The environmental assessment literature has neglected the distorting effect of cognitive and unconscious motivational biases (CUMB) in environmental assessment processes. This is problematic because CUMB are present in most, if not all, decision-making situations and can significantly distort decision-making processes. This article assesses how debiasing techniques are, or should be, incorporated in (supra)national environmental assessment legislation. The Dutch case study undertaken for this article shows that EU and Dutch legislation do not sufficiently incorporate debiasing techniques to ensure sound environmental decision making. Furthermore, the extent to which Dutch legislation incorporates debiasing techniques was found to be decreasing. Based on these findings, the article presents ways to incorporate debiasing techniques in environmental assessment legislation more generally, and in EU and Dutch legislation in particular.

In this work we analyse the way in which ideologies, understood as an extra-legal factor, are discursively manifested in a corpus of judicial rulings that resolve cases of Mapuche domestic violence. We understand the judicial ruling as an ideological discursive genre inherent to the legal field formed by social and discursive practices. By applying critical discourse analysis, we analyse the judicial discourse strategies used in order to construct (i) the idea of domestic violence in an indigenous context, (ii) the image of the Mapuche woman and (iii) the self-image of judges who resolve the conflict. We conclude that these strategies serve two purposes: one is to legitimate the law as an apparently impartial mechanism, and the other is to define the way those involved in the issue must be understood.

Over the past thirty years questions have been raised, and still remain, as to the proper scope of the sovereign's title, Defender of the Faith, in a multi-faith society. Such questions are not only politically important but are legally important, especially as they raise questions affecting the Church of England. Those questions need to be addressed before any suggested changes are actually implemented. These questions are different from those that arise in relation to the Coronation Oath Act 1688, but nonetheless are important. In spite of the uncompromising wording of that Act, changes to the oath taken by new sovereigns have historically taken place at subsequent coronations. This has led to both denials and affirmations of the legality of such changes. As similar changes are likely to take place in the future, it is important to consider whether the courts (civil or ecclesiastical) have jurisdiction to entertain challenges to the legality of the coronation itself, to the oath and to the actions of the relevant participants.

Charles III acceded to the British throne on 8 September 2022, becoming at the same time Supreme Governor of the Church of England. This article presents an overview of the law relating to the King and the Church of England, and considers the effects of the royal supremacy today.

Authority is a normative power to create duties in others. The most plausible accounts of this general power relate it to existing reasons the subjects of authority have with which authoritative directives can help them comply. Such accounts lead some theorists to ascribe a morally ambitious function to political institutions. This article argues against such theories. It defends political authority as a modest normative power, constrained by the type of reasons with which it can help its subjects comply. This modest account differs from other liberal views in the limits it imposes on the exercise of political authority. It casts doubt on familiar limits that protect an individual private sphere. Instead, it imposes a condition of moderation. It suggests that legitimate exercises of political authority should leave space for individuals to be motivated by reasons that political institutions do not and should not mediate for them.

Djibouti and Eritrea have been in conflict since June 2008 when their troops fought along the Djibouti–Eritrea border. The conflict revolves around the location of the border and sovereignty over the strategically located Doumeira Islands and adjacent reefs. In 2010 Qatar brokered a mediation agreement and began to implement it, but withdrew in 2017 without notifying Eritrea and without providing reasons to either country. The dispute raises a number of international law issues. This article focuses on the validity and application of three relevant colonial treaties (from 1900, 1901 and 1935) that defined the boundary, one of which (the 1935 Treaty) did not enter into force. Issues relevant to the determination of the borderline and sovereignty over the disputed islands and the unique challenges that may arise are discussed in light of the colonial treaties, relevant International Court of Justice jurisprudence and other international law principles, particularly uti possidetis juris.

Pan-Asianism as a concept is conventionally associated with Japan's imperialism during the Second World War. This paper, in contrast, argues that far from being merely a language of hegemony, Pan-Asianism had a far more complex role to play in the early twentieth century. As an anti-imperial ideology, Pan-Asianism advanced a normative argument for the emancipation of Asia from Western imperialism and provided an alternative vision of civilization. As an anti-imperial strategy, Pan-Asianism offered Indian nationalist leaders in exile a necessary language to gain international support in favour of their nationalist movement. The paper explains how the ideological and strategic aspects of Pan-Asianism then affected and informed the development of contemporary international law with specific reference to the law of neutrality, the right to self-determination, racial equality, and the Monroe Doctrine. By doing so, it sheds light on an important yet ignored episode of the historical development of international law.

