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This paper examines the extrajudicial use of legal norms by activists. It aims to show how law serves as a useful symbolic resource for activists to strengthen their strategies for political pressure outside the courts. It does this through a qualitative investigation of six citizen debt audit groups from three European countries (France, Belgium, and Spain). Based on an analysis of legal provisions mobilised by activists in public documents, when addressing decision-makers, and in interviews, we identify several common uses of the law: the 'legal call to order'; the 'contradiction game between norms of the same legal order'; the 'call to derogation of certain norms'; and, the 'call to produce new norms'. This work is a valuable contribution to legal consciousness studies. We assert that activists have a complex legal consciousness, being neither completely enchanted ('before the law'), nor completely withdrawn ('against the law'). In their political interventions, the citizen audit groups under study rely on certain legal norms that they consider legitimate to make claims, while they seek to disqualify others of the same legal order. One can thus contest positive law without being against the law per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the seventeenth century, missionaries in China translated a vast array of Chinese works, including classics, official histories, and legal documents. Their translations have been analysed through several perspectives, yet their use of Chinese dictionaries has been largely overlooked. In the context of the Rites Controversy, between the Jesuits on one side and the Dominican and Franciscan friars on the other, precise references to authoritative Chinese dictionaries were made to corroborate their interpretation of Chinese rituals as either religious or secular. This article first describes why and how missionaries started from the early beginning of the mission in the 1580s to write their own bilingual dictionaries based on existing Western and Chinese dictionaries. Then, it considers how the same dictionaries became an important reference when the Rites Controversy erupted in the 1630s. Based on manuscript and printed documents written until 1670, three Chinese characters which became the focus of competing interpretations are discussed: miao as temple versus hall, ji as sacrifice versus offering, and sheng as prophet versus wise man. Besides the problem of biased translations on both sides, we shall show that there was a more fundamental reason which prevented the missionaries from settling their controversy using dictionaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increased usage of generative artificial intelligence (AI) within the legal profession has prompted responses from the judiciary, resulting in the issuance of various practice directives. The spectrum of these directives ranges from conservative recommendations to more radical measures demanding lawyers to disclose their use of generative AI in the preparation of legal documents or certify the absence of such software in their creation. This article explores the development of a comprehensive framework for judicial guidance on generative AI use in legal proceedings in Canada, highlighting key elements of such guidance. The author contemplates a ‘training’ approach to regulating generative AI use in legal proceedings, focusing more on the user than the technology itself. This approach emphasises the need for judicial guidance to balance constructive engagement with generative AI with lawyers’ ethical responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the recent disability legislation in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Maldives after signing the CRPD in 2006. Through a systematic comparative approach, this study identifies and examines the commonalities and differences in the provisions, participation of persons with disabilities (PWD), educational considerations, and rights of women with disabilities within their disability Acts. Qualitative content analysis has been used for thematic analysis of the content of these legal documents. The analysis revealed that a shared philosophical assumption existed across the Acts influenced by the social model of disability, while variations exist in the definition of disabilities across these Acts. It was found that due emphasis was placed on the involvement of PWD in regulatory committees in all Acts taken in the study. However, the level and extent of participation in these committees vary among countries. The nature of the educational provision is more inclined towards inclusive education across these Acts. However, not all of these four practices fully include PWD. Less emphasis has been put on including the rights of women with disabilities in the Acts. This article accentuates the importance of comparative studies for cross-country learning and the potential for adapting ideas to suit respective countries' national contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The surge in the utilization of generative artificial intelligence within the legal profession, particularly in preparing legal documents, has prompted a flurry of responses from the judiciary, including practice directives and standing orders. These varied responses have either directly or implicitly referred to litigants using "hallucinated" cases generated by large language models (LLMs) as a major concern. This article briefly evaluates these responses, making conclusions on their propriety and relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Editorial statutes are standardizing documents that organize and structure the media. They are a legal provision allowing them to define their ethical principles and conduct, establish their identity and ideology, and create a communication pact with their audiences. Editorial statutes can thus be considered mechanisms of media responsibility, accountability, and transparency. In Portugal, such statutes are legally required and are often perceived as formal, general, and bland documents. This paper presents a study of sixteen editorial statutes of the Portuguese press, designed to understand the issues and values of these documents. Thirty-eight categories were identified across three key dimensions: self-definition, normative values, and ideological elements. While these dimensions seek to address the requirements set out in the Portuguese Media Law, this analysis defies the common concepts of superficiality and homogeneity of editorial statutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the shift in international water law from traditional nation-state governance to embracing hydrological units such as watersheds through the lens of scalar politics. It scrutinizes how the United Nations Water Conventions, by advocating various legal principles such as equity and no harm, have triggered rescaling in transboundary water governance