This article explores the exiling of Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, in 1814 and 1815. It argues that in confronting Napoleon’s sovereignty and trying to remove him, the allies were forced to make a highly pragmatic, improvisational, and incoherent use of international law. Much of this stemmed from that fact that they were trying to implement a Great Powers political system within and through a legal system that was antithetical to any such concept. Because of this the allies move between employing traditional, domestic understandings of sovereignty, to treating sovereignty as something capable of international control and distribution. This results in an incoherent legal argument and narrative, with each turn of the tale adding layer upon layer of further confusion and contradiction. The conclusion of all this is Napoleon’s miserable dispatch to St. Helena by the British government – speedily done and in fear of a legal challenge.

The discussion of the need to establish a ‘right to the internet’, ongoing now for over thirty years, has not brought about a clear resolution. Despite the growing importance of online services to both the economy and social life, there is no consensus on the limits of such a right, nor on the need to define it at all—not to mention controversy over its inclusion in the catalogue of fundamental rights.

However, the discussion about the right to internet access in the context of the EU legal system now seems obsolete. This is so, because—not through the direct modernisation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights but as part of new telecommunications legislation—a new subjective right, called the right to open internet, has emerged.

The aim of this Article is to clarify the content of this right and its relationship to the principle of network neutrality. Against this background, recent judgments of the Court of Justice will be examined and discussed. Although closely related to the telecommunications market, these judgments may serve as a starting point for further discussion on the meaning of the right to open internet in the EU legal system, including its relation to the protection of human rights.

The European Green Deal and the European Climate Law highlight the EU’s commitment to strive for carbon neutrality. Considering the magnitude of the global challenge, it is evident that a green transition will not succeed without the efforts of every sector, including financial institutions. Concerns have been raised that central banks may, in fact, contribute to the increase of greenhouse gas emissions and, in consequence, aggravate global warming. This all has currently resulted in a rapid expansion of the debate on the potential role of central banks, and in particular the ECB, to consider climate objectives. In the European context, however, it is often argued that environmental sustainability lies outside the ECB’s traditional core mandate to focus on price stability. This article aims to introduce the environmental integration principle, laid down in Article 11 TFEU, in the ECB’s legal framework, and provide an analysis of the possibilities for and limitations to the greening of the ECB's monetary policy based on this provision. Although Article 11 TFEU has great potential with regards to the greening of sectoral policies, in legal literature, the provision has not gained enough academic attention in terms of the financial sector.

An expert panel formed by Stop Ecocide International has proposed an amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court which, if adopted, would create a new international crime of ecocide. However, the panel's proposal is compromised throughout by anthropocentrism in the sense that it places too much emphasis on the needs of humans and not enough on the needs of the environment. It is argued here that this anthropocentric dilution of ecocide resulted from the panel's lack of standing, influence and confidence on the international stage. Its weakness pushed it towards a strategy of producing something palatable to states in the hope of securing their support. That strategy will prove futile. The article considers whether other actors, such as the international courts or experts working in different contexts, might be better placed to design the blueprint for ecocide. It concludes, tentatively, that the International Law Commission remains the architect best positioned to set out a bold vision of ecocide.

What is the value of including vulnerable people in risk regulation decision-making in the European Union (EU)? This article examines a distinctive approach employed by the European Medicines Agency (EMA): public hearings integrated within safety reviews of medicinal products. The article presents findings from a case study of the EMA’s public hearing on Quinolone antibiotics, which was included by the EMA as part of a review process that led to significant tightening of regulatory restrictions on the prescribing of this class of antibiotics. The article argues that the public hearing enabled a group of patients who had been victims of a debilitating toxicity syndrome associated with Quinolone antibiotics to criticise the existing scientific evidence base around the safety of Quinolone. Deploying the quantitative Discourse Quality Index and an interpretive analytical approach, the article shows how patients challenged the evidence base in a manner that was efficacious in advancing knowledge in this area of risk regulation. When physically staged alongside interventions by professional experts, the article argues that patients facilitated a process of “negotiation” of expertise, leading professional representatives to propose methods of coordination in order to integrate the patients’ qualitative evidence of their suffering with the toxicity syndrome. Ultimately, this process led to the EMA proposing more stringent future guidelines for the prescription of Quinolone antibiotics in the EU.

Stakeholder participation is an important tenet for European Union (EU) policymaking and it can be approached from different disciplinary angles. The legal literature tends to refer to participation as a formal consultative opportunity in regulatory processes, resulting in rather homogeneous institutional arrangements for participation across policy fields and different sets of problems. Sustainability science, on the other hand, starts from the understanding of a problem in its complexity and peculiarities as a driving force determining both the rationale behind and the design of each participatory process. In this paper, we explore lessons regarding participation that could be derived from adopting an approach in which we combine insights from law and sustainability science. Along four principles, we explore potential leverage points for improving the sustainability of EU decision-making processes and their outcomes.

Public participation in international environmental decision-making can seek to fulfil different goals. This article explains how these goals can affect the design and appraisal of participatory processes and highlights the under-recognised value of law in determining the objectives of public participation in international environmental forums. A doctrinal analysis finds that substantive goals are most prominent in current international environmental law, but that a normative rationale for public participation could be gaining more formal endorsement through the growing legal recognition of linkages between procedural human rights and environmental protection.

