Chapter 6 shows that international environmental law embraces an equitable approach whereby states must cooperate to suppress transboundary pollution.

In this chapter, early efforts at legal codification relevant to submarines are seen in the work of learned societies, such as the Institut de Droit International and the International Law Association, as well as in discussions leading to the conventions adopted at the two Hague Peace Conferences. However, submarines were not specifically addressed but fell within a category of belligerent warships; an early proposal to ban submarines as weapons being unsuccessful. Discussions at this time concerned passage in territorial waters and straits, and particularly the rights and duties of belligerents and neutrals. International law on navigational rights in territorial waters was unsettled as World War I began. The critical role of submarines during World War I prompted States to adopt laws that specifically addressed submarines, including requirements to surface in the territorial sea. The chapter reflects on these emergent laws regulating submarines in both times of war and peace.

There is a strong need for evidence-based approaches to inform the growing field of genocide prevention. The chapter introduces conceptual and methodological advances to aid research in this area. It highlights the value of a ‘Risk and Resilience Framework’, which gives equal credence to the role of risk factors and factors promoting resilience, in understanding vulnerability to genocide. The chapter then introduces the six case studies that make up the bulk of the book – case studies in which a demonstrable risk of genocide was not realised in the period under study. Following this, it presents the key findings of the volume. These comprise eleven cross-situational factors that have contributed to promoting resilience to genocide in the past, and therefore have proven potential to do so in the future. The functioning and influence of each factor is described, followed by a brief analysis of its efficacy as identified in the case studies. The introduction concludes with a section exploring how these factors can be operationalised to stabilise and reduce vulnerability to genocide in current at-risk societies.

As reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 went out for government consultation, the interaction between trans rights and women’s rights became a topic of considerible contention. Many women who voiced concern about gender recognition reform suffered discriminaiton and harassment in the workplace. This chapter traces the development of the law on philosophical belief discriminaiton to protect gender critical belief focused on the reality, immutability and importance of biological sex. It argues that the belief in the importance of biolopgical sex is core to the protection and necessary to distinguish gender critical belief from mere opinions based on science or accepted evidence. The chapter concludes by examiing the limits of protection, including where a belief is unworthy of respect in a democratic society because it includes within it group-based intolerance of prejudice.

European Migration Law (EML) presents a challenge for legal research. The law is formally unitary, yet in practice highly fragmented, and we lack a clear understanding of how its different elements legally interact and shape decision-making. This chapter introduces computational methods to overcome traditional mono-disciplinary constraints in cognising how EML operates in overlapping legal frameworks. Section 19.1 introduces computational legal method as a growing field of research in EU law and outlines some of the principal applications of case law analysis. Section 19.2 profiles a new agenda for researching legal normative interactions in EML through case-citation network analysis. Section 19.3 investigates what is to be gained from using machine-learning methods to explore outcome variance on migration decisions in EU member states. Section 19.4 concludes by reflecting on some of the limitations of our computational legal research and underscores the need to maintain an ethical approach when dealing with normative subjects.

Legal debates within and between the EU institutions are highly influential for their policy choices. Yet, little is known about the legal advice that underscores them. The EU institutions restrict access to this legal data; usually, the only point of access is individual requests under the EU’s public access legislation, Regulation No 1049/2001. This source of legal data has been vastly underused in EU legal scholarship. This chapter addresses the key question of access to non-judicial legal data from the Council and the Commission. Following the critical tradition, the chapter treats EU law primarily as a language of argumentation that enables various interpretations and uses internal legal data as a source of highlighting the political choices involved in legal argumentation – a key endeavour of empirical research in law and institutions. The chapter first outlines the object of inquiry: what legal data exists in the institutions. It then gives examples of how access to documents requests can be systematically used as a method for collecting legal data. This may include confrontations, such as initiating proceedings before the EU Courts and the Ombudsman, which are explored with reference to the author’s own cases. The chapter also raises concern about the future possibilities to study the handling of legal questions within the institutions, increasingly threatened by the problem of empty archives.

In this chapter, we assess the international law regulation of the newest forms of submarines, underwater maritime autonomous vehicles (UMAVs) and ask what changes for States’ rights and duties when an autonomous vehicle operates uncrewed and underwater. A core issue has been whether UMAVs are ships or not and we address differences emerging for floats and gliders particularly. Whether uncrewed submarines are ships or not has implications for navigational rights and duties. We also consider questions emerging under the law of armed conflict and distinctions for autonomous maritime systems (such as mines and torpedos). While State-owned and operated UMAVs are a primary focus, we also consider the international laws applying to the use of UMAVs by terrorists or criminals seeking to smuggle goods. This chapter concludes Part II of the book and brings together the key questions that remain to be answered in regulating submarines in international law.

Empirical legal research, better known as empirical legal studies (ELS), has arrived in the EU. It introduces a distinct way of thinking about the law – or epistemology – and distinct ways for transforming this thinking from beliefs and opinions to justified beliefs and opinions – or methodology. As an exploration of ELS in EU law, this volume reflects on both. Its purpose is to map the state of the art, highlight the contribution which empirical legal scholarship has made to EU law, as well as its potential, limitations, and the way forward. In this Introduction, we begin by defining its object and objectives, comparing them to existing legal and social science research concerned with legal aspects of European integration. Second, we briefly revisit the field’s historical and geographical origins. Third, we examine the developing relationships between, on the one hand, ELS and, on the other, EU law and political science. Fourth, we address open questions, unchartered territories, and existing obstacles faced by ELS. Finally, we provide an overview of the volume, outlining the individual chapters and the overarching themes which they address.

