This chapter presents agreements between Indigenous peoples and governments, specifically those in Bangladesh and Mexico that focus on their roles in promoting sustainable development. The introduction sets the stage for subsequent discussions by emphasizing the importance of global legal and policy frameworks in shaping these agreements, with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The two case studies from Bangladesh and Mexico are then analysed, shedding light on the unique characteristics, provisions, and outcomes of agreements between Indigenous peoples and governments in these contexts. A comparative analysis is conducted to identify commonalities, differences, and lessons learned from these case studies. Ultimately, the chapter concludes by highlighting the significance of ongoing dialogue, collaboration, and respect for Indigenous rights in achieving sustainable development goals globally. It underscores the importance of incorporating Indigenous perspectives and aspirations into the design and implementation of such agreements.

Chapter 5 complements Chapters 3 and 4 by analysing how the standards identified in those chapters translate into the framework of ICL. It explains that while the passing of sentences without providing for necessary fair trial standards can amount to a war crime (and, potentially, a crime against humanity if sufficiently widespread and systematic) not every violation of the judicial guarantees required by IHL entails individual criminal responsibility. The chapter argues that this nuanced approach maintains incentives for armed group members to comply with fundamental fair trial guarantees without being unduly penalized for not meeting standards considered unrealistic in the context of a non-state entity engaged in armed conflict. However, it also explains how a discriminatory interpretation of the nexus requirement, as applied by international criminal tribunals and advocated for by institutions such as the ICRC, might render criminal certain acts of rebel governance, in particular the punishment of common crimes in territory under armed group control, while the same acts may be carried out with impunity by state authorities.

Review of principles and rules under the Civil Code that govern marriage, divorce, family relations, adoption and succession. Discussion also includes foreign-related marriage, divorce and adoption.

Since the 1930s there have been intense debates about how far democracy can go to protect itself against its enemies. Hans Kelsen’s antagonistic relationship to militant democracy is well established in the literature and is not controversial. First, this chapter anchors Kelsen’s opposition to militant democracy more deeply and systematically in his own theory of democracy. This sheds light on the reasons why his opposition to militant democracy remained consistently immune to the defeat of democracies – as painfully observed in the 1930s – and to the conviction, shared by many of his contemporaries, that such vulnerability legitimises the prevention of anti-democratic parties from abusing the democratic process. Second, the chapter challenges the common view that Kelsen’s rejection of militant democracy would have no contemporary adherents. It discusses similarities and discontinuities between Kelsen and a new generation of thinkers who also express doubts about militant democracy. In doing so, the chapter offers a fresh look at the strengths and weaknesses of Kelsen’s perspective on militant democracy and assesses its influence on the issue in contemporary literature.

Discussion of the legal framework of international commercial arbitration in China under the 2025 revised Arbitration Law. Analysis of such issues (and related doctrines) as formation, validity and enforcement of arbitration agreements, application of law in foreign arbitration, and the mechanism for recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards. Review of the application of the New York Convention in China in the country under the New York Convention to which China is a member.

Discussion of classical Chinese legal philosophies, legal tradition, civil law influence, and interaction between the social legal system and traditional heritage.

Sri Lanka is the only Buddhist-majority country in the world without an official state-recognised monastic legal system. This is in spite of the fact that an entire section of the county’s constitution is dedicated to such a venture. How can one explain this? And why does Sri Lanka remain in this impasse? This chapter answers these questions by tracking a significant (and ongoing) series of attempts made by Sri Lanka’s leading intellectuals, educators, politicians, monks and legislators to ‘legalise’ monastic law (S: nītīgata kirīma) by creating some form of statute, tribunal or legal body that could blend monastic and state legal authority. Drawing on an un- and under-studied body of political and legal documents, it explains how a particular approach to legal pluralism – one motivated by a ‘purist’ approach to law – both motivated and sabotaged successive efforts to formally recognise monastic courts and constitutions in state law.

