Providing pro bono legal services is an important professional obligation that ensures that people who cannot afford representation still realize their rights. Unlike impact litigation, which seeks to overturn unjust laws or create new rights, pro bono direct legal services are not typically seen as oriented toward creating social change. Drawing on longitudinal interviews with thirty-six lawyers and non-lawyer legal volunteers, this article explores how bearing witness became a mechanism that blended pro bono services with social movement-like collective action to transform direct legal services within two liminal legal environments, the U.S.–Mexico border and immigration detention. These activities included (1) asserting and publicizing truth in the face of misconceptions and misinformation so the American public understood what was occurring and demanded policy change, (2) recruiting more volunteers to assist asylum seekers and in turn speak out, and (3) documenting the human impact of immigration laws and policies to ensure future harms would not occur. Because interviewees took part in up to three waves of interviews between 2019 and 2023, I also address the perceived outcomes of these efforts, including that interviewees felt that they increased knowledge and shifted some individuals’ perspectives.

Increasing water scarcity forced the European Union to investigate the possibility of supplementing natural water sources with reclaimed wastewater. Regulation (EU) 2020/741 sets minimum requirements for the safe reuse of treated urban wastewater in agricultural irrigation. The risks that wastewater reuse presents are further regulated in the numerous EU law instruments that concern the protection of human health, the environment and the European waters, including both laws and principles. This paper applies the widely applicable framework for risk governance that was developed by the International Risk Governance Council to the EU regulatory framework on wastewater reuse. The analysis identifies regulatory gaps – unclear pollutant regulation, incomplete division of responsibilities, and insufficient attention to the science-policy interface – and concrete means of improving the regulation of risks associated with wastewater reuse.

Ecological restoration is increasingly recognized as essential for combating the biodiversity and climate crises. However, restoration activities can also produce or exacerbate social and environmental injustices. This article explores the extent to which the European Union’s 2024 Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR) enables ‘just ecological restoration’. Drawing on the three dimensions of environmental justice – distributive, recognitional, and procedural – we assess whether the NRR adequately includes justice considerations. Our analysis finds that while the Regulation includes several justice-relevant provisions, many are implicit and lack enforceable guarantees. Disparities in expected costs and benefits raise concerns over distribution, limited safeguards may exclude marginalized communities, and participation mechanisms vary across Member States. The potential of the NRR to foster fair and inclusive restoration depends largely on how Member States implement their national restoration plans and whether the European Commission provides clear guidance and support to ensure socially responsible action.

A decade ago, in Allianz, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered a landmark ruling on the interpretation of anticompetitive object in EU competition law. The judgment marked the beginning of a new era, where identifying an anticompetitive object could involve a comprehensive, case-by-case examination extending to aspects traditionally associated with effects analysis. This Article provides an account of this development—from its inception and the trajectory of subsequent case law to the establishment of the full-fledged doctrine—and offers a critical evaluation. Through an analysis of the case law, the Article argues that the Allianz doctrine adds no substantive value. All cases where it has been applied could have been equally, and indeed more effectively, analyzed under the traditional category-based framework of object inquiry. It further contends that the frameless, amorphous, and unpredictable nature of the current examination undermines the very certainty and structure that the object inquiry is designed to ensure. The Article advocates for a return to the category-building principle and argues that the Court should focus on developing a more nuanced and differentiated effects analysis instead of discarding the category-based approach.

Neural organoids derived from pluripotent stem cells have sparked ethical debate because, it is claimed, they could be sentient, or could develop sentience. We critically assess three routes for defending such a possibility: analogy with known sentient organisms, inference from neural function using leading theories of consciousness, and foundational philosophical commitments. Current cortical organoids lack nociceptors, sensory integration, and behavioral repertoires necessary for analogical arguments; they also fall short of the structural differentiation presupposed by most empirically grounded consciousness theories, rendering existing neural metrics unreliable. Even if constitutive panpsychism were accepted, the moral relevance of any putative micro experiences would remain undetermined. Precautionary appeals, therefore, hinge on how the term “possible” is interpreted. We argue that regulatory or experimental restrictions are warranted only once there is a non-trivial empirical likelihood that a given organoid type can generate valenced experience. Given present technological limits on size, complexity, and vascularization, that threshold has not been reached, nor is it likely to be met in the near to medium term. This claim is contingent on the current state of research, but we believe it to be justified. Our analysis clarifies conceptual ambiguities surrounding organoid sentience and offers a principled framework for proportionate precaution.

This paper revisits the longstanding debate over the nature of suffering, focusing on the divide between subjective and objective accounts. I defend a Personalist conception of suffering, rooted in an Aristotelian understanding of human flourishing, that recognizes suffering as both universally human and deeply personal. On this view, suffering is neither a purely sentient, inner experience nor reducible to external conditions, but a disruption of flourishing that arises when love or justice is violated or absent—and that calls for a communal response. Understood through this lens, suffering, I argue, invites a shared practice of meaning-making—not as sentimental optimism but as a form of grounded hope: realistic, responsive, and attuned to the dignity of both the sufferer and those who accompany them. Even when suffering cannot be cured or fully comprehended, it can be met with deeper engagement, mutual responsibility, and a reaffirmation of our commitment to a life lived in relation and shared purpose.

The emergence of remotely operated vessels introduces new players, such as remote operators, into the shipping industry. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) is working to incorporate these concepts into its regulatory framework. Given the significant responsibilities expected of remote operators, their liability for oil pollution and their role in marine environment protection require careful examination. The IMO is reviewing whether remote operators should be protected under the ‘channelling of liability’ provision in the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage 1992, which shields certain parties from negligence claims. While this provision may simplify the process of assigning liability, it has been criticized for weakening incentives to protect the marine environment. This article examines two options for the IMO: (i) leaving the status of remote operators undefined, allowing courts to interpret if they fall within the provision, or (ii) explicitly clarifying their status. The former is assessed through treaty interpretation and domestic case law, highlighting risks of legal uncertainty. The latter is explored by evaluating policy considerations and tools that could strengthen incentives for protecting the marine environment.

While David Benatar’s 2006 book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence remains the most influential formulation of contemporary academic antinatalism, numerous other iterations, both academic and nonacademic, have emerged since its publication. These newer forms reflect differing styles, motivations, and normative commitments across a range of issues, none more contentious than the question of what duties human antinatalists may hold toward nonhuman animals or life more broadly. This debate has produced a significant division within antinatalisms. Anthropocentric forms endorse the voluntary extinction of humanity while allowing other life to continue. Sentiocentric forms recommend the eventual extinction of all sentient life. While humans could voluntarily choose to cease reproducing, sentiocentric antinatalism implies, sometimes explicitly requires, active human intervention to end the reproduction of other sentient beings, potentially involving coercion or violence. This paper builds upon Patricia MacCormack’s critique of Benatarian antinatalism and efilism in her 2020 book The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene. By widening the scope of inquiry to include multiple antinatalist traditions, the analysis maps how and why some formulations of antinatalism come to endorse forceful or promortalist positions aimed at achieving the extinction of certain, even all, species.