This article examines how the devolved legislatures of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have developed distinct institutional, normative and conflict-based constitutional identities that position them as constitutional actors within the UK’s territorial order. Moving beyond analyses focused solely on competence allocation and the Sewel Convention, it argues that devolved identity is articulated through institutional design, claims to democratic legitimacy and episodes of contestation with Westminster. Disputes arising from Brexit, the UK Internal Market Act 2020, rights-based legislation and the Northern Ireland Protocol reveal how devolved institutions frame authority in terms of popular sovereignty, civic nationhood, consent and parity of esteem. While parliamentary sovereignty remains legally intact, these developments expose a widening gap between doctrinal hierarchy and constitutional practice. The article contends that the UK now operates as a differentiated constitutional system in which authority is legally centralised yet politically dispersed across multiple constitutional sites.

With nearly one in six children globally living in conflict zones, evidence-based mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) is crucial. This systematic mapping review with narrative synthesis followed the PRISMA 2020 guidelines to synthesize fifty-six studies examining in-country interventions for conflict-affected youth under 25 from 1990 to 2025. The studies were mostly conducted in the global South and utilized various methods, including Teaching Recovery Techniques, trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy, and school-based programmes.

The findings were mixed. While twenty-five studies reported positive outcomes regarding post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), anxiety and social functioning, the effects often diminished over time, and long-term data (>6 months) remains scarce. The review identified three critical success factors: multilayered stepped-care models, task-sharing with trained lay workers, and family engagement. To be effective, cultural adaptation and age-appropriate tailoring were essential; efforts in this regard ranged from play-based interventions for younger children to structured therapies for adolescents.

The evidence base is limited by methodological heterogeneity and short follow-up periods. To bridge the research–practice gap, future efforts must prioritize longitudinal evaluations and stronger collaboration between researchers and humanitarian actors to ensure that interventions effectively mitigate the long-term impacts of conflict.

This Research Note is an effort to lay out some ways of thinking about the relation between political time and judicial time. We have decent general descriptive theories of Supreme Court behavior when a political regime is consolidated and seemingly stable, but descriptive theories about the Court’s behavior during “transitional” periods are under-developed. The Research Note’s contribution is to identify some lines along which such theories might be developed. The analysis is highly speculative, identifying possibilities and offering anecdotal examples as illustrations. Future research into the matters discussed here will undoubtedly deepen, qualify, and refute some of those speculations.

Australian government herbariums and museums are repositories of flora and fauna specimens collected from across Australia. This has occurred since before Australia was colonized and to the present time, often by explorers and researchers using Indigenous people’s traditional knowledge to identify and locate culturally significant species. The colonial legacy of Australia is embedded in ex situ collections of biological specimens and related data, which mostly predate international treaties promoting benefit-sharing with Indigenous peoples for using their traditional knowledge. Collections of culturally significant biological specimens and associated data should be recognized as cultural property and managed according to Indigenous data sovereignty principles including for attribution and nomenclature. This article presents an example of Australian native tobacco biodiscovery in Australia and pathways for integrating principles of Indigenous data sovereignty for decolonization of ex situ collections and for promoting a rights-based approach.

After the Occultation of the Twelfth Imam (al-ghaybah al-kubrā) in the fourth AH/tenth CE century, the applicability of divinely ordained punishments, ḥudūd, became a subject of theo-juridical controversies between two groups of Shiʿi jurists: pro- and anti-ḥudūd. In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the establishment of a Shiʿi theocracy, Iranian theocrats supported the pro-ḥudūd Shiʿi jurists, and as a result, ḥudūd punishments were incorporated into the Islamic Penal Code and have been applied by the state ever since. Some Iranian legal reformers, recognizing the challenges in applying ḥudūd punishments, have put forward two politico-juridical mechanisms (zarfiyat): the secondary ruling and the state order. These two mechanisms, the reformers assert, may be used by the Islamic Republic of Iran to suspend ḥudūd punishments. In this article, I examine both the arguments presented by reformers and the objections to these arguments raised by conservative and Shiʿi orthodox-minded jurists. These objections pose doctrinal challenges that impede the utilization of these mechanisms, thus obstructing the suspension of ḥudūd punishments.

