounded responses to mass incarceration.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020034

Authors: Cristiani Fontanela Thaís Alves Costa Andréa de Almeida Leite Marocco

This study examines how the international harmonisation of intellectual property rules, particularly trade secret protection, reshapes the governance of artificial intelligence (AI) in ways that both enable and threaten justice. We argue that convergent standards on undisclosed information are essential for legal certainty in knowledge-intensive AI investments. Such standards are anchored in TRIPS, reinforced by WIPO guidance and digital trade agreements, and complemented by regional instruments such as the EU Trade Secrets Directive. This emerging framework facilitates cross-border technological cooperation while helping prevent the “regulatory expropriation” of code, models, and data infrastructures. At the same time, when this pro-secrecy architecture is extended to opaque algorithmic systems that mediate access to credit, employment, welfare, health and justice, it can entrench digital vulnerability: information asymmetries between firms, states and citizens; barriers to meaningful transparency and audit; and pathogenic forms of exclusion that disproportionately affect already disadvantaged groups. Building on the concept of digital and structural vulnerability, the paper defends a vulnerability-sensitive approach to harmonisation in which trade secret protection is balanced against human rights, algorithmic accountability and the regulatory space of Global South states. We conclude that only an intellectual property regime guided by an ethics and politics of vulnerability can reconcile economic integration, technological development and reducing digital vulnerability in deeply unequal societies.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020033

Authors: Jennifer Morgan

This paper analyses the existing international refugee framework in light of the emergence of alternative so-called ‘safe and legal routes’ devised by the UK government—in particular, the bespoke Ukraine visa schemes—and considers the practical implementation of a Safe Passage Visa programme in the UK. It will consider how safe routes may benefit at-risk people when provided alongside the protection afforded under the Refugee Convention. It will also evaluate the persistent failure of UK government policy that focuses on deterrent-only aims but has been unsuccessful in reducing irregular journeys to the UK. The paper will then explore the case for a ‘Safe Passage Visa’, focusing on the practical challenge of implementation and the potential impact of its development on the workings of the asylum system in the UK, including the potential reduction in irregular entry and other benefits. The paper argues that there is an imperative need to take action to safeguard and protect human lives in transit whilst asserting that this must be conducted in a way that complements and enhances the principles enshrined in the Refugee Convention.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020032

Authors: William Fernando Martínez Luna Ana María Moreno Ballesteros Edgar José Ruiz Dorantes

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are transforming the commercialisation of digital art by establishing unique blockchain identifiers that ensure authenticity and certify subsequent transactions. However, the transfer of control over an NFT does not automatically include the transfer of the associated copyrights, thereby creating legal uncertainty as to what rights are actually acquired. This interdisciplinary project between engineering and law proposes the design of a smart contract, based on the ERC-721 standard, to manage the transfer of property rights linked to digital artworks represented as NFTs. The accompanying legal contract incorporates essential clauses covering the identification of the parties, a description of the artwork and its link to the token, pricing, royalties, and the terms of rights transfer. The proposal seeks to integrate blockchain technology with existing legal frameworks, offering an innovative solution that strengthens legal certainty in the transfer of copyright within digital environments.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020031

Authors: Stefanie Schmahl

The interplay between the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is of particular importance, as children today make up around 41% of all refugees. The Refugee Convention grants subsidiary international protection for persons who have legally or de facto lost the protection of their home state because it either persecutes them or exposes them to persecution by non-state actors. The Convention contains various substantial guarantees for recognized refugees and persons seeking refugee status. However, it does not contain any explicit provision on refugee children. This is precisely where Article 22 CRC comes into play, which states that refugee children are entitled to “appropriate protection and humanitarian assistance”. The essay delineates the definition of what is meant by a “refugee child” in the light of both Article 22 CRC and Article 1A(2) of the Refugee Convention. Furthermore, it works out that Article 22 CRC can strengthen the Refugee Convention’s scant commitment to children’s rights. This is particularly evident in the CRC’s requirements for the treatment of children in asylum procedures, which are not addressed at all in the Refugee Convention.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020030

Authors: Alexandropoulou Antigoni Themistokleous Antigoni

The Digital Services Act (DSA) represents a landmark regulatory context aiming to secure a safer, trusted and more transparent digital environment. While the DSA establishes a harmonised regulatory framework for intermediary services across the EU, its enforcement system relies significantly on national regulatory authorities, leaving member states a degree of institutional autonomy in designing the supervisory structures. This article examines the implementation of the DSA in Cyprus and discusses the national legal framework adopted through primary and secondary legislation. It analyses the powers, legally mandated tasks, rights, and obligations of the digital services coordinator in Cyprus including its supervisory, investigatory, and enforcement competences as well as the sanctioning mechanisms. This article provides a comprehensive legal analysis of the coordinator’s operation and contributes to the academic debate on the national implementation of the DSA as a horizontal legal tool of intermediary services and digital platforms accessed by European citizens.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020029

Authors: Bernadett Solymosi-Szekeres

The legislative framework of labor law is generally described as gender-neutral based on universal presumptions about employment availability, work productivity, and the ability to work without interruption; in actuality, this gender-neutral framework remains contingent on the existence of the non-menstruating body. This paper analyzes the concept of menstruation as the blind spot in labor law, exploring whether the gender-neutral framework of the legal system has the ability to achieve true gender equality while turning a blind eye to the cyclical body, which has been identified to negatively impact the lives of many menstruators. Methodologically, this research takes a normative approach, incorporating feminist legal theories, principles of substantive equality, and socioeconomic and medical studies on menstruation. The results of this research prove that the concept of menstruation cannot be described or characterized by frameworks such as illness or disability, leaving the normative regulatory space for menstruators to experience structural inequality. The formal equality of labor law rules thus produces unequal effects in practice by privileging an implicit model of uninterrupted work capacity. This article concludes that the legal silence surrounding menstruation is not neutral but reinforces gendered patterns of disadvantage. Making menstruation visible within labor law is therefore not a matter of special treatment but a necessary step towards substantive equality and embodied gender justice, and a prerequisite for any future regulatory responses aimed at addressing workplace inequality.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020028

