This article reviews Martti Koskenniemi’s To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth: Legal Imagination and International Power, 1300–1780, Dannelle Gutarra Cordero’s She Is Weeping: An Intellectual History of Racialized Slavery and Emotions in the Atlantic World, and James Q. Whitman’s From Masters of Slaves to Lords of Lands: The Transformation of Ownership in the Western World. These authors raise fundamental questions about what was going on and what was or is at stake in the legal theorizing, argumentation, and adjudication that characterized the immediate prehistory of the nascent US constitutional order.

In Türkiye Halk Bankasi A.S. v. United States, the Supreme Court held that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) does not apply to criminal prosecutions of foreign state instrumentalities. The Court found that FSIA’s text and structure address only civil actions. On remand, the Second Circuit ruled that Halkbank lacked common-law immunity from criminal prosecution, deferring to the Executive Branch’s decision to prosecute and concluding that state-owned corporations enjoy no immunity for commercial activity under common law. The court’s analysis relied primarily on pre-1976 U.S. cases rather than international law. The Supreme Court denied certiorari in October 2025, ending the immunity dispute.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued a landmark merits decision in 2025 holding the United States internationally responsible for the torture and death of Mexican national Anastasio Hernández Rojas, and for denying his family justice. The Commission found violations of the protections of life, humane treatment during arrest, health, and access to justice in the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (American Declaration) and ordered the United States to reopen the criminal investigation, impose sanctions, provide legal remedies and adopt non-repetition measures, including aligning use-of-force standards with international law, such as banning electric shock weapons, after specific legal findings of torture by the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Rapporteur, which both regarded its use as disproportionate, unnecessary, and inhumane.1

This article examines the adoption of voting methods designed to support individuals with intellectual disabilities in elections. It focuses on two widely used approaches, frequently explored in scholarly discourse: assisted voting and proxy voting. Both of these voting methods rely on third-party involvement and therefore require the consideration of the prohibition of plural voting in the Australian Constitution. The article concludes that while assisted voting and a limited form of proxy voting-where the proxy must strictly follow the elector’s explicit instructions-are constitutional, proxy voting becomes unconstitutional if the elector is unable to communicate their electoral judgment. Assisted voting therefore emerges as the most practical and constitutionally compliant option.

Surrogacy, the engagement of third parties to perform biological roles, presents complex regulatory dilemmas. It raises questions about the ethics of commercializing human reproduction, especially when viewed through natural and cultural lenses. This article discusses the relevance of geopolitics in regulating artificial reproductive technology (ART) in Nigeria. It espouses the traditional health norm development approach to reproductive governance and dwells on surrogacy as a gendered concept, as it affects different categories of people in different ways in Nigeria. It examines Nigeria’s dominant cultural and religious ideologies against the extant legal framework, including family laws and judicial authorities. The article identifies the loopholes and relevance of geopolitics in the development of ART norms in Nigeria. There have been attempts to regulate ART to exclude recognizing surrogacy. The article concludes that the uncoordinated regulation is due to the geographical and socio-political norm development experience in the country. It recommends a cautious re-evaluation of the regulation of surrogacy through adopting Eager’s norm development approach. This position aims to redress the challenges confronting women in reproduction, in line with international norm development.

This paper examines the role of interviews in Australian protection visa decision-making, arguing that while not a statutory requirement, interviews are often constructively required to ensure procedural fairness and achieve reasonable satisfaction. The analysis explores the evolution of departmental policy from an initial presumption favouring interviews to a more exceptionalist approach driven by administrative efficiency. It argues that this shift creates tension with the underlying legal framework and risks legal error. Analysis of key cases such as Plaintiff S157/2002, Saeed, and Chen, alongside departmental policy, suggests that failure to make obvious inquiries or engage with applicants directly, particularly regarding credibility, can constitute jurisdictional error. The paper calls for balanced procedures that identify when interviews are necessary while maintaining efficient processing.

This article examines the relationship between acts harmful to the enemy (AHTTE) – the first criterion for the loss of special protection for medical units and transports under international humanitarian law – and the requirements for classification as a military objective, which governs the loss of general protection for civilian objects. The analysis begins by clarifying the articulation between special and general protection, then outlines the legal consequences of losing special protection alone. The definition of AHTTE is examined, with particular attention to hospital shielding, and it is then assessed whether such acts always meet the cumulative conditions of Article 52(2) of Additional Protocol I for becoming military objectives: effective contribution to military action and definite military advantage. The article argues that AHTTE do not always meet these conditions, and that certain acts contribute too indirectly or speculatively to justify targeting. The conclusion emphasizes that this analysis does not preclude the application of other rules governing the conduct of hostilities.

The Supreme Court of Canada mandates recognition of systemic factors that create barriers for Indigenous peoples’ access to equitable justice. Specifically, R. v. Gladue directs courts to consider the unique circumstances of Indigenous peoples when engaging in decision-making processes in all criminal courts. Drawing from interview data with Indigenous and non-Indigenous defence counsel in Ontario, this study assesses whether and how Gladue factors shape bail hearings. Our findings reveal that the application of Gladue principles exists along a continuum, ranging from mere “lip service”, to the tailoring of bail decisions based on meaningful recognition of systemic disadvantages. We also highlight the importance of lived experience and representation of Indigenous legal actors and the challenges they encounter working within a colonial system. We situate these findings within broader critiques of risk-based bail frameworks and settler colonial legal systems, concluding with policy recommendations and directions for future research.

Telemedicine is increasingly playing a vital role in European health systems, offering great potential for improving healthcare access and outcomes. Funded between September 2022 and December 2024, the Joint Action ‘Strengthening eHealth including telemedicine and remote monitoring for health care systems for CANcer prevention and care’ (eCAN JA) provided evidence-base for person-centred implementation of telemedicine services among cancer patients in the European Union (EU). Through a mixed-method approach, this foresight study gathered insights from key decision-makers in 14 EU Member States and eight cancer patient associations via two surveys and a joint workshop, conducted within the Sustainability Work Package (WP4) of the eCAN JA. Our results show that EU Member States and cancer patients view telemedicine as a useful and complementary tool, however, not as a replacement for in-person services for cancer care. The policy recommendations from our study can be summarised as follows: (i) develop legal frameworks to complement in-person care with telemedicine; (ii) improve digital literacy and information technology infrastructure while ensuring privacy and health equity; and (iii) engage patients in the co-design of telemedicine services. Implementing these recommendations will enhance the integration of telemedicine into cancer care in Europe.