This article aims to highlight peculiarities relating to the realization of the state duty to protect human rights during the crisis situation after the 2020 presidential elections in Belarus. It proposes that we engage more seriously with the context of a strong authoritarian state, which does not have people’s protection as a priority and deliberately involves business in human rights violations. Such a context is at odds with the more often presumed model in the BHR discussion: a strong business and a weak state that cannot protect its people. Two systemic factors, which stem from the authoritarian nature of the Belarusian political regime and which worsened during the crisis are discussed in the context UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: the use of business as a tool to achieve political goals and the dependence of all institutions in the country on the authorities. One of the key conclusions of the article is that the Belarusian crisis, aggravated by the complicity of Belarus in the Russian aggression, prompts businesses to adopt a new optic on human rights due diligence and to assess their long-term risks and strategies in authoritarian countries. At the very least there is an awareness among businesses of the direct link between political and human rights risks.

Hong Kong presents a test case of China’s willingness to adapt Western liberal values of individual freedom and the rule of law in a corner of China. The Western model of governance, along with its common law system and capitalist economic system, has been permitted to operate side by side with the Chinese socialist system within the framework of Chinese sovereignty and the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) political and legal system. The formation and implementation of the policy of ‘one country, two systems’ (OCTS) entail Chinese law-makers’ selective integration of international and Western rules of governance into the Hong Kong and China context to serve the interests of the PRC party regime. This article explores the approaches taken by the PRC to the governance of Hong Kong in light of the regime’s political and economic goals and how the Western concept of rule of law and autonomy is perceived and substantiated in terms of the communist ideology. The author argues that the intrinsic value of OCTS lies in seeking complementarity and coexistence between the Western liberal norms of governance and Chinese communist ideology, and that this intrinsic value should be upheld and remain in full force to serve as a normative consensus between China and the West.

In August 2020 the UK government announced without warning the abolition of Public Health England (PHE), the principal UK agency for the promotion and protection of public health. We undertook a research programme seeking to understand the factors surrounding this decision. While the underlying issues are complex two competing interpretations have emerged: an ‘official’ explanation, which highlights the failure of PHE to scale up its testing capacity in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic as the fundamental reason for closing it down and a ‘sceptical’ interpretation, which ascribes the decision to blame-avoidance behaviour on the part of leading government figures. This paper reviews crucial claims in these two competing explanations exploring the arguments for and against each proposition. It concludes that neither is adequate and that the inability adequately to address the problem of testing (which triggered the decision to close PHE) lies deeper in the absence of the norms of responsible government in UK politics and the state. However our findings do provide some guidance to the two new organizations established to replace PHE to maximize their impact on public health. We hope that this information will contribute to the independent national COVID inquiry.

Taking the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) as its focus, this paper critically examines the Canadian government’s efforts to regulate the extractive industry. Using insight from ideology theory and critical discourse analysis, and drawing empirically from Canadian Parliamentary debates, official government and NGO reports, and various news items regarding the development of the CORE, we document how dominant voices prioritized the economy, downplayed the systemic violence of the industry, and redirected blame to “underdeveloped” countries, on route to a regulatory framework that is voluntary and which fails to address the underlying causes of corporate harm and violence. While the CORE represents a “logical” state response to corporate crime, we nevertheless emphasize the importance of ongoing debates about its role in combating corporate impunity. This not only reinforces the idea that (capitalist) dominance is never absolute but signals the ever-present nature of resistance and possibility for change.

In Indonesia, swidden practices have been part of traditional rice farming for centuries. Swidden agriculture is a fundamental part of all remaining large tropical forests and provides a critical form of biodiversity-friendly agriculture. Meanwhile, peatland degradation and land conversion for oil palm plantation and agriculture have created an annual transboundary environmental disaster in Southeast Asia. This article adopts a transnational lens to highlight the complex multi-scale interactions that perpetuate recurring transboundary air pollution in the region. Having examined the traditional practices of swidden agriculture in Central Kalimantan and South Sumatra (Indonesia), the article reveals that swidden agriculture has been misunderstood generally, and in particular in international and national law and policy. It argues that existing laws fail to identify the important role that swidden agriculture plays in sustainable ecosystem management and cultural expression. Nuanced understandings of fire use, alongside transnational multi-stakeholder and multi-scale approaches, are required.