This chapter examines legal developments in submarine regulation taking into account the political context existing prior to World War II, including tensions in the Pacific with Japan’s aggression against China. Notably, States adopted the 1936 London Protocol on Submarine Warfare seeking to align requirements for submarines with obligations imposed on surface warships. Tensions in the 1930s also prompted Turkey to initiate a revision of the legal regime governing the Turkish Straits, leading to the Montreux Convention and the near complete prohibition of submarine passage in these waters. With the outbreak of World War II and unrestricted submarine warfare, questions emerged as to the viability of rules set out in the 1936 London Protocol. States also moved to revise laws of neutrality with more targeted consideration of submarines. The chapter thus reflects ongoing legal developments concerning navigational rights of submarines in territorial waters and the regulation of submarines during armed conflict.

This chapter delves into the application of Systematic Content Analysis (SCA) when studying EU internal market law and governance. It consists of four parts. Section 18.1 offers an introduction to SCA, presenting its definition and tracing its historical development as a legal methodology. Section 18.2 argues that SCA is a natural choice for studying internal market law given its inherent ambiguity, intricate multi-level governance system, and the limited transparency surrounding the implementation of EU law. Section 18.3 surveys the usage of SCA in legal scholarship on the internal market (1957–2023). It shows the growing trend in usage of SCA, identifying the most important areas of research, types of research questions and data coded, as well as the academic actors and institutions involved. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion on the future of SCA as a legal methodology for studying EU internal law and governance, advocating a greater emphasis on transparency requirements in the application of EU law.

Chapter 2 branches out to study one of the most noticeable – if unintended – impacts of the settlement legislation: the emergence of a huge body of administrative paperwork relating to the settlement of the poor. This chapter begins with the role of printers and stationers, masters of the metropolitan Stationers’ Company, who played a key role in the production and distribution of the settlement forms. Drawing on our north-western and south-eastern samples, the chapter explores how the business of forms took root. It also investigates the continued and highly significant use of manuscript. Influential social and political theorists – from Max Weber to Michel Foucault – have emphasised state control of bureaucratic procedures. Here we see how, while dealing with the settlement laws, influences emerged from the bottom up, as stationers, scribes, local officers, and even paupers contributed to the rise of the form.

Chapter 5 discusses a number of potential objections to the transactions cost approach to competition law. For example, it might be claimed that the concern about hold-up is captured under the concept of ‘dynamic efficiency’ or that this framework can be incorporated into the concept of consumer welfare. This chapter also deals with concerns that the transactions cost approach may focus on the protection of competitors or that the implications of this approach are already recognised in the literature. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications for the sunk investments of the dominant firm as opposed to its trading partners and a discussion of whether the proposed approach would require a large change in competition law enforcement practice.

In assessing international law governing submarine warfare, we consider how peacetime rules from the law of the sea apply in an armed conflict and focus on the law of neutrality and the law of armed conflict (international humanitarian law). The allocation of rights and duties within different maritime zones continues, albeit with some modifications, during an armed conflict. Most notably, the law of neutrality establishes how those rights and duties change depending on a State’s status as a belligerent or neutral. The use of submarines during armed conflict is also governed by the law of naval warfare and they are largely subject to the same rules that restrict surface warships in relation to targeting, as well as the means and methods of warfare. While submarines are predominantly governed as warships, we note how operational limitations of submarines may affect the interpretation of some rules.

Chapter 4, “The Amazon as a Place for Global Conservation”, unpacks the tensions and conflicts of conceiving the Amazon as a field of global conservation and examines the prospects to scale indigenous politics of conservation and reimagine conservation policies in the local and international spheres. For this aim, this Chapter discusses the theories for decolonizing conservation, how they help to explain environmental conflicts in the Amazon, and their strengths and gaps. Then, it provides an overview of the conservation architecture and associated conflicts in the Peruvian Amazon through three cases that show the international and local interactions around conservation politics and policies. Ultimately, the Chapter provides insights to revisit critical theories on conservation and the importance of international governance for reinventing conservation practices and policies in the Amazon and beyond.

EU legal scholarship has a strong tradition of contextual, somewhat theoretical analysis. That tradition has been facilitated by the open nature of EU law, the grand social goals of the EU, and the need to construct legitimating legal stories around these, but also by the interconnected community of EU law scholars and professionals, which have given the field a kind of autonomy from more doctrinal national law. Yet lacking empirical evidence beyond legal texts, EU law’s free-ranging scholarship is suffering a crisis of disillusionment, paralleled by the crisis of the EU itself, which invites scholars to reconsider the nature of their role. In this context, empirical legal studies is enjoying a huge rise in popularity among EU legal scholars, with its promise of answers to important questions, rather than mere commentary. That leads to synergies as well as conflicts – for resources, and about methods – but above all it seems likely to reorientate EU legal scholarship away from its path of the last five decades and towards a new stylistic and methodological mix.