globally. Through an extensive survey of legal documents, this paper further uncovers diverse scalar reconfigurations that permeate bilateral, multilateral and regional water treaties and interface with existing social, political and legal structures across different regions, highlighting the multiplicity of rescaling processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We illustrate the evolution of a social problem by describing the history of the switchblade knife and claims used by moral entrepreneurs to change the switchblade's legal status in American. To investigate this issue, we conduct a historical-event analysis using legal documents, newspapers, magazines, advertisements, books, and testimonials. We argue that the switchblade's deviant status evolved not from the objective harm it caused, but rather, from sensational claims made by moral entrepreneurs. In our analysis, politicians successfully singled out and redefined the switchblade as a vicious weapon with no legitimate civilian use and created concern for this particular knife by drawing attention to its associations with a dangerous class and criminal behavior. Additionally, we show how politico-moral entrepreneurs utilize sensational claims and sketchy data to create, proliferate, and regulate a new social problem. We conclude by discussing the role of power regarding the ability to define and regulate social problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel approach to utilizing open-source legal databases in academic education, especially in the fields of law and police investigations. Our framework provides a way to organize and analyze this data and extract reports that are associated with crime scenes, addressing the challenge of classifying unstructured legal documents by using text mining, natural language processing, and machine learning techniques. We developed a supervised machine learning model capable of accurately classifying court documents based on two classifiers: one identifies the documents containing crime scenes, and the other classifies them into five types of crimes. The experimental results were promising, as the random forest algorithm achieved an accuracy of 91.07% for the first classifier and support vector machines achieved an accuracy of 82.46% for the second classifier. What distinguishes our work is the creation of a crime dictionary that includes 70 crime tools and 151 related terms extracted from various forensic sources. It is considered relatively small, but it contributed to giving good classification results. The proposed crime dictionary can be generalized, developed, used in advanced searches, and integrated with police databases to improve crime scene analysis. Overall, the research highlights the use of court databases in police academic education and attempts to utilize them in a more effective manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regularisation of informal settlements has become a common initiative for addressing urban development and growth in many cities in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, its governance is still complex and unexplored. This study thus aims to examine and understand the governance challenges of regularising informal settlements in peri-urban Tanzania. A case study design with a combination of discussions from two participatory workshops and document analysis was used to collect empirical and theoretical data. Findings show that the regularisation of informal settlements is challenged by existing structural governance operations driven by stakeholders, particularly community leaders and planning and surveying firms. Consequently, regularisation processes are delayed or halted, which demoralises the landholders. To ensure effective and efficient governance structures for regularisation activities, it is essential that responsible actors diligently play their roles as mandated in the policy and legal documents. Accountability and transparency should be reinforced in the operation and implementation of regularisation schemes to ensure adherence to guiding policies and laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues both that the Physician's Tale explicitly addresses the sexually threatening nature of employment for women, and that it offers a suggestive parallel to the situation as it may have unfolded between Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecily Chaumpaigne, who in 1380 released Chaucer from her raptus: de raptu meo. Chaucer's Physician's Tale presents a chance to consider the ways Chaucer envisions both the mind of a rapist and rape culture in general, including especially what feminist philosopher Kate Manne calls "himpathy" and victim-blaming. In this tale, a churl presents a case in which he alleges abduction in order to commit abduction—for the purpose of rape. Chaucer's many alterations to his sources present Virginia, the victim/protagonist, as what Judith M. Bennett has called a "singlewoman," a fourteenth-century category of woman especially vulnerable to coercive labor laws under the Statute of Laborers. In this article, then, I show how this tale and its lessons about Chaucer's own understanding of gendered labor, sexual assault, and discursive power challenge recent conclusions about the legal documents relating to Chaucer and Chaumpaigne. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explore the barriers that prevent the implementation of occupational health and safety regulations in Lebanon. A qualitative approach was adopted including a document analysis of the available legal documents pertaining to occupational health and safety at the national level and ten in-depth interviews with professionals in the field of occupational health and safety in Lebanon. Our findings show that the implementation of the occupational health and safety regulations in Lebanon is hindered by several barriers including the lack of a holistic legal framework, lack of promotion of a health and safety culture at work, insufficient number of labor inspectors, insufficient training for labor inspectors, lack of necessary tools and equipment, lack of an adequate documentation system, hierarchy within the Ministry of Labor, weak compliance, and the influence of the informal sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the authorial projections of the comics artist in Kiko da Silva's El infierno del dibujante (2015) and argues that da Silva creates a work with conflicted authorship in which he actively engages with metafiction, not only including numerous paratexts in the form of fictional facsimile (images, documents, etc.) that highlight the materiality of comics but also expanding the work through online and public happenings. Da Silva's graphic novel appropriates various graphic styles and genres to pay tribute to and/or parody real cartoonists that influence the protagonist, a failed author whose life paradoxically becomes the comic he always wanted to write. In portraying