Though formal life sentences have been abolished in Norway, forvaring (post-conviction indefinite preventive detention) – a type of informal life sentence – can be imposed on individuals convicted of certain offenses who are considered to be at high risk of future offending. While great attention has been paid to Norway as an “exceptional” penal outlier globally, there is a notable lack of comprehensive knowledge about its indefinite penal sanction. Drawing on extensive historical research and legal and policy documentary analysis as well as leveraging a unique national dataset on the total forvaring population, this article provides the first international in-depth assessment of the evolution and implementation of Norway’s ultimate penalty. In so doing, it highlights significant disparities between policy ambitions and current practice and questions the extent to which the sanction of forvaring can be considered an “exceptional” approach to life imprisonment. It is argued that the development and growth of this type of informal life sentence can be seen as the epicenter of the impact of a more punitive ideology in Norway, emphasizing the need to move away from the concept of penal exceptionalism to better understand the full spectrum and practice of Norwegian and Nordic penality.

Multi-party systems play an important role in African democracy and constitutionalism. Against the African backdrop, political parties are indispensable in promoting constitutional values, enhancing political stability and realizing the effectiveness of constitutions. Recognizing the importance of political parties, African constitutions introduce many provisions confirming rights relating to political parties, recognizing their central role in elections, enhancing the internal solidarity of the parties and protecting the opposition. Meanwhile, due to concern regarding the negative impact of party politics, African constitutions also show hesitation about public funding to political parties, set controls on their programmes and organization, and demand many public office holders to be party neutral. Therefore, in African constitutions one can find a high expectation on political parties as constitutional institutions, while deep suspicion against them as individual organizations, which reflects the dilemma that African constitutionalism and democracy is facing in its development.

Using 60 interviews with a range of minority law students and early career legal professionals (primarily differentiated by race, gender identity, religion, and disability), this Article illuminates the cruciality of empirical Critical Race Theory to understand individual deviance within the legal profession and develops a framework – blasé – for considering interactional violence that is not legally or socially cognizable as discrimination but still causes harm. These data reveal that discrimination was minimized and denied to varying degrees for all minority respondents. However, for genderqueer respondents whose identities had not achieved a high degree of sociolegal legibility, these denials had low contestability and were often without contrition. Unlike microaggressions which might have resonance in common cultural parlance as operationalizations of structural violence, what distinguishes blasé discrimination, I argue, is the ordinariness of the act in interactional parlance alongside its relative unlikeliness to be seen as problematic when confronted. It is this possibility of defense and justification in the face of being challenged that makes blasé and its ambiguous parameters worthy of our attention in identity jurisprudence. This exploration of the blasé response to discrimination sheds light on the opportunities available for revealing structural inequalities when analysis begins from the perspectives of peripheral actors.

The use of religious symbols has sparked heated debate and numerous judicial cases across Europe. Early case law from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has been criticised for allegedly employing biased discourses. However, it remains unclear whether such biased discourses are present in recent ECtHR rulings or in comparable decisions by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). This article applies Critical Discourse Analysis, a linguistic and social science approach, to examine the narratives used by the ECtHR and ECJ in cases involving religious symbols. It argues that religious and gender biases are pervasive in ECtHR judgements. While the ECJ generally employs neutral language, biased discourses occasionally emerge in the ‘subtext’ of its decisions. These biases are not incidental but serve as strategic tools within judicial narratives, reinforcing the argumentative legitimacy of rulings for audiences influenced by societal prejudices.

Healthcare systems are increasingly exploiting the advantages of Internet of Things technologies: cloud-connected devices with perceptive sensors can gather very accurate health data from people even if they do not get to the hospital or private clinics. For potential innovators of new medical IoT devices, the legal framework applicable was until now limited to the application of the General Data Protection Regulation and the Medical Devices Regulation.

This paper will investigate what will happen when medical IoT-generated data are shared to create new products or services according to the framework now depicted by the Data Act and the European Health Data Space.

Given that the EHDS and the Data Act are both aimed at facilitating the secondary use of (health) data, the contribution will compare the two processes set up to establish a roadmap to solve health-data sharing theoretical and practical queries.

