The article addresses the challenges that increasing capabilities pose to freedom of thought and conscience. The author contrasts the ongoing debate about the ability to manipulate the human mind with the deeply rooted theories and judicial treatments of freedom of thought and conscience and argues for renewed attention to the subject. Briefly noting that the issue of AI manipulation has especially preoccupied legal scholars, institutions, and societies at large for its impact on the economic market, religious extremism, and politics, the author argues that the capabilities of AI stretch well beyond these limited fields as they challenge the centuries-long notion of freedom of conscience and thought. Because AI capabilities can extract information about individuals’ thoughts and feelings, they are making obsolete the deeply held belief that what is within the human mind (forum internum) is protected from intrusion by its very nature. The author explores the notion of the extended mind to show how the frequent reliance on smart technologies reveals a need to strengthen their protection in order to protect their users. Finally, the author criticizes the widespread focus on the notion of manipulation in recent developments across a range of disciplines and argues for a stronger and more direct consideration of freedom of thought and conscience to update their legal and academic treatment.

This note analyses the Council of Europe’s Convention on the Protection of the Environment Through Criminal Law, adopted in May 2025, which has been open for signature since December 2025. It establishes an international framework that criminalizes environmental harm in peacetime and armed conflict; it introduces twenty distinct offenses, most notably “particularly serious offenses” that address intentional, catastrophic environmental damage as a legal proxy for ecocide. Diverging from traditional pollution-based models, the treaty adopts an ecosystem approach that also protects functional natural processes and services. The twenty environmental crimes are paired with enhanced protections for environmental defenders, NGO participation, and a monitoring mechanism. While closely aligned with EU Directive 2024/1203, the Convention’s “open” nature reflects a universal ambition to harmonize legal standards across legal systems. This note briefly evaluates the Convention’s drafting history, its innovative legal architecture, and its potential to establish a global “common legal space” against environmental destruction.

Journalists are mnemonically dispossessed in the age of large language models. To accept News Corp CEO Robert Thomson’s 2026 redefinition of journalism as an ‘input’ alongside semiconductors and datacentres is to deny the human provenance of what it means to make and to consume news. Licensing deals now being signed between major press groups and AI companies enact a transfer of mnemonic sovereignty from journalists as human ‘agents of memory’ (Zelizer, 2008) to the algorithm, to the machine. Generative AI produces an intention economy, restructuring how information flows through society, with each interaction with AI deepening its understanding not just of what you know, but of what you do not yet know to ask (Fang, 2025). This gives AI systems functional agency, anticipating the curiosities it wants us to formulate, generating a ‘past that never existed’. We are at a tipping point in the battle over journalism’s soul in AI’s seizure of human agency in the making of memory, and in how the production of news becomes infrastructure food. Journalists are caught up in the production of content used to feed AI models and systems, which will shape what people are trying to know, rather than their value being derived from the work of journalists as human agents of memory, of having created a past that they have a stake in. We set out how the battle for journalism’s soul is not yet lost in the emergence of a new memorial front of ‘archival journalism’, institutional glitches, and infrastructural exits.

Generating evidence to guide investments in new service delivery platforms remains a major challenge. We applied a linear constrained optimisation model, ex ante, to estimate the potential health impact and trade-offs of integrating community-based providers (CBPs) into Uganda’s essential healthcare package. Specifically, we compared a facility-only delivery strategy with an integrated strategy that included Village Health Teams (VHTs) and medicine retailers. Outcomes included potential expansion of the optimal service package, additional net disability-adjusted life years averted, average cost-effectiveness, and maximum cost-effective investment per provider. Integrating CBPs could avert an additional 4.7 million net disability-adjusted life years and expand Uganda’s optimal health package by 25 interventions compared to the facility-only strategy. VHTs achieved health gains at $42 per net DALY averted and remained cost-effective at an investment of up to $3,423 per provider; medicine retailers remained cost-effective up to $19,792 per provider. Although current policies restrict CBP utilisation, results indicate substantial potential for health system strengthening. Constrained optimisation provides a systematic approach to quantify the value of new delivery platforms. Our findings provide an evidence-based roadmap for integrating CBPs in Uganda, while the adaptable model itself serves as a replicable tool to inform similar analyses in other settings.