a character who is supposedly plagiarised, El infierno del dibujante also provides a reflection on the notion of originality and copy in art, drawing attention to the comics industry and the production, reception and social recognition of comics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-2017 Zimbabwean laws have remained hostile to business, contradicting Emmerson Mnangagwa's promise to citizens and the international business community to make Zimbabwe flourish economically. Seven million Zimbabweans were on the brink of starvation in 2018 forcing Mnangagwa to use Statutory Instruments (SIs) to promote business, create employment, and defeat poverty. Yet, many Zimbabweans remain prevented from meaningfully contributing to reviving the economy. This article considers if the Mnangagwa administration's political priorities and economic choices have undermined the very legal framework of the SIs intended to promote business confidence amongst citizens. The aspiration to better the lives of citizens by implementing regional trade liberalisation policies is based on theories of flexible integration and derogation. This article interrogates the legal frameworks of selected Statutory Instruments (SIs) and evaluates their impact on Zimbabwean livelihoods. It argues that Mnangagwa's administration has implemented SIs arbitrarily, making it difficult for citizens to contribute positively to the creation of wealth for all. This is important because it shows the dangers of subordinating economic policies under the political imperative to remain in power. Reform of the legal provisions of SIs is needed to balance the political and economic aspirations of citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uncertainties are always involved in construction projects, and most on-site assessments rely on qualitative data to determine the level of risk to which workers are exposed. Furthermore, the majority of legal documents for companies and statistical data are inadequate for risk analysis. This aspect enhances the uncertainty of the worksite circumstances. This research aims to propose a novel approach in a fuzzy environment to consider the uncertainties and interdependencies for the risk assessment of occupational safety in construction projects. Occupational safety risk factors (OSRFs) are identified using an expert panel. An extended decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) with interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy numbers is integrated with the Choquet integral to obtain robust interdependencies between OSRFs. Then, the extended technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) method with the intuitionistic fuzzy set (IFs) is applied to obtain the priorities of OSRFs. Moreover, an intuitionistic fuzzy weighted average (IFWA) operator is employed to integrate the individual judgments of experts for ranking the degree of importance of OSRFs. Eventually, the sensitivity analysis is conducted and the robustness and validity of results from the suggested approach are verified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consistent with Convention 87 of the International Labour Organization (ILO), Section 79 of the Labour Act, 2003 (Act 651) empowers every employee in an organization to either form or join a trade union of their choice for the promotion and protection of their economic and social interests. In spite of this legal provision, union coverage and density in Ghana have continually declined in recent years. The decline in union density and coverage is likely to decrease the collective bargaining strength of unions. It is against this background that our study seeks to examine the effect of unions' bargaining (proxied by union presence variable) on wages in Ghana. We employ the Heckman Selection Model and quantile regression technique to analyze data extracted from the sixth round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS 6) and 2015 Ghana Labour Force Survey (GLFS 2015) respectively. The findings indicate that unions' bargaining effect on wages is positive. Furthermore, the study finds that the union wage premium is highest at the lowest point of the wage distribution (25th quantile) but lowest at the highest point of the wage distribution (75th quantile). Whilst the study acknowledges the importance of education in earnings determination, we recommend that low-wage employees in a non-union establishment should join a trade union in order to earn a living/decent wage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The freedom of religion or belief is internationally recognized. However, studies demonstrate that the implementation of the right to apostasy, an essential aspect of this freedom, encounters difficulties in state practices. Doctrinal and historical research is conducted regarding the UN legal documents and the drafting history in order to demonstrate that the phrasing of the freedom to change religion in the provisions has been gradually altered since the legal establishment in 1948. Within the UN, member states have succeeded in changing the provisions, resulting in conceptual ambiguity regarding the right to apostasy. It is a matter of concern that there is little recognition, within the UN and in academia, of the fact that the explicit right to apostasy has been disregarded, resulting in diminishing the normative force of the religious freedom provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As structural inequalities within universities persist, universities increasingly develop diversity policies. Much diversity research focuses on the gap between universities' commitments and actual practices. This paper takes a different approach by scrutinizing how diversity documents enact politics of time that results in their selective non-performativity. We demonstrate how diversity documents at a Dutch university compose diversity as a problem of time for which the near future is crucial. It legitimizes action in the here-and-now to realize the diverse future, while simultaneously delegitimizes it by envisioning diversity as a problem that resolves itself in time. Along such urgent, yet inevitable progress, a competition between gender and ethnic diversity emerges. As the documents engage in a white politics of time, change for white women becomes realizable in concrete, time-bound actions. In contrast, people of color appear to lag behind and have yet to arrive in a time where progress could be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Viterbo engages primarily with childhood studies, critical legal studies, critical human rights scholarship, and literatures on Israel/Palestine. In doing so, human rights NGOs have aligned with the discourse of the Israeli state and might have contributed to depriving Palestinians of valuable support and care while imprisoned. Hedi Viterbo's remarkable and innovative new book is an invitation to rethink common assumptions about childhood, law, and human rights in Israel/Palestine and beyond. [Extracted from the article]