What it means for a provision to be “incompatible” with Convention rights is crucial in determining whether courts with the power to do so ought to make a declaration of incompatibility under section 4 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (“HRA”). A clear understanding of incompatibility is also necessary for the proper operation of statements of compatibility under section 19 HRA. It is crucial for the devolved legislatures whose incompatible legislation is “not law”. And delegated legislation can be struck down, or declared incompatible, by a court for the same reason. Yet the test for determining incompatibility remains unclear and understudied. The lack of clarity threatens both rights protection and dialogue between the different branches, and layers, of the state. This article argues that the test currently favoured sets the bar inappropriately high and that the test must more clearly consider both the potential extent, and the likelihood, of the breach.

The assumption that deleted digital information is irretrievably lost remains widespread, yet this belief obscures the continued existence of residual traces within archives, backups, and systems that implement only partial or ‘soft’ deletion. Such remnants, though frequently overlooked, may persist in shaping the operation of artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore warrant critical examination. This article addresses three interrelated questions. First, through what mechanisms do obsolete or concealed data fragments re-enter AI systems and exert influence that manifests as bias or distortion? Second, in what ways might the trajectory of digital information be conceptualised through reference to ecological processes such as decomposition, renewal, and systemic adaptation? Third, what forms of regulatory or procedural innovation – here articulated as a model of ‘digital composting’ – could facilitate the identification, evaluation, and responsible management of residual data? The analysis demonstrates that outdated data frequently function as ‘ghost inputs’. Despite their invisibility, these elements shape the generative capacity of AI, modify the narratives it produces, and subtly recalibrate public discourse as well as shared cultural memory. Their persistence underscores the communicative and social significance of digital traces once presumed to be obsolete. To advance this discussion, the article introduces the concept of a ‘Data Decay Pathway’. This framework offers a novel means of addressing accountability and transparency in digital systems, emphasising that processes of digital decay, much like those observed in natural ecosystems, may serve either to sustain the vitality of collective memory or to propagate forms of distortion and systemic vulnerability.

On 14 November 2025, the High Court of England and Wales handed down judgment in the largest environmental mass tort in UK history: the group claim by more than 600,000 Brazilian victims of the 2015 collapse of the Fundão tailings dam against the mining giant BHP Group. In Município de Mariana v BHP Group, the Court found BHP (through its UK and Australian-listed parent companies) liable on both strict liability and negligence grounds under Brazilian law.1

Since 2021, the Armenian Red Cross Society (ARCS) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have been jointly implementing a community-based mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) programme. The intervention targets border communities and people from Karabakh affected by the 2020 Karabakh conflict and subsequent escalations. Implemented collaboratively by partners of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the programme reflects a locally grounded and cooperative approach. At the time of writing, the ICRC and ARCS have reached more than 6,000 individuals in more than 100 communities through the programme.

The present study aims to explore how this comprehensive, community-based MHPSS intervention contributes to strengthening the resilience of individuals in the aftermath of the conflict and within a context of recurrent violence. A representative sample of 341 participants was selected from a total of 3,000 adult men and women who took part in the MHPSS group sessions during 2024 and 2025, and a fully quantitative approach was applied to assess participants’ levels of resilience, quality of life and perceived changes following their participation in the MHPSS programme. Outcomes from these three scales, along with analysis of correlations, helped address the question of the effectiveness of the intervention in building resilience. The results suggest that the programme’s community-based MHPSS approach may contribute to strengthening resilience and may represent an effective model that could be adapted to other contexts facing conflict and ongoing violence.

The increasing integration of outer space technologies into both civilian life and military operations poses significant challenges to the application of the principles of international humanitarian law. Although these technologies may strengthen military operations, the repurposing of civilian space assets for military ends increases their vulnerability to hostile actions, thereby creating risks that could ultimately impair the civilian infrastructure that is reliant upon them. The present article sets out to explore the growing reliance on space-based assets, such as satellites, for communication, navigation and surveillance purposes in modern conflicts, and explores the evolving role of outer space in armed conflict, emphasizing the humanitarian risks posed by its militarization and the absence of robust legal protections. The article puts forward that the international community’s primary focus should be the protection of civilians, achieved through the safeguarding of space-based assets and the prevention of outer space’s weaponization. Protecting these technologies from the effects of armed conflict is imperative for civilian safety as well as for maintaining global stability and ensuring that outer space remains a domain of peaceful cooperation.

Despite the fact that traditional mediation is one of the main dispute resolution mechanisms in Malawi, the country’s formal legal and institutional frameworks pay little attention to its place in enhancing access to justice. This article analyses the extent to which Malawi’s traditional mediation law, practice and institutions promote access to justice. It relies on African mediation theory to argue that the reason why traditional mediation continues to be a favoured dispute resolution mechanism is because of its communitarian nature in its quest to restore harmony in society.