This paper contributes to an underdeveloped yet critical feature of international criminal law – victim assistance. With the creation of the ICC and the Trust Fund for Victims, the idea of victim assistance in situations of mass criminalities was provided an institutional backbone. However, much of its operational principles remain theoretically ill-defined. Through a methodological study of over a decade of assistance programmes administered by the Fund, this paper sheds light on some of the critical operational principles which have emerged in practice. Additionally, in light of these principles, this paper argues that there exist two major causes of ineffectiveness which hamper the Fund’s assistance work – first, the problem of defining its goals in definite, strategic terms, and second, the overlap between assistance mandate of the Fund and reparations regime of the ICC. It concludes by making course-correction suggestions for the Fund to chart a future towards an effective organization building.

European constitutions differ greatly in the depth to which they deal with emergencies: while many constitutions devote more or less detailed regulation to emergency regimes, others almost completely neglect these issues or dedicate only some very short and vague references to emergency situations and powers. This article aims to carry out a systematic comparison of the emergency-related provisions of forty European constitutions, focusing on (1) the level of detail of the regulation, (2) the emergency regimes addressed, and (3) the restrictions on fundamental rights. As the study points out, only two out of the forty constitutions are completely silent on emergency powers. However, the remaining thirty-eight constitutions show wide variation in the level of detail of the emergency regulation; the vast majority of the emergency regimes are related to war or armed attack (or the danger thereof), to internal crises threatening the constitutional order, and to natural disasters. Concerning fundamental rights, the examination of the constitutional texts confirms that twenty-five out of the forty constitutions encompass some provisions on the restriction of these rights in a state of emergency.

This article examines the recent work of the ILC on ‘Succession of States in Respect of State Responsibility’. While the ILC decided in 2024 to stop working on the topic, the five reports submitted by Special Rapporteur Šturma and the Guidelines provisionally adopted will have a long-lasting impact on state succession scholarship and may influence states in their practice. This article provides a critical analysis of the Guidelines by comparing its content with the Resolution adopted by the Institute of International Law in 2015 on the same issue. It will show that while the solutions which were initially put forward by Special Rapporteur Šturma in his reports followed many of the same features as the Institute’s Resolution, the final version of the Guidelines are significantly different in both content and tone. A major shift occurred when each provision was examined by the Drafting Committee. This is because some ILC members, and many states, rejected any presumption of succession to responsibility. Instead, they favoured the opposite general rule of nonsuccession. As a result, none of the provisions provisionally adopted by the ILC impose any obligations whatsoever on states. They only go so far as to encourage them to reach agreements on matters of succession to responsibility. Ultimately, the Guidelines leave wide open the possibility that a wrong remains unpunished in the context of a succession of states. As such, the Guidelines do little to protect the interests of injured states.

This article presents a sociolegal study of decisions by a Canadian immigration tribunal on appeals for “humanitarian and compassionate” relief from criminal deportation. Drawing on the work of Émile Durkheim, we argue that the appeal decisions serve two legitimating functions. On the one hand, they seek to demonstrate the state’s capacity to ensure that the large-scale admission of mostly economic immigrants does not threaten the solidarity of Canadian society. On the other, the decisions address concerns about the justifiability of deportation by making vivid the moral incompetence of unsuccessful appellants, hence their unsuitability for membership.

This article analyzes the main investigative and legal challenges addressed by the Acknowledgment Chamber of the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP) in Case 07 on recruitment and use of children in the armed conflict. First, it presents a general background on the mandate of the SJP as a special system of justice – the outcome of the 2016 Final Peace Agreement reached between the Colombian government and the former FARC-EP guerrilla group. Second, it outlines how the investigative methodology used in Case 07 addressed challenges related to understanding child recruitment as a complex criminal phenomenon, the identification of those bearing the greatest responsibility, and the approach to the broad scale and scope of the victimization. Finally, the article addresses the main challenges faced by the Chamber in the legal qualification of the criminal patterns identified, and how it resolved three key issues: the determination of the age threshold under which child recruitment constitutes a war crime, the definitions of the international humanitarian law status of protections of individuals within an armed group, and the classification of different forms of gender-based violence as war crimes.