Afghans' protracted displacement is a geopolitical legacy from the Cold War. Although Pakistan's return policymaking has foreseen the complete voluntary return of Afghans since the end of the Cold War, then as now, about three million Afghans reside in Pakistan. This article advances the notion of calculated informality to dissolve this seeming contradiction. Pakistan's policymakers have excelled in calculated informality by successfully navigating the domestic and geopolitical arena over time based on practices of deregulation and ambiguity. Methodologically, the article applies Evolutionary Governance Theory (EGT) to reconstruct Pakistan's return governance path based on the analysis of legal documents, previous research and secondary literature. EGT reveals the dependencies and layering at work in return governance and points out how the geopolitical positionality of Pakistan has determined its return policymaking. The structured interconnectedness of path-, goal- and interdependencies illustrates rigidities of the governance path and why opacity and ambiguity in return governance persist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the intertextuality of asylum documents by analysing the links between the documents in various stages of the process. The paper argues that the asylum process materialises in asylum documents and that these documents are inherently intertextual. Thus, they create intertextual chains, that is, they are based on previous documents, which in turn become sources of subsequent documents, thereby creating new links to the chain. The article traces two asylum cases in Finland from the asylum interview to the appeal process while paying special attention to recontextualisation, inclusion and exclusion, assumptions, and absences. The analysis also shows how the inclusions and exclusions can be used in recontextualisation, how the assumptions and absences intertwine with one another, and what kind of consequences these may have for an asylum process. The paper provides an opening in discussing how asylum documents are formed as intertextual chains and how they can be reformed in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, there are no legal provisions for same-sex partnerships in Japan. Despite a gradual rising awareness of nontraditional partnerships and family forms, the parenting and family formation intentions of same-sex couples and their experiences of living as nontraditional families in Japanese society are still rarely studied. This study qualitatively explored the social experiences of Japanese women with same-sex partners regarding parenting intentions and family formation. The researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 women aged 30–40 years with same-sex partners. Data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. A central theoretical category that emerged was "Sexual minority self is recalled through the child's contact with society." The subcategories revealed that participants both with and without children perceived becoming a parent and forming their own family positively. However, being a parent or forming a nontraditional family implied an increased exposure of their identities as sexual minority individuals through contact with the society to which they aspired to belong. Parenting and family formation are perceived by these women both as a bridge that connects them with the society and as a psychological strain that makes them rediscover the difference. Education on family form diversity should support these women's well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key discourse underpinning US antitrust law is that it protects competition, not competitors. However, what this means in practice both has changed over time and betrays the politics underlying antitrust enforcement. This article interrogates this discourse and its contradictions in the context of the AT&T-Time Warner merger lawsuit through a critical discourse analysis of legal documents related to the case. The case represents a conflict over incentivizing competition in digital advertising markets at the expense of competition, particularly smaller competitors, in video markets. The analysis reveals how the discourse obscures the strategic choices made by courts to protect incumbent companies: by approving the merger, the court circumscribed the video programming and distribution market for consolidation to strengthen the competitive position of the merging parties in the digital advertising market dominated by Facebook and Google. Thus, this discourse masks not just the deference to dominant merging companies, but also the role of courts in shaping market competition at their behest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional or industry-based interest groups have long been a feature of the Nigerian political landscape. Nevertheless, studies of these interest groups in Nigerian politics have largely privileged the analysis of individual groups or considered their collective role in the democratic transition of the 1990s. By returning the scholarly focus to their raison d'être, namely, their shared economic concerns, this article offers a comprehensive theory of interest groups in Nigerian politics. This novel theory posits that federal-level interest groups draw their membership from across Nigeria's diverse ethnic, regional, and class constituencies due to their common economic concerns. Moreover, these groups actively lobby the federal government in pursuit of their economic advantage, often in direct competition with each other. Neither aloof from nor coopted by the state, the most prominent interest groups in Nigeria enjoy formalized positions within the bureaucracy from which to exert their influence and pursue the unique interests of their members. To develop this theory, this article employs new data and documents on the lobbying efforts of interest groups during the reform process of corporate law in Nigeria across a thirty-year period. Elite interviews, previously unpublished documents, and archival legal documents evidence their lobbying efforts. Examining the reform of corporate law across Nigeria's later military regimes and the democratic Fourth Republic (1999–present) demonstrates the relevance of this theory of interest groups for both historical and contemporary understandings of Nigerian politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the tension between regulations aimed at hindering the mobility of irregular migrants in Europe and the individuals who identify with humanitarian ideals and assist rejected asylum seekers. Drawing on legal document analysis and qualitative interviews with individuals who have supported rejected asylum seekers from Afghanistan, this study analyses how the term 'humanitarian assistance' is interpreted both legally and socially in the Norwegian context. Although Norway has implemented a humanitarian