This chapter focuses on the use of AI at sentencing. First, we note that AI can be used in different ways in the task of sentencing offenders. Second, the chapter considers when a ‘robot’ judge can be said to perform sufficiently well to replace a human judge. We argue that a plausible criterion for the assessment of the performance of a robot judge is contingent on penal ethical considerations and since these have not been sufficiently developed, we do not yet possess an applicable criterion for a comparison robot and human judges. Third, this conclusion also has implications for less radical applications of AI (such as the use of algorithms as sentencing advisory systems), for assessing competing types of AI models, and for carrying out post hoc evaluations of the performance of sentencing algorithms once they have been implemented.

Over the last two decades, new historical scholarship has greatly improved our knowledge and understanding of the history of the League of Nations beyond the old dichotomy of failure or success. Meanwhile, legal scholars are showing an increasing interest in the history of international law. Yet, a systematic account of the important role of international law in the League of Nations is lacking. Surveying the main state of the art, this introduction outlines how the Handbook aims move beyond these two separate strands. Moreover, it elaborates on its understanding of international law as the new ‘meta-language of global governance’, as well as on the methodological underpinnings the various chapters before briefly outlining the content of the Handbook.

The rise of the #MeToo movement has prompted a public reckoning with sexual consent, with public discourse now squarely focused on issues of sexual coercion and culpability. However, the principle of consent has a much longer history and wider significance beyond recent events. Bolstered by a social contract model that prioritises individual personhood and the protection of private property, consent has been central to the development of modern law and liberal societies (Munro, 2008). As feminist legal scholar Vanessa Munro argues, in Western legal settings, it ‘demarcate[s] the terrain between acceptable and unacceptable intrusions upon property / bodies’ (Munro, 2008, pp. 923–4) and accredits the liberal subject with its defining features of individuality, rationality and autonomy. In the specific context of sexual violence, consent is endowed with significant power (Hindes, 2022): it is used to arbitrate legal disputes over sexual assault and violence, and determine whether violation has occurred.

This project is a close study of the legal and political aspects of management of water resources in semi-arid environments. The British in India laid the foundations of the modern irrigation system in what is now India and Pakistan. In semi-arid environments, the bulk of agriculture relies on irrigation, as it did in Spain under the Moors. We can observe a stark divide in the use of laws and institutions to manage natural resources in different societies, at different times and places. Some societies have managed in a way that achieved prosperity and long-term sustainability. The Moors of Spain created a vibrant civilization in the Middle Ages that lasted nearly eight hundred years. One of the reasons for the dynamism of their civilization was their judicious management of water resources on which foundation they created a thriving agricultural economy that produced the economic surplus for their vibrant urban culture. Of particular interest is what I regard as the essence of Moorish water management: its management of scarcity by borrowing principles from the great cradles of civilization, Mesopotamia and the Nile, which built abundance in harsh environments, along with principles of use, reuse and justice as conceived of in the Quran.

Chapter 11 argues that the absence of the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) in the Manchurian dispute case at the League of Nations in 1931–33 had a significant impact on the development of the international judicial system for interstate conflict resolution. It argues that the dispute contributed to the ‘decoupling’ of the judiciary process from the League’s collective security mechanism which it had tried to build in the 1920s and of which the PCIJ was an integral part. The Japanese foreign policy elite’s shifting understanding of international law and the League, this chapter argues, was critical in underpinning this development. These elites had understood international law largely as a set of inter-imperial agreements and saw the League and the PCIJ as operating according to this norm. This understanding remained persistent at the beginning of the Manchurian dispute, and led them to argue that the case should be submitted to the PCIJ. In the course of the Manchurian case at the League, however, they recognized that the dominant norm was shifting, which prompted them eventually to opt for extra-League, bilateral inter-imperial relations.

The trespass torts are some of the oldest causes of action in the common law. These torts create a number of fundamental common law rights protecting our personal dignity, our desire for autonomy, and our interests in the physical integrity of our bodies and the exclusive possession of land and goods. This chapter examines the nature of these torts and focuses on the three forms of trespass to the person: battery, assault and false imprisonment. It also briefly considers the potential development of a tort of privacy. Chapter 6 looks at the torts of trespass to land, trespass to goods, conversion and detinue.

Genetically modified food (GMF) is part of our realities as consumers worldwide. The techniques and possibilities involved do require an Islamic legal (fiqhi) study as to assess GMF with regard to its consumption, production and related research. The paper focuses on placing the study of GMF within a holistic context, under consideration of the societal background and rationale it has been developed under. It investigates into the possibility of transferring fiqhi devices such as istihalah (chemical transformation), istihlak (extreme dilution) and others to GMF combining genetic material from permissible and non-permissible sources. It raises a number of deliberations and concerns with regard to the usage of the maqasidi scheme and discusses the permissibility of GMF under the aspects of changing creation or harnessing nature.

This chapter focuses on the judicial use of AI in German courts. In recent years, the work of German courts has changed significantly due to increasing digitalisation in particular through the introduction of electronic court files and electronic communication with the courts. AI is being used in a number of different applications and is being tested in several pilot projects. After an overview of the court organisation and competences, the most important projects and possible applications of AI in German courts are described. The opportunities and challenges of AI for the German justice system and its impact on the work of German courts are analysed. Applications include automatic speech recognition, data extraction, anonymisation of court decisions, and support for judicial decision-making. These use-cases are then evaluated in the light of German constitutional law and the EU’s AI Act 2024.

