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.

With the combined experience of an abuse of power by the British monarch and an absence of executive authority under the Articles of Confederation, the Framers faced the challenge of establishing an executive authority of effective, yet limited, powers. It was generally agreed that the role of the executive was limited to the execution of the laws enacted by Congress, but the number of executives, the manner of selection, and length of tenure in office were considered important to restraining factions.

This is the first of six chapters on Arendt’s contributions to international legal theory. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt called for “a new law on earth,” but she never explains its contents; these six chapters do so. The present chapter begins with the issue of statelessness, one of her central preoccupations. Arendt believed that human rights law offers no real protection to the stateless, because they lack “the right to have rights,” by which she means the legal right of membership in a political community that protects their human dignity. The chapter analyzes “the right to have rights” and Arendt’s relational conception of human dignity. It then unpacks her views on state sovereignty, arguing that they resemble contemporary theories of sovereignty as responsibility. It explains what Arendt means by the “idea of humanity” reflected in international law, and why that idea requires courts to pass judgment on crimes against humanity.

When inner dialogue concerns moral choices, we call it “conscience” – dialogue with an internalized other who witnesses what we do and judges us. The chapter elaborates on this theme. It then turns to Arendt’s concern that the quest for inner harmony the motivation of morality may lead us to withdraw from the messy fight against evil for fear of getting our hands dirty. This chapter rebuts this argument. In the penultimate section of the chapter, it analyzes a well-known letter Arendt wrote to Gershom Scholem about her shift from “radical evil” to “banality of evil.” Arendt invokes several different conceptions of radical evil without marking the differences; distinguishing them yields an explanation of her shift and an account of banality of evil. A postscript offers a reading of Eichmann’s prison memoir to ask whether he did think morally, as he claims. The answer is no; seeing why reinforces Arendt’s diagnosis of Eichmann’s banality.

Defences play a critical role in tort law by allowing courts to balance individual rights with broader considerations of justice and social policy. For example, a person who acts in self-defence or under necessity may interfere with another’s rights in a way that would ordinarily be unlawful, but their actions may be justified by the circumstances. Similarly, defences like consent or statutory authorisation reflect the idea that liability should not arise where the plaintiff has permitted the interference or where the defendant is acting in accordance with the law. Without defences, the law would be overly rigid, punishing conduct that, in context, may be entirely reasonable or socially acceptable.

In this chapter we begin by discussing the distinction between a denial of liability and a defence. A denial of liability challenges whether the plaintiff has proven the elements of the tort, whereas a defence assumes that the elements are satisfied but provides a justification or excuse for the defendant’s actions.

The role of the judiciary as a check on the legislative and executive branches was believed necessary to the effectiveness of the horizontal separation of powers as a check on political factions. The nature of the judicial power was generally agreed to include the power of judicial review, but selection and tenure in office were thought to be important to limiting abuses of power.