exception from criminal liability for humanitarian assistance to irregular migrants, the concept of humanitarian assistance is narrowly interpreted as life-saving assistance provided by publicly known formal organisations. This is in contrast with the broader understanding of humanitarian assistance maintained by the respondents, who understand the term as support beyond mere physical survival and which includes upholding human rights. It is shown that even though respondents align themselves with international human rights and humanitarian motives, they might still be prosecuted by the EU and national legislation. It is argued that the criminalisation of acts that are commonly deemed as morally right and humanitarian challenges fundamental principles of the use of punishment as a tool to prohibit harm in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refugee-background youth in the Australian context have long been confronted with a series of challenges surrounding their living and educational conditions. However, limited research has been conducted to examine the underlying factors of such problems. This paper critically explores possible factors that contribute to or intensify the challenges that refugee-background children and youth face in Australia by scrutinising related legal documents and education policies (e.g. inclusive and language transition policies). It is argued that the living and learning crisis among refugee-background youth in Australia is a result of: (a) restrictive refugee law; (b) incomplete education policy; and (c) deep-rooted political and historical views on refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Having considered the judgments of the Divisional Court and Supreme Court in I Ziegler i , the Supreme Court in the I Northern Ireland Reference i was clear: the dictum at para 59 of the Supreme Court's judgment in I Ziegler i did not establish a universal rule. 1. In I Reference by the Attorney General for Northern Ireland - Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Northern Ireland) Bill i ,[1] the Supreme Court considered whether an offence created by cl 5(2)(a) of the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Northern Ireland) Bill ("the Bill") was within the competence of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The parties' submissions on proportionality centred on the decision of the Supreme Court in I Ziegler i and of the Divisional Court in I Cuciurean i . In I Cuciurean i , the Court observed that the Supreme Court in I Ziegler i expressed its reasoning solely in the context of the lawful excuse defence to a charge under s 137 of the Highways Act 1980. [Extracted from the article]

The aim of the IEP is that the definition of "ecocide" would serves as a basis for an amendment to the Rome Statute, which would make "ecocide" the fifth international crime by adding a new Article 8ter. The IEP did not have to define the mental element of the proposed crime of "ecocide" because, unlike the statutes of previous international tribunals, Article 30 of the ICC Statute provides a I general i rule for establishing the mental element of criminal responsibility that is applicable to all crimes subject to the Courts jurisdiction. After several months of discussions, the IEP presented a legal definition of the crime of "ecocide" in June 2021.[10] According to the expert panel: ... "ecocide" means unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts. As the next section discusses, the definition of the mental element of lability for ecocide triggered similar problems: the IEP recognized that the crime may often be committed with reckless disregard for the environment rather than a concrete intent to harm it, but ambiguously relied on the term "knowledge" of the crimes in the actual definition. [Extracted from the article]

The stereotype literature views responses of a subordinated group to stereotypes as a unified attempt to counter the control and domination of its identity. Complexities that exist within the unified response of the subordinated group have drawn less attention. Using a qualitative content analysis of text-based data (newspapers, legal documents, press releases, scholarly works), the paper examines responses of two American Muslim organizations to the terrorism stereotype. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a representative of the American Muslim mainstream majority and the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a representative of 'moderate' Muslims have been consistently denouncing terrorism in all its forms. The unified response, voiced in the denouncement of terrorism, is explained through the depersonalization hypothesis of self-categorization theory, suggesting that an increase in saliency of the Muslim identity predicts greater perceived homogeneity of the group. Yet, beyond this unified response, there are profound differences in these organizations' views, positions, and tactics toward combating the terrorism stereotype. Such variations depend on the perceived legitimacy of the source of negative stereotypes. Future research should study other stereotypical traits associated with Muslims in the US, to identify the existence of complex internal dynamics within various Muslim groups countering negative stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zambia experienced an episode of distinct democratic backsliding between 2011 and 2021. Autocratisation resulted from the deliberate use of legal mechanisms to enhance executive power. Tracing key legal changes through legal documents, press reports and informant interviews, the article examines this recent episode of autocratisation as a consequence of a poorly institutionalised party system in a fledgling and unconsolidated presidential democracy. We show that under PF rule, autocratisation resulted from the deliberate use of legal mechanisms to enhance executive power, stifle the opposition, muzzle the press and undermine civil society forces. The election of opposition candidate Hakainde Hichilema in August 2021 may have ended this episode of backsliding as for the third time in the country´s history, power changed peacefully through the ballot box. But, to what extent the 2021 elections will move Zambia away from this authoritarian trend is uncertain as the state of the country's political institutions, hereunder a poorly institutionalised party system in an unconsolidated presidential democracy, may leave it vulnerable to further episodes of backsliding. The main contribution of this paper is the documentation of the role of lawfare in processes of autocratisation, and how integral it has been to the decline of democracy in Zambia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In tenure and promotion denial lawsuits against historically White institutions, Black professors submit evidence of discrimination based on implicit and explicit bias and gendered racism, yet legal redress rarely occurs because many