This article develops the concept of justice-centred artificial intelligence (AI) through Hannah Arendt’s thinking on the danger of a machine world replacing the real world and the freedom achieved in communities of equals. It explores how regulation might advance localised forms of justice concerning AI development and deployment reframing corporate accountability from transparency to enforceable duties. It focuses on energy systems and engages with European data law acquis, proposing three principles for justice-centred AI: a reversed categorical principle, fiduciary obligations grounded in the diligentia diligentis standard, and the right to have rights. It presents justice-centred AI as a constitutional project for the EU, aligning technology with rights, ecology, and political freedom.

This article critically re-examines whether foreign companies carrying on business in Nigeria without incorporation can sue, be sued and recover under Nigerian law. It critiques the Supreme Court’s decision in Citec International Estates Ltd v E International Inc & Associates (Citec), which imposed an absolute bar on enforcing contracts made in breach of sections 54–55 of the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) 1990 (now sections 78–79 of CAMA 2020). It argues that Citec conflated the foreign company’s capacity to sue (governed by the place of incorporation theory) with the legality of its transactions in Nigeria (governed by Nigerian law). It also contends that “carrying on business” should exclude brief or isolated transactions. Ultimately, it advocates for a contextual, proportionate interpretation of sections 78–79 of CAMA 2020 to align with Nigeria’s legislative intent and foreign investment policy, while drawing on Nigerian and comparative jurisprudence in assessing the underlying illegality question.

This article offers a critical analysis of gender in life-history narratives of children born of war (CBOW) and in the construction of legal recognition of CBOW in recent decisions of the International Criminal Court (ICC). As this article shows, the perceptions of the biological mother and father have shaped narratives by and on this group, albeit to different effects. An analysis of interview and documentary data shows that the mother is perceived by the CBOW participants with critical ambivalence, while the father is a symbol of personal identification, which has informed the participants’ understanding of harm and blame. In light of these findings, this article analyses recent decisions by the ICC and the way the biological mothers and fathers of CBOW are framed by the Court. In reference to gender theory, a critical discussion follows of the images of the ‘good mother’ and the ‘bad father’ the Court is employing to recognize CBOW as victims. The gendered dichotomies at play and their implications are discussed in light of the growing attention paid to CBOW in international criminal law. The findings challenge the recent and still evolving legal narrative on CBOW at the ICC, with implications for how recognition for CBOW might be reimagined in light of their own voices.

This afterword examines the intersections between the green and digital transitions within EU law and argues for the development of a coherent regulatory framework capable of addressing their interdependence. Drawing on the contributions to the special issue, it identifies a number of common challenges, including tensions between market structures and the protection of fundamental rights, the environment and the climate, the limits of anthropocentric approaches to regulation and the increasing relevance of interdisciplinary expertise in law-making and adjudication. The paper further distinguishes between two forms of conflict arising from the twin transitions: normative conflicts between overlapping regulatory regimes and substantive conflicts concerning the negative consequences of one transition on the other. To address these issues, the afterword proposes a “pointillist” approach grounded in the coordinated and teleological interpretation of EU law. Finally, it suggests that impact assessment regimes provide a particularly promising case study for future research on theintersections between the twin transitions.

In 2023, the Australian people were asked to vote on a proposal to amend the Constitution to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. A major argument advanced against the proposal was the uncertainty and risk associated with it. This article evaluates the argument’s role in relation to the referendum and in relation to constitutional amendment more generally. It analyses why this type of argument is deployed in public debate, the constitutional values and assumptions embedded in the argument, and what it portends for future efforts to amend the Constitution. The article contends that the argument and its use merit careful attention in part because it can risk constitutional stasis and engender institutional distrust among the public.

Fred Schauer’s work on probability and evidence exposes a persistent problem for criminal law: credible allegations of sexual assault routinely fall short of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, leaving serious wrongdoing unaddressed. Schauer highlights this failure through cases involving probabilistic aggregation, but ultimately locates the payoff of his analysis outside criminal adjudication. This Article returns the argument to where it belongs – within the criminal law. Deploying Schauer’s own analytical toolkit, it examines three potential levers – the burden of proof, the construction of criminal offenses, and evidentiary rules – that could be used to respond to the injustice of sexual violence. For each, it details the difficult trade-offs between protecting defendants and vindicating victims. There is no clear winner.