The Western response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has featured remarkable solidarity over diplomatic and sanctioning initiatives. This unity of action, however, has largely not extended to developing or non-Western States. Many such States have, instead, expressed their non-alignment in respect of Western ‘economic warfare’, albeit not infrequently while also condemning Russia's military actions. This article proposes an approach to reconciling the positions of States in different economic, geopolitical and regional/cultural alignments. First, it suggests that current norms on State responsibility do not rule out using collective countermeasures against States accused of erga omnes norm violations, including via sanctions not authorised by the United Nations but rather imposed by coalitions. At the same time, however, it is argued that individual third-party States retain extensive rights to decide whether or not to participate in such initiatives. This autonomous agency can be derived, in part, through the continued applicability of traditional neutrality principles that require all sides to a conflict to respect the status of neutral States. As collective countermeasure initiatives come to be used more frequently in response to global conflicts, the ‘forgotten’ rules of neutrality provide a useful guide for balancing inter-State legal relations.

Since their adoption, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights have become crucial to intensify actions to protect human rights in the context of business conduct. Numerous countries, including Poland, have adopted National Action Plans (NAPs). Taking into account the years that have passed, it is worth assessing the implementation of their goals. Guidelines for the preparation of NAPs on business and human rights of the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights (UNWG) are helpful in assessing the Polish NAPs. This Development in the Field piece concludes that every NAP should begin with an assessment that would help identify areas where there is a need to implement necessary policies. Such an assessment could be used to compare the initial stage with future achievements. It should rely on clear milestones mentioned in NAPs, and on key performance indicators to assess effectiveness while also relying on inclusive decision-making processes. Unfortunately, this was not the case with the two Polish NAPs.

Two of Donald Trump administration’s most salient legacies are the high level of crime victimization and low popularity ratings among groups likely to be targeted by crime, such as females and race and ethnic minorities. To explore crime victimization and public opinion towards the president, the article tests whether gender and race determinants among crime victims were associated with trust in the president and job performance approval. Results indicated that females and female victims of crime were less likely to reward presidential performance and trust Trump. Blacks and Latinos were less likely to trust Trump and less likely to reward his job performance; however, there was no effect when moderating by whether they reported being victims of crime. Victims of crime in unsafe neighbourhoods were less likely to trust and reward presidential performance. More surprisingly, being a crime victim was a significant and positive predictor of trusting Trump and rewarding his job performance. The results tell us about the need to continue studying the public’s wishes for the authorities to respond to the problem of victimization, oftentimes rewarding populist approaches to punitive justice, incarceration and overall tougher criminal policies.

In this article I consider the increasing use of the “rough sex” defence by men who kill women in trials of murder. In demonstrating the prevalence of this defence I examine the defence tactics of pleading accident and traducing the character of the dead by invoking the excuse that the deceased consented to the acts which contributed to her death. I examine the impact of this defence strategy on jury determination and return of convictions for unlawful manslaughter rather than murder. The notion that women in these situations have contributed to their own demise is a redolent oeuvre in pornography but also has roots in psychoanalysis and medicine. Stereotypes of women’s sexuality as defined by men continue to inform contemporary thinking skewing male violence against women as an outcome that women desire. Legal attempts to reform the law are examined and challenges to the representation of women in popular culture are called for.

In international human rights law, the right to food has become a widely accepted legal and normative framework for tackling the problem of food insecurity. However, as currently formulated, the right to food is insufficient as a framework to tackle gender-specific barriers that impede women's access to food, which has contributed to the persistence of women's food insecurity globally. While the equal enjoyment of the right to food is guaranteed by the non-discrimination and equality provisions in international law, this notion of equality, associated with the formal equality approach, fails to recognise and address women's historical experience of systemic discrimination. This article argues that women's food insecurity should be approached from a broader formulation of the right to food that is informed by a substantive equality perspective, drawing from contemporary interpretations and elucidations by human rights bodies which have pushed for a more substantive notion of equality.

The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACtHPR) was finally established in 2004 after decades of negotiations. Despite forty years of resistance from governments who were reluctant to sacrifice sovereignty to a supranational body, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and its Protocol grant the ACtHPR far-reaching authority relative to other regional human rights courts. How did the ACtHPR end up with an expansive jurisdiction that is unprecedented among regional courts? This analysis proposes that legal experts’ ability to capture control over vital stages in the drafting of the African Charter and Protocol, thus limiting the influence of political advisors, yielded an institutional design that facilitated the ACtHPR's unique mandate. Furthermore, colonial legacies in newly-independent states pushed the founders of the African human rights system to envision an innovative, post-colonial human rights framework that integrated a wide-reaching spectrum of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

Individuals sometimes do things that they know will violate the terms of a statute. Most scholars deny that such actions are always morally wrong, but a coherent theoretical account of the relationships between 1) moral obligation, 2) legal obligation, and 3) criminal wrongdoing that can robustly classify hard cases has been elusive. This article starts with a Kantian account of the relationship between law and morality, and it proposes two closely related standards: one for legal obligation, and another for criminal wrongdoing. It then tests the plausibility and resilience of these standards by using them to generate illuminating new analyses of classic hypothetical cases involving alleged crimes committed under circumstances of necessity. These analyses offer reason to believe that the standards proposed in this article can anchor a Kantian theory of criminal responsibility that is simultaneously rigorous and humane.

A discernible rift between the rhetoric of political constitutionalism and the real policy of authoritarian populists – The rhetoric focused on political constitutionalism and popular sovereignty as a façade and a utilitarian argument justifying the introduction of counter-constitutional changes through statute laws – Captured apex courts turned into useful devices of power consolidation – The analysis of the Constitutional Tribunal and the Supreme Court – The Constitutional Tribunal as an ‘inverted court’ used increasingly often to actively shape the government’s Eurosceptic policy – A double face of the Supreme Court – The new Chambers of the Supreme Court introduced to be politically abused by authoritarian populists – Systemic interactions between two captured apex courts have a synergy effect with regard to the process of the denormativisation of the constitution – The deepening politicisation of the apex courts creates a favourable environment for further rule of law deterioration.