In an era characterised by a rise in cross-border litigation, India’s stance on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments (REFJ) reveals a complex contradiction. Although India’s REFJ regime appears to advocate a pro-enforcement stance, the inclusion of révision au fond – the practice of assessing foreign judgments based on their substantive merits – introduces considerable tension in the realm of cross-border dispute resolution. This paper explores the implications of India’s commitment to conducting merits review as a self-imposed obstacle to fostering international judicial collaboration. This paper elucidates how this practice not only complicates the enforcement of foreign judgments within India but also hinders the recognition of Indian judgments abroad, especially in those countries that require reciprocity for such purposes such as Japan, South Korea, Germany and China. Through a comparative analysis of national laws and multilateral instruments, this paper illustrates how India’s statutory révision au fond requirement poses reciprocal challenges for the enforcement of Indian judgments abroad, advocating a critical re-evaluation of India’s REFJ framework to conform with emerging international judicial cooperation standards.

As well as adopting a new Pandemic Agreement in 2025, the “legal reaction” of the international community to the COVID-19 pandemic also included the adoption in 2024 of a substantial set of amendments to the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations, which had already been practically overhauled in 2005 from the previous model. The process was set in motion by the United States and ran in parallel with the negotiation of the Pandemic Agreement, thus creating evident political complexities but also laying the foundations for a synergistic and complementary relationship. The amendments entered into force on September 19, 2025, but their universality and effectiveness are still a work in progress.

In the Confirmation of Charges decision concerning Joseph Kony, a Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) confirmed thirty-nine charges against Kony, the leader of the Ugandan rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army. The charges covered a range of war crimes and crimes against humanity, many related to sexual and gender-based crimes perpetrated against girls and young women. This decision was further notable as resulting from the ICC’s first confirmation of charges process conducted in absentia because, despite an arrest warrant dating to 2005, Kony has never been brought into custody. As a result, the process leading to this decision addressed novel questions of law for the ICC.

This essay assesses Susan Sturm’s What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions as a major contribution to Critical Race Theory, socio-legal theory, and the practice of institutional anti-racism. It argues that Sturm’s central achievement is to reframe anti-racism not as a discrete legal remedy or diversity initiative, but as a sustained institutional practice of navigating paradox. Drawing on Sturm’s earlier work on complex discrimination, the essay shows how her critique of formal adjudication and liability-centered antidiscrimination law develops into a broader theory of organizational transformation. Institutions, Sturm argues, are not race-neutral arenas; they reproduce racial hierarchy through norms, routines, role structures, and patterns of interaction that often appear ordinary or neutral. The essay emphasizes three linked dimensions of Sturm’s intervention. First, anti-racism requires working through contradictions rather than resolving them: race must be acknowledged because it is materially consequential, yet racial categories must also be destabilized because they help reproduce hierarchy. Second, institutions often become trapped in cycles of reform and retrenchment, producing what Sturm calls “Groundhog Day” dynamics in which diversity initiatives generate temporary movement but fail to alter underlying structures. Third, meaningful transformation depends on trust, linked fate, stretch collaboration, and organizational catalysts that can create durable forms of shared inquiry and collective action.

While legal mobilization through litigation and legislative reform has been widely examined, less is known about how political and social actors engage constitution-making processes to advance or restrict rights. Latin America provides a particularly relevant context to study this phenomenon, given the region’s frequent constitutional replacements and the growing tendency of activists to use constitution-making itself when other institutional channels prove unresponsive. This article analyzes Chile’s 2021–2022 Constitutional Convention – the first phase of the 2020–2023 constitutional replacement process. Focusing on the constitutional mobilization of anti-abortion rights groups, we examine how, despite an unfavorable political opportunity structure and public opinion, they sought to roll back reproductive rights advances. Drawing on interviews, official records, protest event data, and public opinion surveys, we identify three main strategies employed by anti-abortion rights groups: reframing opposition to abortion within constitutional, natural law, and international human rights discourses; bundling conservative causes with broader appeals to protect life and property; and leveraging the referendum campaign to cast the draft constitution as a threat to national identity. Our findings demonstrate how constitutional replacement processes create distinct arenas for anti-rights mobilization, thereby contributing to the discussion on the “right against rights” in constitution-making contexts.

This article reviews Roger Cotterrell’s landmark paper, ‘Trusting in Law: Legal and Moral Concepts of Trust’. That paper identified a shift from a moral conception of trusteeship based on the notion of a settlor reposing personal trust in a trustee, to an amoral systems-based conception of trusteeship, in which personal entrustment is largely absent. This article examines contractualised trusts, containing widely drawn exemption clauses, which commonly underpin commercial arrangements. It identifies two developments which have the potential to limit the amorality of the contractualised trust. The first is a reaffirmation of the existence of a non-excludable core of fiduciary obligations. The other is an enhanced understanding of the trustee’s accountability, owed to the court as well as to the beneficiaries, for the due administration of the trust. The developments demonstrate that equity has the resources to overcome contractual overreach in trusts law.