courts will not recognize structural inequities as a persisting reality in academia. Informed by intersectional theory and methodology, this qualitative study synthesized data from legal documents of four tenure denial lawsuits filed by Black professors, with the results presented as a fictionalized composite counternarrative affirming these professors' lived experiences. Drawing on scholarship about tenure and promotion, the study identifies intersectional barriers to tenure attainment for Black professors that include inadequate institutional support, divergence from established institutional tenure and promotion policies, inconsistent application of tenure and promotion guidelines, and problematic academic politics. The study findings illuminate how inequitable, often haphazard tenure and promotion processes can result in litigation and extend scholarship about the retention of Black professors in the academy. The project delineates a path toward more humanity-affirming academic work environments with unequivocal institutional commitments to faculty retention. To translate these values into practice, the authors assert the need for a new approach to tenure and promotion policy anchored in anti-discrimination, referred to as critical procedural justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the Australian higher education landscape, fault lines are emerging between institutions that are questioning the viability and sustainability of the conservatoire, and academic staff who are committed to maintaining excellence in actor training (Moor, 2020). The COVID-induced digital pivot has led to greater flexibility in teaching modes and heavier reliance on independent practice (Pike et al., 2020), leading to a destabilisation and recalibration of the power dynamics of actor/director and student/teacher (Neideck et al., 2021). As the cultural and creative industries seek stability in the wake of the powerful aftershocks of #MeToo, there has been a rush to develop policies aimed at reducing abuses of power and encouraging healthy and productive ways of being in the workplace (Park & Neideck, 2020). In the fast-paced, embodied, and emotionally vulnerable environment of the actor's studio however, the distribution and dissemination of formal guidelines regarding behavioural norms is often perceived as counterproductive, or as frustrating to individual creativity. This paper outlines ways in which Appreciative Inquiry is employed in collaboration with forms of embodied placemaking facilitated by senior artists in QUT's actor training program. These strategies are used to model respectful relationships; to empower cohorts of student actors to negotiate boundaries of consent and outline their own behavioural expectations; and to enable academics to provide continuity of care in uncertain times. Observations will be made regarding the ways in which these rituals of practice and living policies shift and change over time, constituting not "a legal document", but "a cultural document" (Fischer & Myers, 2019). These strategies enable ensembles to self-regulate and are used to navigate the tricky intermediate space between the conservatoire and industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a "culture war" underway among software peer-production communities through relevant blog posts, legal documents, forum discussions, and other sources. Software licensing has been a defining strategy for peer producers, and much of the conflict at hand revolves around whether licensing should more fully incorporate ethics and economics, respectively. Feminist analysis can aid in tracing the contours of discontent through its emphasis on social processes that enable and infuse productive activity—processes that peer producers have trained themselves to ignore. The emerging critiques, and the experiments they have inspired, gesture toward fuller understandings of what "free" and "open" might mean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the rise in far-right inspired terrorist attacks globally, social media and electronic communications companies have been criticized, mainly by politicians, for allowing far-right extremist content to be available. This article is a comparative legal study focusing on Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S.' legal provisions regarding the right to freedom of expression, hate crime, and proscription of terrorist organizations. This study found a disparity in the form of expression protected under this right. This disparity widens further when related to hate crime and proscribing groups as terrorist organizations. As such, social media and communications companies have difficulty setting at global level a baseline in determining whether content is legitimate commentary or is extremism promoting or inciting hatred and violence. The article concludes with a recommendation for how states can provide comparable legislation on hate crime as they have done in relation to Islamist inspired extremism. This will assist social media and communications companies in removing content and suspending accounts. These companies are not the guardians of freedom of expression, that is the role of states' legislatures and judiciary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the subject of divorce and the development of divorce legislation in nineteenth-century England and Wales have received some academic attention, much work remains to be done. Existing studies have examined either a small number of cases from a limited period of the newly formed Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes' history; answered a specific question over a longer period; or conducted detailed micro-studies of individual and high-profile cases. None have examined the surviving petitions made to the court (held at The National Archives under J 77) holistically over an extended period. This article seeks to revive the field by suggesting a new interdisciplinary methodological approach that will combine historical and legal studies with digital humanities to offer the first panoptic view of J 77 petitions. Far from being dry legal documents, this article argues that they hold a wealth of rich detail about petitioners, respondents, co-respondents, witnesses, children, solicitors, barristers, clerks, and judges, and stand at an exciting intersection of several fields of enquiry. Adopting such an approach will generate important new insights about gender, class, property ownership, intimacy, religion, childhood, and sexuality in nineteenth and early twentieth century England and Wales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Street-level bureaucrats in the field of migration control express ideas of who should have the right to stay (or not), influenced by individual stereotypes, but also by organisational structures and established legal provisions. Tasked with screening for 'bogus' asylum seekers and deporting irregularised migrants, they are asked to categorise