Recent changes to EU fiscal policy, such as the landmark economic governance reform package passed in early 2024, have established a dense ‘coordination space’ that steers crucial social and economic choices at the EU and national levels. This coordination space, however, departs significantly from its historical predecessors. It largely operates within a hard law framework using finance rather than either rules or soft persuasion and peer review as its main tool of influence. In this coordination space, EU law is less a system of uniform rules underlain with sanctions than a negotiation framework where discretion abounds, and rules are never broken but rather ‘adjusted’. As this paper argues, the significance of the coordination space lies not only in its unique governance model and unclear boundaries but rather its increasing centrality to the governance of the EU. As the paper will explore using the rule of law example, even areas of EU law commonly conceived as necessarily insulated from political bargaining are increasingly drawn into the negotiation logic and instruments of coordination, rendering even more crucial a clear understanding of the trade-offs policy coordination implies. By unpacking 8 core features of policy coordination in the 2020s, the paper is therefore devoted to illuminating an expanding battleground within which EU law is being re-defined.

Imagine a future where man and machine become one on the battlefield, where soldiers direct weapon systems through a neural implant. Research advances on brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) may eventually allow such control of arms at the speed of thought. This article sketches two modes of BCI-controlled weapon systems. In Mode A (active BCI), the soldier opens fire by actively imagining that he is pushing a button with his hand. By contrast, Mode B (reactive BCI) captures neural signals evoked instantly after having spotted a target, before the operator becomes consciously aware of it. If he deems the target lawful, the brain signal is translated into a command to fire. Arguing that such man–machine collaboration transforms the operating soldier into a means of warfare, this article conducts a weapon review in line with Article 36 of Additional Protocol I (AP I) to answer the question of whether BCIs can be lawfully used to control weapons in international armed conflict. Consequently, the two set-ups are reviewed on their compliance with the customary targeting principles of international humanitarian law. Since Mode B casts doubt on the amount of control that the soldier retains over his targeting decision, the concept of meaningful human control is transposed from the debate on lethal autonomous weapon systems and applied to BCIs. It is found that reactive BCIs cannot be meaningfully controlled and thus violate the principles of distinction and proportionality. Hence, reactive BCIs are unlawful under Article 36 of AP I.

Greenwashing cases holding businesses to account for false or misleading eco-claims are an increasingly visible component of the business and human rights landscape globally. In the European Union (EU), the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive is the centrepiece of regulation for business-to-consumer claims. Within the European Green Deal initiative, the EU is revising this framework, first with the Directive to ‘Empower Consumers for the Green Transition,’ and second the pending proposal for a ‘Green Claims Directive,’ introducing detailed requirements on the substantiation and communication of ‘green claims’ to consumers. If fully adopted, this fundamental reform will impose greater restraints on the discretion of any authority charged with the assessment of green claims and provide more uniform criteria across the EU, resulting in more accurate environmental claims and greater clarity for consumers and businesses alike.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems, notably ChatGPT, have emerged in legal practice, facilitating the completion of tasks, ranging from electronic communications to the drafting of documents. The generative capabilities of these systems underscore the duty of lawyers to competently represent their clients by keeping abreast of technological developments that can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of their work. At the same time, the processing of clients’ information through generative AI systems threatens to compromise their confidentiality if disclosed to third parties, including the systems’ providers. The present paper aims to determine the impact of the use of generative AI systems by lawyers on the duties of competence and confidentiality. The findings derive from the application of doctrinal and empirical research on the legal practice and its digitalisation in Luxembourg. The paper finally reflects on the integration of generative AI systems in legal practice to raise the quality of legal services for clients.

In this paper, I argue against a widely held view about interpersonal moral relations inspired by Benjamin Cardozo’s landmark judgment in Palsgraf v Long Island Railroad Company, which I call the Relational Fault Requirement. The requirement holds that in order for A to commit a directed wrong against B, A must be at fault in relation to B. I present two ways of understanding wrongs that violate this requirement: (1) that one is wronged if one is harmed by a wrongful action, and (2) that one is wronged if one is harmed by a wrongful action and the outcome one suffers is sufficiently similar to the grounds on which the action is wrong. Accepting either of these ideas requires rejecting the Relational Fault Requirement and encourages us to rethink the core elements of directed wrongdoing.