This chapter tackles seascape as a symbolic space. It explores the political symbolisation and the symbolic power of the sea via a twofold empirical focus. The first move examines the maritime imagining of a nation-space with the example of Estonia’s ex-president and ethnographer Lennart Meri’s historical travelogue Hõbevalge [Silver White] (1976). This imaginative reconstruction of Estonia’s ancient seafaring history and connectivities with the Baltic Sea region and beyond was a conscious exercise in linking a forgotten Baltic province to the mental map of a Nordic-Baltic region. Silver White provided a national mythology for a small nation which was denied an autonomous political present and future as part of the Soviet Union. As a second move, the chapter looks at the emerging maritime posture and posturing of NATO in the Baltic Sea region. Proceeding from Catherine Bell’s understanding of ritualisation as a culturally strategic way of acting in the world and exercising power, NATO’s maritime presence in the Nordic-Baltic space emerges as a case of ritualised performance of deterrence towards Russia. In both instances of cultivating a national mythscape via the sea and performing a multinational military alliance via exercising extended maritime deterrence, the Baltic Sea emerges as a crucial arena for creating and enacting political subjectivities and communities in world politics.

Hans Kelsen was one of the first major legal and political thinkers to argue that political parties are indispensable to democracy. This chapter deals with an important but largely overlooked aspect of Kelsen’s thinking about parties, which will be called party constitutionalism. In short, party constitutionalism refers to the idea that party organisations should be regulated by constitutional norms in order to ensure that parties are democratically organised. Kelsen developed this idea at a time when constitutions had little to say about the status of parties, and even the normative desirability of the party form was contested. After reconstructing Kelsen’s case for party constitutionalism, the chapter turns to the question of how the constitutional regulation of parties has evolved in the second half of the twentieth century. It is argued that even in countries where constitutions prescribe that parties must be democratically organised, intra-party democracy has rarely flourished. However, the sobering reality of party constitutionalism should not blind us to the lasting importance of Kelsen’s observation that democracy is ill served by elite-dominated, oligarchic parties. In fact, Kelsen’s work can help inspire a broader conversation about how parties should be organised and how their internal life can be regulated.

The manageability of the technical obstacles set out in Chapter 4 established, this chapter turns to the adaptive challenges amalgamation faces – most notably its inconceivability to the judiciary. The chapter details the maladaptive constraints that underlie the constitutional drafters’ and legal establishment’s resistance to embracing vernacular law as part of South Africa’s ‘law of general application’ or ‘common law’, as well as the urgency of overcoming such resistance. Depicting the severe decline in institutional trust and rising support for undemocratic governance amidst the public’s waning hopes of material security, the chapter argues that, to strengthen South Africa’s rule of law, constitutionalism must be founded on the vernacular legal traditions that resonate with everyday South Africans, who often feel alienated by a legal system rooted in ‘uncommon’ law. Alter-Native Constitutionalism offers a sustainable path to transformation that would counteract public disillusionment with a constitutionalism that embraces rigid colonial precedents and simultaneously restore trust in the judiciary as the last line of defence. The chapter therefore argues for judicial praxis that re-envisions courts as mediators supporting collective agency, rather than mere adjudicators, thus fostering a relational approach aligning with Ubu-Ntu and honoring the country’s diverse normative traditions and social justice aspirations.

Chapter 2 is devoted to AI ethics, broadly defined. It provides an overview of ethical, responsible, safe, trustworthy, transparent and explainable, accurate, just and fair, accountable, sustainable, robust, accessible and inclusive AI. Just as the definition of AI itself is fraught with disagreement, words with a connotation of “good” AI have generated considerable controversy among academics, social movement activists, journalists, business leaders, and lawmakers. This chapter aims to represent the plurality of positions. Furthermore, the adjectives associated with getting AI right are mutually supportive, but tensions between desirable goals are mentioned as well.

Chapter 4 covers the policy agenda of the von der Leyen Commission as it relates to technology, identifying the concerns over ensuring digital sovereignty and maintaining strategic autonomy as central rationales for Commission action. Chapter 4 focuses on ‘technological systems’ in which the EU has sought to increase its control and regulatory oversight through regulatory mercantilist means. Analysing the Commission’s actions in technical standards for technologies such as digital communications, life-cycle cybersecurity for internet-enabled products, and the fostering of an EU industrial policy for semiconductors and microchips, this chapter highlights how concerns over foreign manipulation and excessive strategic dependencies has resulted in the Commission proposing legislative interventions in order to guarantee sovereignty and strategic autonomy through increased Commission and regulatory body oversight, the explicit linkage of economic and security concerns, and active promotion of technology industrial policy internally, and exporting of norms and values through ensuring a positive regulatory balance of trade externally.