Authors: Sarah Singer

This paper explores the ‘criminalisation’ of asylum in recent UK law and policy, most notably the 2022 Nationality and Borders Act (NABA) and 2023 Illegal Migration Act (IMA), and the ways in which this framework has fed through into recent legislative and policy measures. Whilst the development and expansion of criminal offences relating to irregular entry and arrival may be considered the most overt form of ‘criminalising’ people on the move, in this paper it is argued that the criminalisation of asylum in the UK today should not only be understood through the prism of crimmigration measures which are expressly penal in nature, but also through an array of measures which, although framed as administrative and civil, are similarly punitive in character and serve the criminal punishment rationale of retribution and deterrence. The legislative framework of the NABA 2022 and IMA 2023 has paved the way for this progressive ‘criminalisation’ by sanctioning those arriving irregularly to the UK to claim asylum. This trend has been continued in recent law and policy, and progressively expanded in a manner that increasingly sanctions refugees for the very fact of having claimed asylum in the UK.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020027

Authors: Tommaso Spasari Paolo Bailo Emerenziana Basello Giuliano Pesel Giovanna Ricci

Recent Italian developments in end-of-life governance have intensified debate on self-determination, medically assisted suicide, and the constitutional limits of healthcare regulation. This article is a narrative review combined with doctrinal legal analysis and medico-legal commentary. It examines Tuscany’s Regional Law No. 16 of 14 March 2025 within the broader Italian framework shaped by Law No. 219/2017, Constitutional Court Judgment No. 242/2019, and the subsequent constitutional review culminating in Judgment No. 204/2025. The article pursues three aims: to reconstruct the national legal framework governing end-of-life decision-making in Italy; to analyse the structure and constitutional implications of the Tuscan statute; and to assess the medico-legal relevance of the persistent uncertainty surrounding life-sustaining treatments as an eligibility criterion. The analysis highlights two distinct but interconnected issues: the constitutional boundary between regional healthcare organisation and matters requiring nationally uniform safeguards, and the unresolved interpretation of life-sustaining treatments in clinical and legal practice. In light of Judgment No. 204/2025, the article argues that regional procedural intervention may reduce administrative uncertainty, but cannot replace coherent parliamentary legislation capable of clarifying substantive criteria, limiting territorial variability, and reinforcing the role of palliative care within end-of-life pathways.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020026

Authors: Ahmed M. Khawaldeh

Cyberattacks and data breaches expose individuals and firms to liability in civil courts. Despite regulators’ efforts to standardize cybersecurity laws, judges, justices and attorneys have offered a plethora of interpretations to the same laws, causing a great deal of confusion. The current investigation utilizes the Jordanian civil code to illustrate how complex liability becomes in data breaches cases. Through a comprehensive examination of liability rules 256–291 within the civil code, the Supreme Courts’ liability precedents, and the new personal data protection law, this analysis finds that liability could be established under strict conditions. Liability claims in Jordanian courts must satisfy the standing doctrine, the presence of injury requiring compensation, and causality, and must demonstrate the clear links between data breaches and the harm/injury suffered. The novelty of the personal data protection law in Jordan is likely to impact how liability is interpreted and established in cybersecurity cases.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020025

Authors: Rebecca Parry Hakan Sahin

There have been multiple examples in recent years of nationalisation being used as a strategy for protecting the functions of failing public service providers. In the UK, at present, there is a demand for the nationalisation of Thames Water, which supplies water to 16 million users but is struggling financially and operationally. Proponents of nationalisation often overlook the complexity of the process, which involves the expropriation of shares and can be an expensive option. The expense arises in part due to the globalised investment context, where bilateral investment treaties (BITs) between various countries require compensation from foreign investors who suffer expropriation. There is wide foreign ownership of Thames Water, as well as many other UK public service suppliers. The practical and legal obstacles to nationalisation may mean that compensation must be paid at full market value, or not far short of it, even where the nationalised company is insolvent or failing. This paper examines the compensation frameworks applicable to the nationalisation of distressed public service providers with foreign ownership, analysing both bilateral investment treaties and the European Convention on Human Rights. Using Thames Water as a detailed case study, we demonstrate that current international investment law standards, which were developed for the expropriation of profitable enterprises, prove ill-suited when applied to the nationalisation of insolvent companies. Requiring “prompt, adequate and effective” compensation at fair market value for failing public service providers, such as utilities, creates perverse outcomes, as the taxpayers are asked to fund both the rescue of failed private ownership and the infrastructure investments that private owners neglected, while the shareholders who presided over the decline receive windfalls from state intervention. We propose an alternative framework based on four graduated responses: (1) enhanced regulatory intervention before failure occurs; (2) the use of upstream insolvency procedures, including restructuring plans; (3) the use of ordinary insolvency procedures of liquidation and administration; and (4) nationalisation as a last resort when market-based solutions are exhausted. Crucially, in this last case, we advocate for compensation to be calculated on a basis that reflects the insolvency of the nationalised entity. This entails valuing expropriated interests at what shareholders and creditors would have received through the insolvency proceedings that nationalisation displaces, which will typically be well below market value, even zero.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020024

Authors: Thomas Cook Boleslaw Z. Kabala

A Jeffersonian model of civic education supports robust civic engagement while differing in important respects from prevailing paradigms of community-embedded learning that prioritize activism. Rather than emphasizing participation alone, Jefferson’s approach to the development of civic awareness foregrounds reasoned speech, civil discourse, and the cultivation of practical judgment informed by theoretical understanding. Central to this model is Jefferson’s insistence that civic education is primarily a local and state responsibility, grounded in a broader commitment to self-government. Jefferson’s account reflects an appreciation for human reason as a universal capacity that makes consent and civic deliberation possible. Reason, so understood, provides the foundation for political equality and for an account of human flourishing articulated most clearly in the Declaration of Independence and consistent with core claims of the natural law tradition. This framework supports a conception grounded in metaphysical equality and civic friendship, best expressed within a federal political order, and capable of sustaining what classic sources and contemporary initiatives describe as a “pervasive commitment to diversity—as well as unity”. Further contributing to the novelty of our argument, we show that Jeffersonian natural-law-inflected civic engagement resonates well into the 20th century. Important judicial decisions, educational initiatives, and policy recommendations—including Cook v. McKee, Education for American Democracy (EAD), and the Truman Commission Report—draw upon related concepts of civic formation, consent, and reasoned participation. Jefferson’s emphasis on “reasons in speech,” understood as an essential element of self-government, thus remains a necessary and underappreciated contribution to contemporary debates over civic education and engagement.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020023