Arendt believed that “the idea of humanity” requires all nations to assume responsibility for major crimes of international, rather than purely domestic, concern. Her ideas about international criminal law grew from the Eichmann trial; they appear in Eichmann in Jerusalem and her correspondence with Karl Jaspers about the trial. This chapter provides essential background for her ideas by explaining the “lawyers’ law” concerning state sovereignty, sovereign immunity, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Arendt partly presupposes this background, but she also breaks with it in significant ways. Notably, Arendt breaks from the state-centered orthodoxy when she argues that its concepts don’t apply when a state itself becomes criminal. She also gives the term “crimes against humanity” a substantive meaning (crimes of international concern), which in her view includes genocide as a crime against humanity. In the lawyers’ law, these are distinct crimes with different definitions. The chapter explains what motives the lawyers’ law, to better understand Arendt’s alternatives.

This chapter explores the golden era of the classical doctrine of civil war, which lasted until the middle of the nineteenth century. Its focus is on the Spanish American revolutions and the emergence of the law of neutrality in the context of civil wars. The several case examples illustrate how the familiar questions and disputes from the previous chapters persisted and developed in state practice throughout the period. In addition to the Spanish American revolutions, the chapter also discusses the impact of European and American revolutionary ideologies on international movements and illustrates the significant practical limitations of the classical doctrine: while it stemmed from the practice of the transatlantic world, elsewhere in the world it often seemed absent or selectively applied to deny the legal standing of indigenous and colonial insurgents, or to legitimise local rebellions within Oriental empires.

Chapter 13 explores the interactions between the League of Nations and two transnational legal societies that had been torch-bearers of legal internationalism since their establishment in 1873: the Institute of International Law (IIL) and the International Law Association (ILA). Comparing how the IIL and ILA engaged with the League institutions and with specific projects such as the codification of international law, it demonstrates how the League’s limited geographical scope ensured that these ‘universal’ societies continued to consider themselves as crucial and sometimes even superior platforms for organizing legal internationalism. In spite of these reservations vis-à-vis the League, IIL and ILA discussions and reports fed the League with authoritative opinions on what was to be understood as international law, while the societies in return integrated the League into their scholarly understandings and their practical organization.

The principles of Islamic environmentalism are foundational to just practices in the global South and Muslim majority nations. Inevitably, as our common ground is transformed and protected, so too will our human interactions and political dynamics. Muslim-majority nations stand to face the most severe effects of climate change, but those who believe it and combat it are a minority. To face this crisis and protect people and the planet, we need to reconcile our Islamic customs and norms in an effort to shift our exploitative association with nature into an authentic and fair relationship. Muslims have a unique position in the ongoing environmental crisis. Principles set forth in the Quran and Ahadith have outlined foundational beliefs and instructions to guide our actions. The role of khilafa (stewardship) of this earth is a responsibility bestowed upon all Muslims. Moreover, this is compounded with the concept of being held accountable for our actions, and that the land itself will bear witness to our actions. The sanctity of life, Hurmah, is especially powerful.

There are four key principles of justice that dominate the law of damages. They are the compensation principle, the finality principle, the certainty principle and the fault principle revisited: mitigation of loss.

The first two principles are new, but the second two are already familiar from the earlier chapters on negligence. This chapter will explore these four principles of justice and conclude by considering the role that lawyers play in advancing the cause of doing justice.

The Framers’ overarching theories for the control of faction included representation as a filter of popular passions, union, and an extended republic to limit the influence of factions by multiplying the number of distinct and competing interests, and divided sovereignty between the state and national governments. The theory of representation was familiar from their British heritage, but their theories of an extended republic and divided sovereignty between the national and state governments diverged from accepted political principles of the eighteenth century.

Many commentators, including distinguished historians, think that Arendt got Eichmann completely wrong – far from being banal, he was a fanatical Nazi. This chapter addresses those criticisms. It argues that if the critics are right, it would damage some but not all of Arendt’s conclusions. It shows that three of the four most important criticisms rest on misreadings or mistakes. The fourth, argued by Eichmann scholar Bettina Stangneth, is that evidence unavailable to Arendt when she wrote proves that she was wrong about Eichmann. The chapter closely examines Stangneth’s arguments, and it defends Arendt’s banality conjecture as an equally plausible interpretation of Stangneth’s historical discoveries. It concludes by explaining how the banality-of-evil thesis sets the agenda for Arendt’s subsequent writing on moral philosophy and legal theory.

Defamation is different from many of the other torts, not only because it contains concepts that do not arise elsewhere, but also because in no other tort do the defences play such a significant role in litigation. As a figure in the chapter illustrates, the elements of the tort set a wide circle of protection that shields a person’s private interest in their reputation –but this protection is cut down to a large extent by the defences, most of which reflect the importance of a countervailing public interest in free communication of information and opinion. To succeed in a defamation action, the plaintiff must be able to bring their case into the central zone (shown in the figure), but note that the balance between the two zones has varied over time.