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Introduction. The communicative theory of law put forward in the first years of the XXI century by A. V. Polyakov received further development in the next decade due to the substantiation of the metatheoretical foundation of this theory in the doctrine of legal recognition as the transcendental basis of law. The idea of objectifi cation of law through recognition proposed by A. V. Polyakov becomes the basis of a new humanistic understanding of law, which asserts the key character of trust in legal genesis. Theoretical analysis. The development of the doctrine of recognition as the foundation of legal genesis begins with the substantiation of the idea of recognition of law. A. V. Polyakov connects the very possibility of law with the fact that interacting subjects must not only understand the boundaries of their behavior, but also continuously coordinate them with each other. In this process, each of the subjects must recognize the presence of symmetrical abilities in the counterparty, therefore, recognition is the unity of intellectual and cognitive aspects of law with emotional and axiological one, which asserts the primacy of freedom, equality, dignity and responsibility of the participants in the interaction. From this thesis A. V. Polyakov deduces four aspects of formal equality – communicative equality, normative legal equality, equality as a legal ideal and equality as conformity. Еmpirical analysis. The author considers the conceptual transition from the idea of law as recognition to the principle of mutual legal recognition. Legal recognition as a principle is based on the ontological fact of the existence of Another as a representative of the human race, recognition of the human status of Another means the acceptance by an individual of responsibilities corresponding to the rights of Another as a response to expectations about their own rights. Results. A. V. Polyakov revealed the transcendental foundations of law through the analysis of legal recognition. These data deepen the provisions of the communicative theory of law on the ontological status of law, give the doctrine of legal communication a metaphysical and existential perspective, considering a person in the unity of his / her cognitive, emotional and volitional abilities.

The third gender, popularly known as ‘hijra’, is a gender non-conforming person residing in Bangladesh. The government of Bangladesh granted legal recognition (LR) in 2013 to acknowledge them as a third gender. Thus, using an exploratory qualitative inquiry, the study sought to understand how LR affected the lives of the third gender community in the Khulna district of Bangladesh. Thirteen participants were selected following snowball sampling, and data were collected using in-depth interviews and key informant interviews. In the domain of socio-cultural dynamics, we found that the LR had enhanced the social participation of the third gender community and given them a sense of identity. On the contrary, within the domain of economic lives, the LR has not been able to change their economic situation. Moreover, in the third domain, we observed an improved situation for the third gender population in their right to vote and political participation, but in accessing healthcare facilities, inheritance, and legal services, LR remained unsatisfactory. The study recommends promoting acceptance and reducing social stigma towards the third gender community through awareness campaigns, providing professional training programs to enable their financial independence, and enacting laws to protect their rights in Bangladesh.

The regulatory approach of international conventions on the transport of goods regarding some important issues in the field of electronic transport documents, such as the legal recognition of electronic transport documents, their functions and legal force makes the subject of analysis in this paper. The overall reach and limitations of the relevant convention rules are also included in the analysis. Conventions in the field of transport of goods, neither conceptually nor in terms of important issues, do not approach the problem of legal regulation of electronic transport documents in the same manner. While some conventions try to approach this problem systematically, in some branches of transport, the conventions are still applicable which, with their content, only implicitly enable the use of electronic transport documents. Regarding the completeness of the regulation of this matter, the Rotterdam Rules and the Additional Protocol to the CMR Convention stand out, but they differ in terms of the adequacy of regulation and final reach. The Rotterdam Rules, despite a very ambitious approach, have failed to adequately resolve the most challenging issue of this entire matter, which is the effective accomplishing of the subject matter-legal functions of a portable electronic record, which greatly reduced its ultimate reach. On the other hand, the Additional Protocol established a completely satisfactory legal foundations for the application of electronic transport documents in road transport.

This article argues that the current rising trend in the use of smart contracts requires a radical update of existing legislation. It intends, in the first instance, to outline a notion of the “smart contract”, and then to highlight different understandings of it in the EU and the USA. This article analyses the existing legislation specifically enacted to address smart contracts. From a comparative perspective, the issue of how the existing contract law adapts to regulate and enforce smart contracts in the common and civil law countries is discussed. In light of this, the author analyses whether a smart contract conforms with the common law and civil law requirements for the formation of a valid and legally binding contract. The author concludes that the common principles of traditional civil law will likely apply to agreements memorialised in code. This paper also outlines the notion that the emergence of “crypto-legal structures” is required due to the peculiarities of the incorporation smart contracts into different legal systems.

In this paper, the author will critically reexamine the 1918 unification of Montenegro and Serbia, challenging the views which claim that it had no legal basis in the then-valid (international) legal order. The author disregards these claims made by the critics of the unification by exposing their methodological and logical inconsistency. In doing so, by citing original documents the author attempts to actually recreate the adjudicating process by which this question had been solved within the realm of the international law and, in doing so, he brings the reader’s attention to certain theoretically interesting aspects of the international law, such as its overall nature, its adjudicating process and its adjudicating bodies (institutions), which are of utmost theoretical importance.