and sort these people according to certain guidelines and policies. It is argued that within migration enforcement, there are two interlinked and underlying rationales which allow for and facilitate such categorisations: suspicion and notions of (un)deservingness. The article presents ethnographic data collected in migration enforcement agencies in Sweden, Switzerland, Lithuania and Latvia in order to cross-examine both concepts. It captures how suspicion becomes a default mode of migration enforcement and allows exclusionary deservingness categories to be created, which again feed back into daily practices to detect suspicious individuals. This intertwined relationship can uphold and normalise a discriminating system despite discrepancies that come up in the creation of these categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Challenging the optimistic thesis on female Asian agency in the early modern Dutch empire, this article studies widows' socio-legal position in the cross-cultural setting of colonial Sri Lanka. Normative legislation and judicial records on stepfamilial feuds from eighteenth-century Dutch Sri Lanka allow us not only to understand how both litigating parties tried to work the Roman-Dutch legal system to get a favorable verdict, but also to unveil the underlying societal expectations of widows and stepchildren. Whereas in the Dutch Republic husbands often used prenuptial agreements or last wills to make their wives principal heirs or give them usufruct (thus increasing the customary half of ab intestato inheritances), Sri Lankan case-studies indicate that such legal documents were also used to reduce life choices of widows. Prenups and last wills drafted up and signed by their late husbands tied these women to their primary role as caretaker of both their own children as well as those of previous marriages. Further stipulations could even tie them quite literally to the parental house, which they were not allowed to leave for a longer period of time without losing their inheritance. These rules of engagement put additional strain on already fraught relationships between stepmothers and first-marriage children. The only structural solution for both parties was that the stepmother married another man, freeing both herself and the stepchildren of a difficult balancing act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article's purpose is to indicate the hypothesis that non-governmental organisations, specialised in pro-defence and paramilitary activities, have untapped potential defence capabilities in Poland. Therefore, in order to validate the thesis, the article highlights the impact of non-governmental organisations that were operating in Poland between the two world wars and during the time of the Polish People's Republic. Moreover, conclusions from the abovementioned subject matter are compared with the Estonian law concerning cooperation with defence NGOs within the Estonian defence system. Finally, the article provides conclusions on the Polish government's financial support for the pro-defence and paramilitary non-governmental organisations and also evaluates existing legal provisions that are covered by such support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental operators perform their activities in accordance with the relevant legal provisions; however, this does not mean that they operate at their technological optima using the operational information available. The possible negative effects (odor, noise, etc.) of a sub-optimal operation can be felt first and foremost by those living in the immediate vicinity of the given object. It would be important to make effective use of these citizens feedback (quickly to revealing the root causes) thus minimize negative environmental impact of operations. The solution proposed in this paper is a portal called EnviroMind, which allows citizens feedback to be recorded in an easy, immediate, and structured way via a form and on the other hand, it provides a real-time graphical odor transmission model output in a dashboard to operators. Using this portal as a monitoring system the magnitude of the odor effect could be reduced and a smaller area around the industrial object could be affected. In a landfill monitoring pilot project where this monitoring system was used the decrease in the number of indicated odor observations was 85% and the decrease in maximal distance from landfill to odor detection positions was 45%. It is proposed to use EnviroMind monitoring system for all industrial objects which have a significant odor effect on the environment, because by using it we can make the odor effect visible to operators in real time, thus, the reaction time for solving the problem can be minimized. Implications: monitoring is available online to the surrounding community, the affected population, so that quick responses and interventions are available; in the knowledge of the current technological activity carried out on the site its expected odor effect in the area can be determined, whether a protected area can be reached and what odor concentration is expected; in every 15 minutes model results to accurately track expected odor emission values; possibility of intervention, stopping or modification of the technology steps. Experience and main achievements of portal operation in a landfill monitoring pilot project from recent 3 years: the decreasing number of odor perceptions (the decrease in the number of indicated observations was 85%) and the cessation of odor effects in certain areas (and the decrease in maximal distance from landfill to odor detection positions was 45%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution, nature and characteristics of boundary mapping in Central and Eastern Europe were distinctive, especially considering the imperial borders of states neighbouring the Ottoman Empire. Affected by strong military and geopolitical needs, demarcation maps were not based on cadastres or property mapping undertaken by civil authorities but exclusively on military mapping. The maps were a part of peace treaties with the Ottoman Empire, which gave them the power of legal documents. Moreover, boundary maps constituted an important tool in defending state sovereignty and subsequently in the state- and nation-building processes. In this article I analyse how countries bordering the Ottoman Empire made their demarcation maps, which strategies they applied, what level of cooperation they had with Ottoman cartographers, what cartographic conventions they met, and how these maps were received at the Ottoman court. I argue that boundary mapping was the key driver of territorial statehood in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do international organisations (IOs) legitimise their right to rule in times of a Pandemic? Where are their previously made environmental commitments on their agenda during a crisis? What are the differences in self-legitimation, if any, across different types