Authors: Sebastian R. Graham Matthew K. Reising

This article contributes to ongoing debates between political scientists and the burgeoning civic education reform movement over the nature and goals of political inquiry and the need for a careful analysis of political methodology. To do so, this article draws on and explicates Aristotle’s criticisms of Hippodamus to show the dangers of privileging legibility and quantifiability over the common experiences of civic life, which includes normative considerations of good and bad and right and wrong. Ultimately, we argue that Aristotle provides a model for inquiring into the nature of political life that is conscious of civic responsibility and which offers a strong justification for continued civic education reform. Along the way, we contribute to ongoing discussions about the potentially positive relationship between liberal and civic education by connecting the civic education movement to modern theorizing about virtue politics.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020022

Authors: Adeline Auffret O’Neil Indira Boutier Emmanuel Maganaris

The recognition of a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a human right has reshaped global human rights discourse, yet its operationalisation remains uneven. This article examines how the African human rights system which is uniquely grounded in collective rights, has reframed environmental protection as a constitutive element of development, sovereignty, and justice. Through doctrinal and case-law analysis, it traces the evolution from the African Commission’s foundational jurisprudence in SERAC, which extended state duties to the regulation of private and transnational corporate actors, to the African Court’s landmark judgment in LIDHO v. Côte d’Ivoire. The study demonstrates how the Court transforms the aspirational ‘greening’ of human rights into binding obligations by articulating a robust duty of vigilance and linking environmental harm to violations of the rights to life, health, and development. It further shows that LIDHO inaugurates a post-sovereign model of shared and polycentric responsibility, in which state accountability encompasses corporate conduct within their jurisdiction and, potentially, beyond it. The article concludes that the African Charter’s collective framework offers an implicit regional model of ecological justice, one capable of addressing extractive asymmetries and informing emerging climate-related obligations across the continent.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020021

Authors: Selina Wai Ming Robinson

UK ports handle the vast majority of national trade by volume and constitute Critical National Infrastructure. Since 2004, the SOLAS/ISPS Code and the Port Security Regulations 2009 have established baseline security requirements, recently supplemented by the National Security and Investment Act 2021 and the National Security Act 2023, creating overlapping obligations. This contribution maps the evolving regulatory framework (ISPS/Port Security Regulations, NSI 2021, NSA 2023, and CNI-related guidance). It assesses operational impacts using industry metrics and draws comparative lessons from Singapore and Rotterdam. Empirical research indicates that security regulation is not uniformly detrimental to performance: targeted, intelligence-led, and technology-enabled measures can coincide with productivity gains, whereas fragmented or blanket compliance regimes are more consistently associated with increased dwell times and throughput loss. These delays propagate through supply chains and intensify cost pressures, with proportionally greater impacts on mid-sized ports. Comparative evidence indicates that risk-based screening, integrated cyber–physical platforms, transparent governance, and clear cost-sharing frameworks can maintain security without compromising commercial performance. The contribution recommends (i) tiered, risk-based screening with transparent indicators; (ii) the consolidation of overlapping regulatory obligations; (iii) clearer liability frameworks, including model terms and alternative dispute resolution; and (iv) scheduled review provisions to maintain proportionality over time.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020020

Authors: Nikolaos Manos Emmanouil Technitis Athanassia Sykiotou

Artificial intelligence is already being used in the administration of Justice, with various applications assisting judges in resolving cases. In particular, in criminal Justice, these applications include predictive Justice and decision-making assistance through the assessment of facts, as well as the classification of criminals into risk groups. This article examines the current regulatory and ethical framework (AI Act, Council of Europe Convention on AI, CEPEJ Ethical Charter, UNESCO and OECD principles) and develops a regulatory approach to the use of AI systems by judges and prosecutors. The methodology is based on a doctrinal analysis of international, EU, and professional ethical literature, as well as on a synthesis of principles of judicial conduct (Bangalore Principles, Magna Carta of Judges). To strike a balance between the rules of governing system use and judicial ethics, the article proposes a consistent framework of ethical principles (legitimacy, transparency, accountability, integrity, human oversight, prohibition of discrimination) and introduces a practical “line of reasoning” with key questions that judges should consider before and during the use of intelligent tools (risks, bias, proportionality, understanding of the algorithm, and impact on judicial judgment). The article concludes that AI may improve the efficiency of the justice system only when included inside a strong ethical framework and specialized training, guaranteeing that final judicial decisions remain solely human and fully aligned with the rule of law.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020019

Authors: Samuel Postell

This essay considers George Wythe’s essential role in creating American civic education. Wythe is most well-known for his influence on American Law; he was the first teacher of law in America and he wrote pivotal opinions on Virginia’s High Court of Chancery. Nevertheless, his influence on American education and the American Revolution was just as essential to the American Founding. Recovering Wythe’s role in shaping civic education in America is important today, given recent lawmaking decisions to fund civic centers within various states. Wythe and Thomas Jefferson—Wythe’s first student—shaped the College of William & Mary. Inventing American civic education was their aim. This paper explains Wythe’s role as a teacher who created the legal and moral frameworks for American civic education in America. I argue that Wythe’s contributions to American education were just as essential to maintaining self-government as the Revolutionary War was in rendering the colonies independent from Britain.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020018

