The day after launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, in a public speech addressed to multiple audiences, Putin called for the ‘overthrow’ of the Ukrainian government, which he labelled a ‘gang of narcomany (‘drug addicts’) and neo-Nazis’ (Roth, 2022). We will return to the significance of this speech later; here we would add to the picture that after Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, in all territories under Russian occupation, opioid agonist therapy (OAT) programmes were immediately shut down, reflecting their status as being also banned in Russia.

Research on judicial use of AI has mainly focused on general attitudes toward algorithmic decision-making, leaving open the question of how policy choices shape public perceptions of the courts. This chapter addresses this gap through a comparative analysis of judicial AI policies across four major jurisdictions: the EU, UK, US, and China. We identify three key dimensions along which these approaches differ: the choice between hard and soft law, transparency requirements, and restrictions on substantive versus administrative use. Drawing on insights from rational choice theory and behavioural economics, we analyse how each regulatory choice might influence public trust and legitimacy. Our analysis suggests that the effectiveness of different approaches likely depends on institutional fit, including the pre-existing legal culture, levels of trust in courts and technology, and broader societal attitudes toward automation. These findings help explain the emergence of divergent regulatory approaches across jurisdictions and offer insights for policy-makers seeking to maintain public confidence in the courts while integrating AI into judicial systems.

Law, with its seemingly endless paperwork, is almost overwhelmingly textual. From contracts to briefs to opinions to treatises, law lives in its texts. Simultaneously, law requires performances to produce authenticity and authority. Witness testimonies, pleadings, and trials all enact the law through participants’ bodies. There is no law without text. There is no law without performance. Legal texts and performances produce and reproduce each other: Legal texts record or script legal performances; legal performances generate or stage legal texts. Because law entwines text and performance, this chapter considers the law’s material textuality and its theatricality in tandem by probing how law brings performance to book. Drawing on theater studies and the history of dramatic texts, I offer methods for reading legal texts as scripts that precede or follow legal performances. Examples from Anglo-American law reveal that legal documents’ typographical conventions uncover law’s reliance on performance and its anxiety about deviating from textuality. More sophisticated legal attention to the relationship between text and performance would better serve law and, more importantly, justice.

Technology has been the bedrock of human existence from time immemorial as every aspect of human life is dependent on one form of technology or the other for their satisfaction. The desire to improve the quality of life and living had induced man to continually invent and innovate. The global economy has become a knowledge economy and the bedrock on which the river of the knowledge economy flows is intellectual property and allied rights. A country’s actualisation of its vision of industrialisation and attendant sustainable development changes as the role of man changes in every era and stage of technology based on such country’s efforts at a particular period to develop its frontiers of intellectual property towards meeting the dynamics of technology. With increased technology and innovation employed in manufacturing, agriculture, and transportation comes environmental pollution and degradation. Many traditional societies in Nigeria fostered strong belief systems and social norms which encouraged or even enforced limits to exploitation of biological resources. These traditional practices are being eroded by several factors. This chapter appraises the IPR, traditional knowledge systems and Islamic law perspective in the protection and preservation of the environment.

The American Civil War (1861–1865) represents the high-water mark in the history of the classical doctrine of civil war. The war was fought on an unprecedented scale on land and at sea, and its global repercussions led to unavoidable diplomatic confrontations between the belligerents and neutral foreign powers unlike ever before. Through the key documents and cases of the conflict, this chapter illustrates how the thoroughly legalistic civil war came to be the culmination of the classical doctrine, and how it led to the coining of ‘recognition of belligerency’, a core concept of the mature doctrine of civil war. The chapter also explores the final breakthrough of international arbitration and state responsibility as a response to disputes raised by civil wars in this period, and traces the canonisation of these new developments in jurisprudence in America and in Europe.

There is a deep scepticism concerning the idea that AI should be used in the making of judicial decisions. There are normative risks such as inaccuracy and a lack of explainability and accountability, and there are sociological risks to public trust in the judicial system. Prominent legal instruments such as the EU AI Act, Vilnius Convention, and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) seek to set some clear guardrails around the use of AI in judicial decision-making, but face two problems. First, they underappreciate the Collingridge dilemma, in which premature intervention risks over-regulation, while belated intervention risks under-regulation. Second, there is a misplaced faith in the power of legal obligations to provide sufficient (and enforceable) guidance. This chapter asks what model of governance should be adopted for the use of AI in courts. In doing so, it undertakes a survey of the current status and evolution of AI technology in courts, examines how we should evaluate risks, and considers competing governance models. It argues that a model of anticipatory governance, often suitable for long and complex problems, should be adopted, and some of the implications are discussed.

Chapter 10 demonstrates that a Latin American regional bloc with a common agenda focused on international legal reform emerged in the League of Nations during the 1920s and that the origins of this bloc can be traced to an important but little-known campaign spearheaded by the Uruguayan diplomat Enrique Buero. Correspondence from Buero’s recently uncovered private archives reveals the domestic, international, and bureaucratic political obstacles that had to be overcome in order to forge a coalition in Geneva. Ultimately, Uruguay and Latin America’s pivot to the League created leverage for legal reform regarding the use of force and diplomatic protection across multiple international organizations.