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) has been lauded as one of the latest global trends in smart ‘ways to pay’, riding on the wave of digital disruption that has gained traction internationally. At the same time, concerns have been raised over harm to vulnerable consumers becoming mired in unanticipated debt. This article facilitates a deeper understanding of the phenomenon from a bottom-up perspective through an analysis of empirical data comprising a survey of 400 consumers, interviews with consumer advocates and BNPL users, and a survey of Malaysian BNPL providers’ websites. The article explores how digitalisation, payment by instalments, and providers’ advertising strategies can collectively mask risks for unsuspecting consumers. Insights from the analysis are used to inform proposals to strengthen the effectiveness of the emerging Malaysian consumer credit framework. As the first country to introduce consumer credit legislation in the ASEAN region, Malaysia’s burgeoning framework provides a model for other ASEAN Member States. In addition to targeted measures aimed at empowering consumer decision-making, there is an urgent need to address the problem of poverty to avoid unintended consequences. The empirical analysis is valuable for other emerging economies seeking to strengthen protections for credit consumers.

The principle of equality of arms, originating in common law systems, is a fair trial requirement designed to preserve the adversarial nature of criminal proceedings. Its basic guarantees are enshrined in universal human rights documents, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This article examines how Vietnam, as a socialist country, has adopted the principle of equality of arms in its criminal justice system, considering the complex relationship between socialist ideology underlying its legal concepts, and recent procedural reforms. The findings suggest that, despite the inevitable impact of globalisation on legal diffusion processes, the operation of the criminal justice system remains ultimately shaped by its historical and contextual surroundings as it is a system designed by local institutions for local constituencies. With regard to the specific principle of equality of arms, influencing domestic factors include collectivism, a particular crime control model, the substantive truth doctrine, a blurred separation of function among procedural agencies, and the procuracy’s judicial supervisory role. Since there has been little research on the principle of equality of arms in the domestic context, let alone in national socialist criminal justice systems, this article contributes to filling a gap in the broader legal scholarship on both equality of arms and socialist criminal justice systems.

A year defined by the judicial reform-overhaul in Israel reached its legal climax when the Government amended a constitutional law to abolish the courts’ ability to make use of the reasonableness doctrine, a common-law doctrine which allows courts to review administrative actions based on their “reasonableness”. Petitions to the Israeli Supreme Court were immediately filed, leading to a revolutionary ruling. For the first time in its history, all fifteen justices of the Supreme Court convened and struck down a constitutional amendment in an eight to seven decision.

While a majority was reached, a deeper inspection of the different opinions uncovers substantial differences in the justices’ theoretical approaches. This Article provides an analysis of the five major theoretical approaches utilized in the reasonableness ruling to justify or reject the existence of a limitation on constituent power in Israel: constitutional data, constitutional self-entrenchment, declarations of independence, natural law, and limitless constituent power.

The Article presents the unique insight that despite the unprecedented outcome of the ruling, none of the justices relied on the ubiquitous distinction between the primary and secondary constituent powers. As such, contradictory to common perception, the Supreme Court of Israel didn’t adopt the unconstitutional constitutional amendment doctrine in the reasonableness ruling. Instead, it adopted a much more radical doctrine according to which the Court may strike down any constitutional law–whether the product of the primary or secondary constituent power–so long as it is convinced that the constituent power’s authority was exceeded.

The human rights situation of gender and sexual minorities in South Korea has been particularly troubling when compared to the recent advancements in other liberal democracies. Strategic obstructions by conservative Christian groups, combined with the passive and deferential attitudes of the legislative and executive branches, have constituted major obstacles to civil society’s persistent efforts to secure and advance these minorities’ rights. In contrast, the judiciary − especially the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court and lower courts − has made meaningful progress in recent years by adopting more principled, human-rights-oriented interpretations of the law. Significant developments include the relaxation of conditions for transgender persons’ legal gender recognition, challenges to the constitutional validity of the military sodomy law, the initiation of legal recognition of same-sex partnerships, and the protection of the freedoms of assembly and association. A close examination of key cases reveals a contrast between the majoritarian tendencies of the legislative and executive branches, on the one hand, and the more rights-protective stance of the judiciary, on the other. This disparity underscores the crucial role of courts in safeguarding equal rights and dignity for marginalised groups, while also highlighting the need for the adoption of a comprehensive anti-discrimination law in South Korea.

What do clients value in legal representation? Based on 65 in-depth interviews with Anishinaabek litigants and their relatives, this study explores how clients construct attorney–client relationships, value representation and experience justice. Drawing from the sociolegal literature on access to justice, attorney–client relationships, and legal services delivery, this article extends understandings of how relationship dynamics inform client evaluations of legal representation and their justice experiences. Caretaking, or a reciprocal relationship with a lawyer based on human connection, respect and a mutual sense of being in a difficult situation together, emerges as a crucial way Anishinaabek value lawyers that help them navigate confusing legal processes during difficult times in their lives. These findings question the promises of procedural justice by illuminating how clients decouple their experiences with lawyers from their views of the justice system. They also contribute to timely debates about the importance of legal representation and access to justice in marginalized communities.