Authors: Baptiste Jouzier

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) has been presented as a milestone in embedding migration governance within an international human rights framework. This article critically examines the extent to which this ambition has translated into concrete effects by analysing the Canadian case. Drawing on a legal doctrinal and contextual policy analysis, informed by the concept of mobility facilitation, the article shows that the GCM has had a limited impact on Canadian migration policies. Despite sustained international commitment to the Compact, recent developments reveal a regression in the facilitation of mobility and the protection of migrants’ rights. This regression has not been reflected in Canada’s international reporting, exposing a disjunction between national practices and international positioning and calling into question the GCM’s capacity to generate international accountability. This article argues that the limited effectiveness of the GCM cannot be explained solely by the shortcomings of its implementation and review mechanisms but must also be understood in light of the unfavourable political context. Moving beyond a compliance-centred perspective, it contends that the GCM should also be understood as lending itself to an indirect form of mobilisation, capable of functioning as a counter-narrative to dominant criminalising and securitising approaches.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020017

Authors: Libor Klimek

The enforcement of European Union restrictive measures increasingly relies on criminal law at national level, particularly in response to serious and systematic violations that cannot be effectively addressed through administrative sanctions alone. Directive (EU) 2024/1226 requires Member States to ensure effective, proportionate, and dissuasive criminal penalties for breaches of EU sanctions, including, in defined cases, conduct committed with serious negligence. This article examines the introduction of serious negligence as a new statutory form of culpability in the Slovak Republic, adopted through Act No. 157/2025 Coll. as part of the transposition of Union law. The analysis is based on a doctrinal examination of Slovak criminal law, legislative materials, and relevant EU legal instruments, complemented by a comparative overview of selected Member States. The article demonstrates that the Slovak legislator introduced serious negligence (Slovak: hrubá nedbanlivosť) as a qualified form of negligence in a cautious and narrowly circumscribed manner, limiting its application to a specific offence relating to the breach of a restrictive measure. While this approach strengthens the effectiveness of EU sanction enforcement, it also raises interpretative and practical challenges, particularly in distinguishing serious negligence from ordinary negligence and indirect intent. The article concludes that the Slovak model reflects a balanced attempt to comply with Union obligations while preserving the internal coherence and fundamental principles of national criminal law, with its long-term impact depending on consistent judicial interpretation and restrained application in practice.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020016

Authors: Rory O’Callaghan Casey Watters

Open Banking aims to empower consumers to control their financial data, yet jurisdictions vary in their regulatory approaches. This article examines whether the US should adopt Australia’s statutory Consumer Data Right (CDR) as part of a domestic open banking framework, as open banking is yet to be fully realized under Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act. This study employs a comparative analysis of the economic and institutional differences between the Australian and US systems, with a focus on non-bank lenders and the challenges of legal transplantation. It argues that although Australia’s rights-based model provides a normative foundation for consumer empowerment, its rigid structure and expensive accreditation processes risk limiting participation and innovation. Instead, the paper advocates a hybrid approach for the US, integrating CDR principles into a market-responsive framework.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020015

Authors: Joseph Yaw Asomah Eugene Emeka Dim

Bribery remains prevalent across African countries, yet little is known about how fear of retaliation for reporting corruption interacts with national institutional contexts to shape bribery behaviour. Using Round 9 Afrobarometer data from 42,655 respondents across 39 African states, this study examines how perceptions of reporting risk combine with macro-level conditions of state capture and symbolic law to influence the likelihood of paying bribes. Hierarchical logistic regression results show that individuals who fear retaliation are significantly more likely to engage in bribery, but this relationship is conditioned by institutional strength. High levels of state capture and weak rule-of-law systems intensify the effect of retaliation risk, whereas judicial independence mitigates it. Aspects of symbolic law—judicial accountability, access to justice, and enforcement—further shape how fear translates into corrupt exchanges. The findings demonstrate that reducing bribery requires credible, protective, and functional institutions, not simply increased anti-corruption awareness. The study advances corruption research by integrating behavioural risk perceptions with multi-dimensional measures of institutional weakness, offering a cross-national explanation for when fear becomes behaviourally consequential.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15020014

Authors: Zhyldyz Tegizbekova Talgat Sarsenbayev

The paper compares legal mechanisms addressing child cyberbullying in Kyrgyzstan (KG) and Kazakhstan (KZ). Using doctrinal and comparative methods, we analyze statutes, regulations, and institutional practices, along with recent survey evidence on prevalence, reporting behavior, and institutional trust. KZ has established a comprehensive framework: it defines bullying and cyberbullying, imposes administrative liability (including parental liability for minors), strengthens criminal penalties for sustained harassment, implements a rapid content takedown procedure, and mandates school prevention programs with helpline support. KG relies on general protections of honor, dignity, and health; has recently reintroduced administrative fines for online insults and defamation; and issues ministry guidelines on school prevention, but lacks a specific legal definition or unified protocol. We find low trust in school remedies and underreporting in both countries, especially KG, while KZ’s new measures improve visibility and early responses but raise implementation issues (e.g., proof of “systematic” conduct, due-process safeguards for removal, tailored measures for child offenders). Both systems require a balanced mix of sanctions, prevention, and support. We recommend that Kyrgyzstan codify clear definitions and enforcement procedures, and that Kazakhstan refine enforcement, transparency, and restorative options.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15010013

Authors: Jason W. Stevens

In this essay, I explore the historical challenge that Abraham Lincoln posed to Stephen Douglas at the fifth debate in Galesburg. During an argument regarding the morality of slavery and the meaning and significance of the American regime, Douglas contended that the nation was legally founded on white supremacy. Lincoln, however, affirmed that based on all available historical evidence, the Founders intended to include all humans when they said in the Declaration of Independence, based on their understanding of natural law, that “all men are created equal.” To demonstrate his confidence in this belief, Lincoln challenged Douglas to provide primary source evidence that anyone, prior to the 1850s, ever said that the black race was not included in the Declaration. Studying Lincoln’s natural law challenge and the responses it received offers a new perspective on the importance of the original meaning of the Declaration’s equality principle, grounded in the law of nature, as well as how Lincoln thought about that principle—particularly in contrast to rivals like Douglas and Roger Taney.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15010012