Arendt asks, “Is our ability to judge, to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly, dependent upon our faculty of thought?” Her answer is yes, and this chapter argues that this thinking–judging connection is central to her moral philosophy. She derives the connection indirectly, by reflecting on three Socratic propositions: that thinking consists in the back and forth of inner dialogue; that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it; and that wrongdoing leads to inner disharmony. The chapter examines these, and from this examination it reconstructs Arendt’s argument for the thinking–judging connection. The chapter connects Arendt's and Kant's conception of “enlarged thinking” with Adam Smith’s sympathy-based moral theory. It spells out additional implications that Arendt never drew explicitly, and concludes by comparing Arendt’s views with those of Stuart Hampshire, who believes that inner conflict is in fact “the best condition of mankind,” contrary to the Socratic and Aristotelian moral psychology – an important corrective that requires modification to Arendt’s view.

My aim, in this response to Peters’ timely and powerful work, is both to acknowledge its transformative force for legal studies and at the same time to introduce distinctions that may be of value in distinguishing discussions of the ‘theatricality’ of law from the emergence of a modern understanding of ‘theatre’ as the production of coherent and powerful fictions enacted by characters. The early modern period (1500–1650) is described, in chapter 5 of Peters’ study, as ‘the age of theatre’. If Peters shows how judicial proceedings draw on the performative aspects of rhetoric and theatre, my response aims to show how, in the ‘age of theatre’, theatre’s distinctive fictionality drew on the fiction-generating power of probable argument and inferential reasoning, as taught in legal rhetoric.

This chapter contends that awareness is the first step to any changes, and therefore, cultivating sustainability literacy is needed badly to understand the inescapable laws of thermodynamics that limit the growth pursued by the ‘development’ ideology. In such a way the Ulamas and Muslim leaders will be sufficiently-informed to devise the environmental Shariah that correctly situates human society within the context of Earth’s limited natural energy flows and resource stocks, and at the same time, comply with the will of God. Given these physical constraints of the planet, the currently dominant ethical framework and the endless rat-race of modern life have placed us in a riverbed of self-destruction. Technological fixes can temporarily improve conditions but they cannot move us out of this riverbed of unsustainability. Here is where Muslims need to redefine a genuinely Islamic development model and its parameters. An Islamic development paradigm should not aim at making humans possible to forget God and his own inner reality, and being stifled by the prison of their own creation. Unlike the dominant Eurocentric development paradigm, an Islamic development needs to have its own criteria of happiness index in which humans are free to roam around and choose objects at will.

Oil has seriously impacted the institutional development of the state in the Arabian Peninsula. More specifically, the sudden and unprecedented acquisition of massive oil revenues resulted in the freezing of the state’s formal and informal institutions, at the point at which petrodollars were injected into the state’s coffers. From then on, state leaders were able to deploy the state’s wealth to dictate the pace and direction of institutional change. Over time, any institutional change has been directed towards enhancing regime security, and the pace of change has been calculated and deliberately slow. Any political opening has been dictated by the logic of state power maximization (in relation to society). At the same time, partly to ensure its popular legitimacy and partly through the vision of its leaders, the state has deployed its massive wealth both to foster rapid economic and infrastructural development, and to enhance the living standards of its citizens. In other words, whereas oil may have stunted institutional development –– i.e., an institution’s curse –– it has been an economic blessing.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is used in criminal courtrooms to support judicial decision- making. Despite heavy criticism on opacity, complexity, non-contestability, or unfair discrimination, such uses have been favoured, given AI’s promises of efficiency, effectiveness, and accuracy in the overall decision-making process. Focusing on the use of AI-generated evidence, this chapter analyses various European frameworks on evidence and fair trial scheme, the data protection guarantees under the Law Enforcement Directive (LED) and the requirements for AI use by the judiciary set out by the AI Act. We assess whether and to what degree the use of AI in criminal courtrooms can respect fundamental European principles regarding human rights and defence rights.

Chapter 21 offers the first source-based historical analysis of the League of Nations’ attempt to codify international law between 1925 and 1930. Drawing on institutional archives and private papers, it demonstrates that codification was for the League Secretariat not merely a legal endeavour, but also a strategic tool to engage the United States – either as a League member or as part of the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ). Encouraged by important middlemen such as Manley O. Hudson and Arthur Sweetser, the initiative aimed to rekindle US legalist Republican support and counter alternative projects that could challenge the League’s role in international peace and cooperation. Beyond US–League relations, the chapter reveals persistent divisions over the aims and methods of codification, reflecting broader struggles within international legal circles. The failure of the project was not just an institutional setback for the League but also a symptom of the legal community’s inability to promote a shared agenda. Rather than an isolated episode, the codification effort was part of a longer trajectory, shaped by both disruptions and continuities. While it barely produced immediate results, it laid important groundwork for later developments in international law.