The dispute of married out women has become an important modernisation problem since the 1990s as the result of urbanisation and industrialisation. It concerns social stability at grassroots that may affect the ruling base. While the Chinese government is constantly striving to solve it, it also shows how deficient the protection of women’s property rights is that it causes so many controversies. Currently, the cultural explanation that simply attributes the phenomenon to traditional patriarchal culture is popular among scholars and widely accepted, which is, however, proved to be misleading. This article attempts to break this stereotype and points out that this trouble is not directly related to Chinese traditional culture. Rather, it is caused by the majority’s tyranny under the current villager self-government and collective property rights. This article also attempts to find possible solutions, requiring improving the rural self-government system and clearly defining the boundaries of collective property rights by law.

Zambia has recently witnessed the removal of four High Court judges within a period of less than two years, raising questions about the country’s commitment to judicial independence. This article examines the extent to which the current legal framework governing the removal of judges in Zambia coheres with the principles of judicial accountability and independence. Drawing upon insights from relevant international standards and scholarly literature, the article posits that the removal of judges is not only a necessary mechanism for judicial accountability but should also be seen as an essential safeguard for judicial independence. Its analysis suggests that some of the grounds for removal and the lack of adequate procedural safeguards within the current legal framework pose threats to both judicial accountability and independence. The article concludes with a call for necessary legal reform, urging policymakers to bring the framework in line with relevant international standards.

Despite large-scale racial inequalities across multiple social domains, racial innocence highlights the complacency of the law and social science research in denying racial power through race neutral assumptions. We explore three theoretical and methodological mechanisms maintaining racial innocence within quantitative social science: treating unequal structural conditions and organizational practices as impartial, isolating samples to reflect limited stages, and focusing on individual levels of analysis. Given that mass incarceration is one of the most visible modern-day exemplars of racial subordination in the United States, we use the example of incarceration sentencing to highlight these mechanisms. Using case processing data from Miami-Dade County between 2012 and 2015 (N = 86,340), we first examine racial inequality in incarceration sentencing when treating unequal case characteristics impartially across racial groups relative to when we allow case characteristics to be unequal across racial groups. Second, we examine racial inequality when isolating limited samples with narrow decision points relative to when we draw from samples across multiple stages. Finally, we examine racial inequality with individual-level frameworks relative to a neighborhood level frameworks. In this case, racial inequalities in incarceration sentencing with a racially consciousness approach are twice as large than with a racially innocent one.

Internationally, the home is legally protected as a bastion of private life, where one may retreat to and recollect oneself after a day’s work and enjoy family life. With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, working from home – facilitated by new collaborative information and communications technology (ICT) platforms and tools – became mandatory in several countries. For many, the workplace was brought into the home. This article examines how working from home on a mandatory basis during the pandemic affected employees’ perceptions and practices of privacy, and its implications for the legal understanding of privacy. With Norway as a case, it investigates the measures taken by employees and employers to safeguard privacy during this period. The data collection and method combine an interpretation of legal sources with qualitative interviews. The analysis shows experiences and practices that suggest a blurring of roles and physical spaces, and the adoption of boundary-setting measures to safeguard privacy.

This inaugural presidential address of the Asian Law and Society Association features three recently published monographs to draw attention to research by the next generation of scholars and to show how they contribute to the field. Although the three books differ in terms of focus, methods, and findings, they share a hallmark of law and society, that is, they investigate practices, beliefs, and objects that are often taken for granted. At the same time, the three studies arrive at dissimilar conclusions about law, which reflects another unifying hallmark of law and society—its diversity. Together, the inconsistent findings expose the many profiles of law and demonstrate its fascinating nature. They remind us that we do not yet know the intricacies of law, and we need all kinds of law and society scholarships—on Asian societies and elsewhere—to continue advancing the field.