Authors: Qinqing Xu

The Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritages (ICH) Law was passed in 2011, followed by the Regulation on Copyright Protection of Folk Literature and Art Works (Draft calling for comments) released in 2014, which finally called for opinions from experts and practitioners again in 2024. This article examines the challenges in directly applying copyright law to protect ICHs in Mainland China, emphasising the fundamental differences in the rationales of ICHs and copyright, despite partial overlap in their subject matters. Although copyright is not suitable for directly safeguarding ICHs, it can play a constructive role in protecting derivative works and creative expressions embodying ICHs. When granting copyright to the creations, certain limitations should be imposed on the exercise of these rights, particularly respecting the local communities and avoiding distorting the original cultural expressions of the ICHs. Such a design could benefit the preservation of Chinese ICHs and also promote the exchange of culture. It also provides a reference to other nations to avoid directly transplanting copyright law onto ICH protection without adaptation. In light of recent international developments, the findings contribute to comparative and cross-border debates on international collaborations, fair remuneration and benefit-sharing, supporting more equitable and sustainable global preservation of ICHs.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15010011

Authors: Mohamed Chawki Subhajit Basu Kyung-Shick Choi

Existing law provides no settled account of how deepfake sextortion should be characterised and regulated in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, creating uncertainty for charging, adjudication and platform compliance at the point when the Online Safety Act 2023 allocates duties to regulated services under Ofcom oversight. This article responds by analysing and synthesising the Online Safety Act 2023 with the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and residual harassment and communications offences, using doctrinal analysis and normative evaluation to identify points of alignment and misfit. It establishes criteria for identifying synthetic sexual coercion, including the elements that mark threat-stage conduct, the role of fabrication in the wrong, and the conditions under which epistemic harms should be treated as legally relevant within ordinary doctrine. It rejects three propositions: that intimate-image abuse is primarily a publication-based wrong; that an authentic image is a precondition for liability; and that content-led platform duties adequately address coercion before dissemination. This analysis specifies how courts and prosecutors should classify conduct and select offences, how services should operationalise risk assessment and mitigation for threat-stage harms, and which targeted reforms to offence design, platform duties and victim-facing procedures are required to secure predictable protection and effective redress.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15010010

Authors: Eliana Díaz-Cruces Camilo Zamora-Ledezma Simone Belli

This article examines in detail Advisory Opinion No. 32, issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July 2025. The analysis examines how the decision of the International Court of Justice establishes the principle of intergenerational equity as an interpretative criterion for climate obligations, consolidating specific duties of prevention, due diligence, cooperation, mitigation, and adaptation to the consequences of climate change that directly affect present and future generations. This Opinion also designates the 1.5 °C threshold as a central legal benchmark for assessing States’ due diligence in climate mitigation and adaptation and extends state obligations to the regulation of private actors, characterizing climate protection as an erga omnes duty based on human rights and customary international law. Through a doctrinal and institutional legal method, supported by systematic documentary analysis of treaties, case law and soft-law instruments, this study situates the ICJ’s reasoning within the broader evolution of intergenerational equity and explores its implications for state responsibility and climate litigation. It also analyzes the potential of the Advisory Opinion to foster new institutional mechanisms, such as ombudsmen, fiduciary management mechanisms, and intergenerational impact assessments, to represent future generations in climate governance. The main conclusion is that the Advisory Opinion inaugurates a new stage in global climate governance, in which intergenerational equity ceases to be a purely aspirational vision and instead operates as a binding interpretative standard guiding the interpretation and review of existing climate obligations, rather than serving as an autonomous source of new duties. However, its transformative effect will depend primarily on the political will and institutional capacity of states to implement effective mechanisms.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15010009

Authors: Stuart S. Yeh

Transnational organized criminal groups operate in ways that are resistant to prosecution. In response, a proposed change in domestic law would aim to ensnare front men who serve to hide the identities of criminals, enabling prosecutors to flip them via cooperation agreements, thereby unraveling transnational criminal schemes. The proposal would require the ultimate beneficial sender, and ultimate beneficial recipient, to certify beneficial ownership (as sender and recipient) when funds are transacted in amounts exceeding USD 3000; and would require foreign financial institution personnel, who handle transactions with a nexus to a party to the Rule, to collect and submit, to a central law enforcement database, certifications by the ultimate beneficial sender and recipient of covered funds that are deposited, transmitted, transferred, or paid. Analysis of the proposed change in law indicates that it may be effective in addressing the impunity that prevails when organized criminal groups operate in China and North Korea in ways that appear to be outside the reach of domestic U.S. law enforcement authorities.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15010008

Authors: Hamiisi Nsubuga

This article examines the subject of SME failures due to financial distress in emerging economies by focusing on Uganda as a case study. It adopts a convergent doctrinal and empirical approach, drawing on existing black letter law and literature alongside some of the empirical data obtained from a survey of SME business owners impacted by financial distress, a survey of accredited insolvency practitioners and exchanges from a stakeholder workshop on SME insolvencies in Uganda. The article examines existing legal, regulatory and procedural frameworks on corporate rescue and the identified gaps exacerbating SME failures in unpacking why, despite the availability of these frameworks, business rescue as the policy objective of Uganda’s insolvency law has yet to be fully achieved. The article devises a recommended toolkit that if adopted, may guide the approaches needed to improve SME rescue, and meet legal and statutory objectives of Uganda’s insolvency frameworks to enhance economic stability.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15010006

Authors: Sabah M. A. Al Momani

This study represents a bibliometric analysis of the global scholarship on institutional rights in education, based on 192 reviewed publications from the Web of Science database, which includes the 2000–2025 period. Research has developed in three different phases: the initial phase (2000–2006) focused on basic topics such as legal regulation, provision of public services, and administrative discretion; the developmental phase (2007–2013) addressed increasing emphasis on representative bureaucracy, availability, and judicial intervention; and the rapid development phase (2014–2025) emphasized digital transformation, transparency, and international cooperation. The keyword analysis reveals a thematic shift from traditional topics such as the “legal system” and “public service” to current issues such as “digital administration,” “social justice,” and “representative bureaucracy.” Research production remains geographically concentrated in North America and Europe, and contributions from Asia, Latin America, and Africa appear. The main institutions include Harvard University, Oxford University, and Leiden University, while influential authors such as Cooper K.W., Schiff D., and Busuioc E.M. have shaped theoretical and empirical advances. Network visualization and historical clustering illustrate the developing thematic structure and interconnection in the field. This analysis provides valuable knowledge for politicians, educators, and researchers who, in the dynamic global context, navigate the penetration of constitutional principles and education management.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15010007