This paper aims to analyse legal recognition of polyamorous relationships and to examine the main obstacles to its feasibility in the short run. Preliminarily, I shall make a few notes on the state of the art in the matter of polyamory, discuss relevant terminology issues, and enumerate some of the main features of polyamorous relationships with a view to framing the debate on their legal recognition. Polyamorous relationships are then contextualized in the light of the radical changes which the traditional family has undergone since the second half of the 20th century. It is my claim that polyamorous relationships can be considered only the latest stage in that process of transformation, and that they will enjoy legal recognition at a sooner or later date. However, I shall acknowledge that this will probably not occur in the short term, and I shall analyse the main reasons why. My concluding argument is, nevertheless, that legal recognition of such relationships may be hailed as desirable.

‘What is family?’ is an impossible question. Singular definitions in the legal realm are predominant in the West. Such definitions are no longer tenable. The concept of family has been put under strain by both empirical and normative evolutions concerning the ways in which we do family. More generally, family arrangements have reached unusual levels of complexity. Queer families are slowly gaining social and, to a limited extent, legal visibility All articles within this themed section engage with the topic of the law/queer families relationship. This topic should be nested within the larger framework of queer theories and their connection with law. To sum up, a recurring question is: ‘Is law a good idea?’. In turn, locating the question whether law is a good idea in the context of family is a useful resource to seek an answer, however plural, inconclusive, and tentative.

The following paper aims to contribute to the Italian literature on non-monogamy with a psychosocial interpretation towards the future of the political and legal recognition requests of non-monogamous and queer relationships, as well as of their families. Starting with a reflection on how normativities position those who are outside the binaries as noises to be ignored or cancelled, the paper then provides a critique of the concept of evaluation as a tool for acquiring rights (as it does not find a counterpart in the different-gender relationships). Psychosocial studies on the relationship quality of non-monogamous people should be used to strenghten the demands for the legal recognitions of non-monogamous relationships, families and multi-parenting. In fact, the available international literature has given voice and confirmed what the many polyfamilies experience in everyday life: that these families (non-monogamous, open, poly, extended, childless * or not) are a social reality with their positive charachteristics and criticalities. Starting from examples on the erasure of bisexualities and ame-gender families recognition – the paper discuss how including these types of psychosocial research can improve our struggle for the recognition and legal rights of non-monogamous agreements and relationships.

The strapline “life finds a way,” from the classic movie Jurassic Park, referred to how the all-female dinosaurs in a theme park had been able to reproduce, despite the laws of nature. Similarly, the participants in the present study described how their lesbian mothers had shown that “life finds a way,” when having children and forming a family, prior to the legal recognition of same-sex parents in Sweden. The study draws on interviews with eight young Swedish adults, aged 17–30 (average age 25). They had been raised by lesbian couples but were born prior to the legal recognition of same-sex parenthood. Prior to a legal change in 2003, a same-sex couple could not share legal parenthood. Further, female couples were excluded from Swedish assisted reproduction programs until 2005. The interviews have been analyzed thematically, and the article presents the results in four themes. The first theme, circumvent, oppose, or adapt to legal obstacles, shows the participants’ reflections on how their parents navigated legal obstacles in order to have children and to live together as a family. The second theme, legal obstacles do not affect everyday life, depicts a common experience of how a lack of legal recognition seldom mattered to the participants during their childhood. Rather, they explained how their parents had been able to form parenthood and close relations without legal recognition. In contrast, the third theme describes occasions when legal parenthood matters. This theme highlights occasions when the lack of legal parenthood was problematic or devastating for the participants, such as when parents divorced, or one parent died. The final theme, the meaning of legal parents in adulthood, explores the participants’ reflections on the meaning and impact of legal ties (or lack of legal ties) between themselves as young adults and their parents. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research on children and young adults with same-sex parents.

In recent years, a new reality of refugees made its appearance, it is migration induced by ecological changes and disasters. These victims have no legal recognition in international law, since the regime of international protection of refugees was not designed to cope with situations of disturbance of the environment. The urgency of the future moments of populations due to environmental causes has motivated us to think about legal concepts, able to advance legal research on international protection of environmental refugees.

Whilst the academic world has already started analysing the legal recognition of de facto couples (coppie di fatto), even more so since the Italian Parliament began discussing the Bill on the Patto civile di solidarietà (Pacs), the political debate on de facto couples has become more and more articulated after the Government drafted its bill on ‘Rights and duties of cohabitants’ (DiCo) early in 2007. Subsequently, the Italian Parliament recast previous proposals, including the governmental one, in a new bill introducing the ‘Contract of solidarity union’ (CUS). In this paper, both the general orientations and the specific traits of each of these three bills will be reviewed, against the background of both European and global experiences and good practices. It will be argued that, whilst there are significant differences in the general inspiration that characterises each bill, the reductionist concept of ‘solidarity’ runs across them as a common thread. Acknowledging the importance of this concept, it is claimed that the focus on reductionist solutions is derived from a frame of reference characterised by the binary approach of the Constitutional court and scholars alike, which insulates the traditional family from critical review and confines all other cohabitation arrangements within the boundaries of ‘solidaristic’ unions. It will thus be speculated that the Italian anomaly lies precisely in the fact that reductionist legislative solutions have up until now been presented by mainstream discourse as the maximum of legal protection that may be supported. It is argued that this approach neglects both the specific problem of marital equality for same-sex couples and the problematisation of broader concepts of masculinity and homophobia in Italian society. While maintaining that the Italian debate on de facto couples is deficient in terms of both the internal law reform process and openness towards foreign legal schemes, as recent court cases demonstrate, it is concluded that the way out of the present cul-de-sac could be more easily found once legal scholars accept that the right questions to be asked are different from the ones asked thus far.