There are two opposed views on the proper relationship between academic research and political activism. The first argues that academics who study politics must remain objective, hence precluding activism. The second argues that academics can and should also be political activists, hence precluding scholarly objectivity. This article argues against an assumption shared by these otherwise opposing positions: that activism and objectivity are incompatible. It conceptually identifies and then normatively defends a form of objectivity characterized by active engagement with evidence that is what Max Weber calls “inconvenient” for one’s existing beliefs and commitments. Far from being incompatible with political activism, this form of objectivity is essential to its success. Since scholars, activists, and scholar-activists alike would all benefit from active engagement with inconvenient evidence, I conclude that academic institutions should promote this form of objectivity among both activist and non-activist scholars, while political organizations should promote the same virtue among both academic and non-academic activists.

This article seeks to unpack the potential and limits of markets as instruments of economic planning in sustainability capitalism. Recent policies for sustainability transitions in the United States (USA) and the European Union (EU) (eg, Infrastructure Law, EU Green Deal) have signaled aspirations for a more prominent role of the state in coordinating the economy, while still relying primarily on market mechanisms for such coordination. Yet, could the market itself be conceptualised and structured as a political instrumentality for the achievement of social objectives? An important part of the puzzle of sustainability transitions is the transportation sector, and specifically the transition to Electric Vehicles, or New Energy Vehicles (NEVs). I explore the comparative legal constructions of markets for NEVs in China – the current global leader in NEVs – the USA, and the EU. Drawing from this case study, I first argue that law makes planning possible within markets, as the functional power of market processes can be strategically deployed for the achievement of politically set objectives. Acknowledging the deliberate and artificial character of markets raises the question of what we want markets for, broadening the scope of the political possibilities enclosed in them. I, then, proceed to challenge the enduring argument of the epistemic deficit of central planners, which morphs into prescriptions of decentralisation. I show that arguments against legal centralism and planning cannot stand on just epistemological grounds and are inevitably political. Finally, I attempt to outline the limits of planning within markets – and thus, to a certain extent, the limits of the constitutive function of law – for broader projects of social transformation.

Article 32(3) of the Constitution of Uganda (1995) establishes the Equal Opportunities Commission; section 14 of the Equal Opportunities Commission Act provides for the functions of the Commission. These include ensuring that the laws, policies and customs of both public and private entities are not discriminatory and do not marginalize any person or deny him / her equal opportunities. The Commission has handled a few complaints dealing with discrimination, affirmative action, marginalization and impairment of equal opportunities. I rely on the drafting history of the Act, among other sources, to argue, inter alia, that the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination under the Act is exhaustive and that the Commission does not have jurisdiction to deal with complaints alleging discrimination on some grounds. I demonstrate that the Commission has been inconsistent in its definition of discrimination and in dealing with remedies where it has found instances of discrimination, marginalization or denial of opportunities. In some cases, the Commission has blurred the distinction between discrimination and marginalization.

Positivists and interpretivists (Dworkinians) might accept that conceptual facts about the law—facts about the content of the concept of law—can obtain in the absence of communities with law practices. But they would deny that legal facts can obtain in such communities’ absence. Under the moral impact theory, by contrast, legal facts can precede all communities with law practices. I identify a set of legal facts in private international law—the law of jurisdiction—that concerns when a community's law practices can, and cannot, have the legal effects that the practices claim to have. This law is noncommunitarian, in the sense that it precedes the communities to which it applies. In this law's light, the legal effects of communities’ law practices are legally coordinated (or, at the very least, can be shown to legally conflict). Although interest in, and even commitment to, a noncommunitarian law of jurisdiction has receded among private international law theorists, I argue that some well-placed questions can elicit from all of us a commitment to this law. And this commitment is a reason to believe that the moral impact theory is correct.

The Tŝilhqot’in Nation has had ample experience exercising its laws and jurisdiction to manage emergencies during record-breaking wildfires and the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the Nation’s unique opportunity to formally describe and advance its jurisdiction through its landmark Aboriginal title declaration and beyond, in these crises, Crown actors have defaulted to well-worn patterns of colonialism. Through a detailed analysis of recent Tŝilhqot’in experiences of emergency, we argue that provincial and federal responses to these extreme events reveal constitutional habits: patterns of decision-making that emerge in the immediate response to an emergency, so as to appear automatic. Crown emergency responses assume exhaustive Crown jurisdiction and its corollary erasure and dispossession of Tŝilhqot’in jurisdiction. Fortunately, however, habits can change. We show how Tŝilhqot’in responses to emergency reveal alternate constitutional possibilities: habits of coordination, which, through their attention to responsible relationships, build capacity to respond to emergencies and, more broadly, a changing world.

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.

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.