Authors: Phillip Marcial Pinell

Since 2017, more than a dozen civics institutes have been founded at America’s public universities, marking a renaissance in civic education. Grounded in the liberal arts, these institutes rightly restore the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and reconnect citizens to the nation’s past. Yet liberal education requires assistance to help students navigate today’s data-driven republic, where questions of law and justice increasingly turn on the interpretation of evidence. This article proposes a balanced model for civics education—a “renewed civic pragmatism”—that unites the historical connectedness of liberal learning with the technical skills required for public life and the rule of law. In doing so, civics education recovers its role as a bridge between moral principle, empirical judgment, and the pursuit of justice under law.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15010005

Authors: Adam Abukari

The capacity of the United Kingdom (UK) to prosecute technology-enabled financial and economic crime (FEC) is increasingly shaped by the Collingridge dilemma. Even though the dilemma was broadly conceptualized in technology governance, its application to prosecutorial and enforcement practice, evidentiary standards, and criminal liability attribution represents uncharted scholarly territory. Through socio-legal mixed methods combining doctrinal analysis, case studies, and comparative analysis, the paper shows how the dilemma’s two horns or pillars (i.e., early epistemic uncertainty and late institutional inertia) manifest in criminal law and regulatory contexts. The paper finds that just like the European Union and United States, the UK criminal enforcement ecosystem exhibits both horns across cryptocurrency, algorithmic trading, artificial intelligence (AI), and fintech domains. By integrating supplementary theories such as responsive regulation, precautionary principles and technological momentum, the study advances a socio-legal framework that explains enforcement inertia and doctrinal gaps in liability attribution for emerging technologies. The paper demonstrates how epistemic uncertainty and institutional entrenchment shape enforcement outcomes and proposes adaptive strategies for anticipatory governance including technology-literate capacity building, anticipatory legal reform, and data-driven public-private coordination. These recommendations balance ex-ante legal clarity (reducing uncertainty) with ex-post enforcement agility (overcoming entrenchment) to provide a normative framework for navigating the Collingridge dilemma in FEC prosecution.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15010004

Authors: Abeer Hassan Al-Qaisi Rehan Naji Abu Elzeet Mutasem Khaled Heif Shadi Meeush D’yab Altarawneh Loiy Yousef Aldaoud Mostafa Hussam Altarawneh

This study evaluates the effectiveness of Jordan’s judiciary in overseeing electoral appeals within the framework of a constitutional monarchy. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, it combines doctrinal legal analysis of key constitutional provisions and Election Law No. 4 of 2022 with a comparative examination of electoral adjudication in Tunisia, Egypt, and Lebanon. The study is further strengthened by a structured content analysis of 120 appellate rulings issued between 2015 and 2023 and by qualitative insights drawn from anonymized interviews with judicial personnel engaged in electoral dispute resolution. Although Jordan’s legal framework formally empowers the judiciary to adjudicate electoral disputes, five structural limitations persist: narrow standing rules, rigid evidentiary thresholds, judicial reluctance to exercise investigatory powers, opaque reasoning in judgments, and the absence of specialized electoral courts. These constraints reflect systemic tensions between formal judicial independence and the realities of constrained discretion in hybrid regimes. An empirical analysis of 127 Jordanian electoral appeal cases from 2013 to 2020 reveals that a mere 7% of disputed electoral outcomes were overturned, whereas 73% of allegations were disregarded due to insufficient evidence. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that only 31% of rulings were publicly accessible, in stark contrast to the 89% accessibility rate observed in Tunisia. By identifying and addressing these systemic limitations, the study contributes to ongoing discourse on institutional reform and democratic resilience. In doing so, it underscores the importance of robust electoral justice mechanisms for sustaining public trust, rule of law, and inclusive governance—principles central to political and institutional sustainability as reflected in Sustainable Development Goal 16.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15010003

Authors: Ana Maria Fagetan

This article provides a detailed comparative analysis of the transposition and implementation of the Renewable Energy Directives II and III (RED II and RED III), REPowerEU Plan, and the ‘Fit for 55’ package in France, Italy, and Germany. The analysis highlights the objectives, key legislative provisions, and national-scale achievements, challenges, advantages, and disadvantages—including implications for investment conditions and renewable energy financing mechanisms—associated with these pivotal European Union legislative frameworks, which, to a certain extent, induced a paradigm shift with varying degrees of impact in every Member State. The work is divided into four parts that follow this brief introductory outline of the problem. The introduction presents legal developments in renewable energy law in the European Union. The second part offers a comprehensive and in-depth examination of the European Union’s renewable energy regulatory framework and research gaps that hinder doctrinal tensions within the EU’s renewable energy legislative framework. In the third part, we analyze the transposition and implementation of each mentioned directive in the selected countries. The last part highlights commonalities, divergences, challenges, best practices, and lessons learned from each nation’s approach. This comparative analysis predicts that implementation success is inversely linked to administrative divergence, with France’s centralized legal system facilitating effective bureaucratic streamlining and higher predicted deployment, while the fragmented governance structures of Germany and Italy serve as structural impediments that critically undermine the EU’s acceleration mandate.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15010002