of IOs? These questions have gathered renewed urgency during the ongoing COVID-19 and climate change crises posing a threat to the legitimacy not only of national governments but also of IOs. The paper aims to address these questions through the analysis of environmental commitments made in legal documents of three IOs (the EU, the EAEU, and the AIIB) and through the analysis of their respective social media between 2017 and 2021. Among other issues, we find significant differences in self-legitimation strategies of these three IOs as reflected by their social media and some evidence of mimicry across these IOs that should remain on the agenda for further studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the notion of spatial justice has been discussed as a possible conceptual foundation for rethinking EU Cohesion Policy. While scholars have adopted a dual distributive and procedural understanding of spatial justice, the paper argues that, applied to cross-border areas, such a conceptualisation is challenged to explain how the border contributes to disparities. We argue that actively questioning the role of law is paramount for better examination of the dynamics within border areas. An understanding of spatial justice informed by legal geography allows examination of how law fosters and impedes movement across borders. The paper presents three recent examples where policy representatives from affected communities have fought to adapt legal provisions to cross-border spatiality. Whether such initiatives increased border communities' capacities to shape their own development (i.e. European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation) or not yet (i.e. co-development at the Lorraine-Luxembourg border; European Cross-Border Mechanism), these examples show that analysing EUropean borderlands as a spatio-legal category helps understanding of how space and law constantly struggle with one another, and how spatial justice emerges from a movement out of this conflict. The paper concludes by discussing the practical and conceptual implications of combining legal geography and spatial justice for analysing EU Borderlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a spotlight on the fundamental incompatibility of immigration detention with health. Yet immigration detention's threats to human rights did not begin with COVID-19. International treaties are clear that detaining children based on citizenship is a violation of human rights law. However, for international treaties and agreements to be fulfilled, most individual countries must enact domestic laws and policies to implement their commitments. In this study, we examine how many countries have laws to limit the detention of children. To assess the legislative protections for migrant and refugee children from detention, we created quantitatively comparable data on legal provisions across the 150 most populous UN member states. Our primary sources consisted of national-level laws, regulations, ministerial decisions, and executive decrees pertaining to asylum-seekers, refugees, and immigration. Globally, less than a quarter of countries legally protect unaccompanied asylum-seekers from detention and only 11% do so for accompanied minor migrants. Among countries that permit detention in at least some circumstances, only a minority address basic rights such as separation from adult strangers, family unity, access to education, and access to health care. Yet effective and human rights-respecting alternatives to detention exist; the evidence on these is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a method for knowledge-based document assembly. A document assembly system is implemented as a proof of concept with service contracts as a sample document type. In comparison to related research, the method presented in this paper uses an explicit formulation of legal norms that prescribes the content and the form of service contracts to assist in the document assembly process. The assembly system also generates semantic documents, i.e., documents that preserve the meaning of the embedded data. As the primary contribution, this approach enables the automation of document processing operations and semantic interoperability of enterprise information systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive that is a world-renowned research archive dedicated to the study of musical traditions from around the globe. Topics include examines the Archive's collection of several audio, video, print and photographic items documents musical expressions throughout the world and includes unique field recordings as well as rare commercial recordings.

New Towns were introduced in Iran four decades ago. The goals were to build new urban areas of quality, control urban sprawl, prevent proliferation of informal settlements and slums and provide affordable housing for people displaced by war and especially the poor. This paper discusses the reasons for the failure in achieving well-intended goals, despite large investments and extensive planning by government institutions. Policies, planning approach, legal documents, the housing market and the methods of allocation and management have been analysed to seek the answers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The greater one-horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) is the largest rhinoceros species found in Nepal and India. The habitat of the greater one-horned rhinoceros encompasses the southern border between the two nations, hence these animals regularly cross this international boundary. Having a national park situated at the periphery of at an international border facilitates the ability of poachers to easily escape from the crime scene. The article examines the legal framework enacted by Nepal to address the poaching of the greater one-horned rhinoceros, one of the world's most popular endangered mammals. This article also analyzes the case law related to the poaching of the one-horned rhinoceros from the Supreme Court of Nepal. The strict enforcement of the legal provisions adopted by Nepal through the enactment of the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act 1973, combined with the punitive approach of the Supreme Court of Nepal, has also helped to discourage the poaching of this species in Nepal. The Supreme Court of Nepal has jointly punished the principal offender for poaching offences with their accomplices, which has helped to discourage in poaching of the one-horned rhinoceros. Nevertheless, a quasi-judicial body, the Office of the National Park, which handles the case firsthand, implements and exercises legal provisions related to poaching at the initial stage and also gives an initial verdict. In most poaching cases involving the one-horned rhinoceros, the principal offenders and accomplices are predominantly drawn from a specific community residing around the Chitwan National Park. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]