Authors: Mohamed Morsi Abdou

The existence of a legal framework for Artificial Intelligence systems is of great importance for the growth and development of this advanced technology, especially given the growing sense of legal insecurity that may arise from potential irreparable harm. Therefore, the issue of legal liability for AI systems is one of the most critical legal topics that should receive the attention of legal literature. This paper critically examines the tempting analogy between the liability of custodians and the liability of operators of AI systems under UAE law. This paper seeks to address this legal gap, by offering suggestions and sharing examples of the legal requirements necessary to establish appropriate liability rules for AI. This legal gap can be filled by improving the provisions of custodian liability in UAE law. Our analysis focuses on three main concerns: (i) proposing an expansion of the concept of thingness; (ii) discussing the challenges of applying legal custodianship; and (iii) concluding that autonomous AI systems are inherently dangerous. In this context, it is particularly important to analyse the specific aspects that should be taken into consideration when operating advanced AI systems, which include mandatory registration and insurance. The article concludes that applying the custodian liability provisions to the operators of AI systems ensures the protection of third parties from potential damage on one hand. On the other hand, the specific regulations governing the operation of these AI systems encourage investment in this vital field.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws15010001

Authors: Nicholas T. H. Farr Elliot J. Owen Rohan M. Bhalekar

The long-stop rule, under the UK Consumer Protection Act (CPA) 1987, imposes a 10-year limitation period for product liability claims, providing legal certainty for manufacturers and consumers. However, this timeframe is increasingly problematic in the case of medical devices, particularly implantable ones, which can fail decades after implantation. This review considers an extension to the long-stop period for medical devices, emphasising the need for patient protection, legal clarity, and reduced clinician burden, and contrasts the current UK system with the EU’s proposed 25-year long-stop period under the recently implemented 2024 Product Liability Directive. Through case studies, including surgical mesh and orthopaedic implants, the discussion highlights the challenges posed by delayed failure modes and the resulting difficulties in seeking redress within the 10-year window. Lastly, the role of publicly funded redress schemes and the evolving legal landscape are examined, underscoring the importance of reconsidering the current statutory limitations. Extending the long-stop period, combined with the use of explant analysis to evaluate defective medical devices, is proposed as a means to enhance patient safety and align with ongoing advancements in medical technology and regulation.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws14060099

Authors: Emilie Ghio

This paper argues that despite two decades of reform, the European Union’s (EU) insolvency framework remains structurally and behaviourally inaccessible to micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). While policy rhetoric has embraced the idea of a “rescue culture,” practical implementation has prioritised larger, well-resourced firms. Drawing on international guidance and case studies from Ireland, France, and the United States (US), the paper shows that legal reform alone is insufficient. Structural complexity, cultural stigma, and weak institutional outreach continue to block MSMEs’ access to rescue. The paper proposes a forward-looking agenda for EU reform centred on three pillars: legal simplification tailored to MSMEs, institutional scaffolding to enhance visibility and support, and cultural reframing to normalise restructuring as a second chance. It concludes that a functioning rescue culture must treat MSMEs not as scaled-down versions of large firms but as distinct users with unique constraints and capacities.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws14060098

Authors: Gulzhan Nusupzhanovna Mukhamadieva Akynkozha Kalenovich Zhanibekov Nurdaulet Mukhamediyaruly Apsimet Yerbol Temirkhanovich Alimkulov

Legal regulation and practical implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in Kazakhstan’s criminal procedure are considered within the context of judicial digital transformation. Risks arise for fundamental procedural principles, including the presumption of innocence, adversarial process, and protection of individual rights and freedoms. Legislative mechanisms ensuring lawful and rights-based application of AI in criminal proceedings are required to maintain procedural balance. Comparative legal analysis, formal legal research, and a systemic approach reveal gaps in existing legislation: absence of clear definitions, insufficient regulation, and lack of accountability for AI use. Legal recognition of AI and the establishment of procedural safeguards are essential. The novelty of the study lies in the development of concrete approaches to the introduction of artificial intelligence technologies into criminal procedure, taking into account Kazakhstan’s practical experience with the digitalization of criminal case management. Unlike existing research, which examines AI in the legal profession primarily from a theoretical perspective, this work proposes detailed mechanisms for integrating models and algorithms into the processing of criminal cases. The implementation of AI in criminal justice enhances the efficiency, transparency, and accuracy of case handling by automating document preparation, data analysis, and monitoring compliance with procedural deadlines. At the same time, several constraints persist, including dependence on the quality of training datasets, the impossibility of fully replacing human legal judgment, and the need to uphold the principles of the presumption of innocence, the right to privacy, and algorithmic transparency. The findings of the study underscore the potential of AI, provided that procedural safeguards are strictly observed and competent authorities exercise appropriate oversight. Two potential approaches are outlined: selective amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code concerning rights protection, privacy, and judicial powers; or adoption of a separate provision on digital technologies and AI. Implementation of these measures would create a balanced legal framework that enables effective use of AI while preserving core procedural guarantees.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws14060097

Authors: Giovanni Fabio Licata

This study examines the role of public procurement of artificial intelligence (AI) as a catalyst for transformative change in State functions. Building on the concept of transformative law, it argues that law should not merely regulate technological innovation but actively guide and shape it in accordance with democratic values and the rule of law. Within this framework, public procurement emerges as a strategic instrument for (re)structuring the very configuration of public governance and institutions. This analysis highlights key legal issues surrounding the procurement of AI, starting with the premise of its dual function: on the one hand, as a tool for optimising acquisition procedures and, on the other, as the object of acquisition itself. Among the most pressing issues analysed are the definitions of algorithmic legality and accountability, the asymmetry of expertise between public authorities and private suppliers, and the regulatory complexity that characterises the field, especially in light of the recently adopted EU AI Act. Finally, this study conceptualises the public procurement of AI as a form of legal infrastructure, capable of securing systemic and enduring transformations for the State and its institutions.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws14060096

Authors: Shilpi Pandey

This article examines the persistent legal invisibility of the Kashmiri Pandits within international frameworks on indigenous rights and internal displacement. Despite meeting definitional criteria under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, the community remains unrecognised as either indigenous or internally displaced. Drawing on Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), constructivist norm diffusion and decolonial intersectional critique, this article argues that this exclusion arises not from normative ambiguity but from geopolitical selectivity and epistemic suppression. Through doctrinal analysis of India’s treaty commitments, including its accession to the Genocide Convention (1959) and its interpretative reservation to Article 1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (1979), this study reveals how recognition is constrained by state narratives of sovereignty and secularism. Supported by evidence from the NHRC inquiry, IDMC displacement data, and comparative experiences such as Native American recognition this paper demonstrates that categories of protection in international law are applied unevenly, depending on political compatibility rather than legal principle. It calls for renewed engagement with epistemic justice and narrative accountability in rethinking indigeneity and displacement in postcolonial contexts.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws14060095

Authors: Gledis Nano Gentjan Skara

As Albania aspires to join the EU by 2030, harmonisation of existing and future legislation and ensuring proper implementation remain the main priorities. Several working groups have been established to deal with harmonisation and enforcement. Although scepticism about Albania’s 2030 membership exists among Albanian scholars and politicians about whether public administration can address this daunting task, Albanian citizens are hopeful about finally joining the EU. This paper analyses the extent to which Albanian legislation on the prevention of money laundering and financing of terrorism aligns with the Anti-Money Laundering Directives and how it is enforced. Using both traditional legal and comparative methodologies, this paper compares whether the Albanian anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism law aligns with the Anti-Money Laundering regime and assesses the level of enforcement of harmonised legislation. This paper concludes that, although the Albanian Law on anti-money laundering and terrorist financing largely aligns with the AML/FT Directive, proper implementation remains a challenge due to limited enforcement capacities, weak legal structures, and an essentially cash-based economy with a substantial informal economy.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws14060094

Authors: Osita Kingsley Odo Stephen Meyers Lilian Ebere Anazube Ijeoma J. Ogu Ijeoma Igwe

Persons with disabilities (PWDs) face disproportionate risks during humanitarian crises, yet their inclusion in aid delivery remains limited. To address this, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) introduced the Guidelines on the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action in 2019. The IASC guidelines provide a global framework for mainstreaming disability inclusion. This exploratory study examines how these guidelines are applied in Borno State, Northeastern Nigeria, a region marked by protracted conflict, displacement and insecurity. Using a qualitative phenomenological approach, data were gathered through in-depth interviews from 20 humanitarian practitioners and supplemented with secondary sources. Thematic analysis revealed that while organisations adopted strategies such as data disaggregation, door-to-door outreach and local committee representation, implementation was inconsistent and constrained by cultural beliefs about disability, political interference, population displacement and weak monitoring standards. The findings also highlighted that although the IASC Guidelines are good in principle, the guidelines require context-specific adaptation, stronger organisational commitment and active inclusive engagement with PWDs and their representative organisations. The study recommends incorporating disability inclusion through mandatory organisational policies, dedicated funding, community-based advocacy and improved data systems to ensure that humanitarian responses are both inclusive and sustainable.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws14060093

Authors: Wiwie Heryani Ratnawati Ratnawati Maskun Maskun Amaliyah Amaliyah Andi Muhammad Aswin Anas Muhammad Hasrul Asmunandar Asmunandar Muhammad Surya Gemilang Wafiq Azizah

Social assistance is one of the primary programs organized in developing countries in a bid to reduce poverty. In Indonesia, the government has allocated IDR 152 trillion toward poverty alleviation. However, the persistent misuse of social assistance funds has unfolded to be a serious concern. According to the Ombudsman of Indonesia, approximately 81.37% of the 1004 complaints received between 29 April and 29 May 2020 were related to the misuse and misallocation of COVID-19 social assistance funds. Therefore, this study aims to comprehensively describe the legal enforcement model for preventing the misuse of social assistance funds and to identify the challenges faced by law enforcement from the perspective of legal sociology. In order to achieve the stated objectives, a qualitative approach grounded in legal sociology was adopted, utilizing empirical study methods. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with academics specializing in administrative law and public policy, as well as through an extensive review of the relevant literature. Subsequently, the gathered data were analyzed qualitatively using a descriptive approach. The obtained results showed that the key challenges in preventing the misuse of social assistance funds include weak regulatory frameworks, limited competency among law enforcement officials, and inadequate institutional infrastructure. Cultural factors were also found to play a significant role in influencing the effectiveness of law enforcement. Based on these insights, preventive measures were inferred to be essential and should focus specifically on strengthening the legal structure and utilizing technological tools to enhance transparency and monitoring. Accordingly, the substance of social assistance laws must be revised to include more detailed and specific provisions, while repressive measures should impose stricter sanctions on individuals who engage in misuse. Fostering a shift in the legal culture of society was also considered very important. These combined efforts are expected to reduce the misuse of social assistance funds, improve legal enforcement effectiveness, and essentially contribute to poverty reduction in Indonesia.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws14060092

Authors: Ancui Liu

The Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) sets target-based and actionable commitments for the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to facilitate its implementation. It is a strategic document that guides global biodiversity governance up to 2030 and beyond, including 2050. To achieve the 4 goals and 23 targets of the GBF, the parties to the CBD must adopt national biodiversity strategies and action plans, establish national targets, and strengthen their domestic biodiversity laws. By comparing China and the European Union’s (the EU’s) legal approaches to operationalizing the GBF targets, insights are obtained into how to improve both China and the EU’s national implementation of the GBF as well as the global collective implementation. Both China and the EU should formalize national targets and requirements as outlined in their respective policy documents. They also need to streamline legal frameworks and measures related to biodiversity and enhance the effective implementation of the legal measures, against the backdrop of China enacting its environmental code and the EU adopting the Nature Restoration Law.

Laws doi: 10.3390/laws14060091

Authors: Johnny Sakr

Article 43(2) of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions defines combatants but does not specify that they must be human. Bundle Theory, which views identity as a collection of rights and duties, suggests that legal personhood is unnecessary for combatant status. Artificial intelligence, while not a legal person, could meet the functional criteria of a combatant, such as Roe v Wade (1973), where personhood was contextually recognised. Similarly, artificial intelligence could be classified as a combatant under international as participating in hostilities and adhering to a command structure. This parallels Roe v. humanitarian law without being granted full legal personhood.