Understanding the interactions between law, technology and society writ large is a very important task for legal analysis. However, the relationship between these areas can be very complex, resulting in a complex web of interactions and feedbacks. Fortunately, Science and Technology Studies (‘STS’) offers a varied toolkit which can help us to understand how these fields overlap.

In this article, I first providing a brief primer regarding STS and its core ideas. The article then considers some high-level legal discussions (particularly those relating to the concept of technology neutral law, and of Lawrence Lessig’s four modalities of regulation) and considers how STS may help to compliment or expand upon those debates. The article then examines how STS may assist with some current legal discussions, focusing on issues that arise from certain types of automated decision-making, as governed by the GDPR, Article 22. Finally, I provide some starting points for those wishing to incorporate STS into their own work, including some of STS’s limitations for law. I conclude that STS can be a very powerful tool for legal scholars, which can help to reinforce existing approaches and to produce analyses which reflect a fuller range of legal, technical and social nuances.

As Chile embarked on a constitutional replacement process during its worst-ever drought, local environmental activists secured significant representation at the Constitutional Convention responsible for drafting a new constitution, and successfully integrated provisions on climate change and water protection. However, despite the popularity of these measures, the citizenry rejected the proposal. This article, using legal mobilization and constitutional reform studies, examines the dynamics of constitutional mobilization against climate change, presenting two major findings. First, the feasibility of constitutional mobilization hinges on the ability of activists to navigate the politics of constitutional change, as their tactical choices are crucial for enhancing the process’s legitimacy. Second, including environmental measures in a constitutional replacement process tie them to less popular provisions, potentially jeopardizing the entire process, delaying state action on climate change, and weakening activists’ standing. The data supporting these findings come from interviews with Constitutional Convention delegates, archival research, and participant observation. In a context where climate change is intensifying, this article underscores the unintended consequences and challenges of pursuing environmental goals through constitutional reforms.

Discussions of Nazi law tend to centre upon Fuller’s desiderata of the rule of law. Whilst not disputing this connection, this essay argues that tyranny and oppression are marked by the (ab)use of law to invade the domain proper to individual moral thinking, and to transform citizens into models of conformity to whatever values the tyrant cherishes. Its main consideration is how a community can recover from periods of tyranny, and how the law can recover its dignity having shown itself capable of evil uses. So, it is focused more on ‘substantive’ rather than ‘procedural’ morality.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), often referred to as the “World Court,” plays a central role in the field of international law. Despite the significance of this court, socio-legal scholarship has not examined the ICJ’s inner workings due to limited access. Drawing from field theory and organizational theory, this study addresses this gap by using various data sources including interviews, organizational documents, and publicly available texts from insiders. Based on this data, this article explores how the ICJ’s institutional context shapes its organization and the experiences of its actors. We argue that the ICJ provides a space that tightly connects institutional myths, organizational practices, and individual action. This tight coupling effectively mediates and manages differences among ICJ actors, fostering a stable practice of international law within a field otherwise marked by conflict. This enables the ICJ to produce and sustain a specific way of doing international law which has stabilizing effects in this field. By linking the macro level of the field – an area emphasized in prior scholarship – with a microlevel organizational perspective, this article offers a nuanced understanding of the conflicts and organizational practices influencing the ICJ’s operations and development of international law.

The passage into law of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA 2023) marks the first time that Parliament has made significant changes to the common law principles of corporate criminal liability. First, for fault-based crimes, the ECCTA 2023 extends the common law practice of identifying a company with the criminal acts of its directors. By virtue of section 196 of the Act, a company may now also be identified with fault-based criminal acts engaged in by its ‘senior managers’ below directorial level. Secondly, the ECCTA 2023 creates a new corporate offence of failing to prevent fraud, although this may be committed only by so-called ‘large organisations’. I argue that the first of these reforms was not properly thought through, and that it should in any event have been made largely redundant by giving wider scope to the second of these reforms. An opportunity was missed in the ECCTA 2023 to make a failure-to-prevent serious crime a more generally applicable principle of corporate criminal liability.

The European Union’s REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) Regulation aims to ensure high levels of human health and environmental protection, while also promoting alternatives to animal testing. REACH permits animal testing as a last resort only and imposes the 3Rs principle (Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement of animal testing). Nevertheless, the current regulatory practices still heavily rely on animal-based methods. This study underscores the scientific limitations of animal models and highlights the ethical and methodological burdens associated with their use. It synthesises the challenges and opportunities associated with integrating New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) into regulatory toxicity testing under REACH, as highlighted by various scientific experts. Key challenges identified include contradictory and inadequate legislative frameworks, slow and restrictive validation processes, low acceptance of NAMs by regulatory authorities, and legislative amendments expected to increase animal testing. To create a more flexible regulatory environment and advance the adoption of NAMs, there is a need for legislative reforms and increased collaboration between academia, industry and regulatory bodies. In this context, it is also necessary that more legal scholars begin to show interest in this field to help tackle the multidisciplinary challenges to non-animal testing for regulatory purposes. This article provides an introduction to the field of regulatory toxicology with a focus on the REACH framework from a legal perspective.

Despite its contested scientific validity, polygraph interviewing is now an established yet opaque practice within criminal justice in England and Wales, with statute law covering polygraph use in the context of probation for released offenders. In this paper, we highlight non-statutory uses of the polygraph by police forces in England and Wales by presenting analysis of responses to freedom of information (FOI) requests. The boundaries around police polygraph use are undefined and potentially elastic. The policies disclosed state that polygraph interviewing is conducted with regard to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) and the Human Rights Act 1998; yet it is denied that a polygraph examination is a criminal interview conducted under PACE. Furthermore, there is a significant risk that the common law may not satisfy the quality of law requirement insofar as it is insufficiently clear who will be subject to polygraph testing, why and in what circumstances. Therefore, we argue that the legal basis for the police’s use of the polygraph is inadequate and imprecise. Without openness and scrutiny regarding the extent of this use, it is difficult to see how the key human rights principle of foreseeability can protect citizens from the risk of arbitrariness.

This article applies van Gennep’s structure of the ritual to the patent application process, arguing that information undergoes several ontological transformations on the way to patentability. The second half of the article applies Turner’s focus on the liminal space. From this perspective, the ‘pure possibility’ of the liminal space is essential to patent law, because it helps negotiate between strong boundaries (as a form of property) and the almost improvisational way in which general rules are applied to specific patents. Taken together, these two approaches provide a more nuanced understanding of how patent law comes into existence and how the patents themselves operate as distinct social and cultural artefacts. The analysis does not intend to replace the economic understanding of patent law, but instead seeks to reflect more completely how it actually functions.

This research note contributes to moving the scholarly field of international investment law beyond its dominant focus in recent decades on issues of post-admission investment protection and investor–State dispute settlement (ISDS). Specifically, it maps a future research agenda focusing on issues of investment facilitation and investment liberalization. This research note analyses several common and important themes that arise in relation to treaty-based investment facilitation and investment liberalization commitments. These include the value-added of international legally binding obligations, the impact of international commitments on States' applied policies, and a notable shift away from investor–State arbitration towards State–State dispute settlement only and mechanisms for ongoing cooperation between the treaty parties. These themes raise challenging questions, which often call for future empirical research employing methods other than traditional legal analysis. Nevertheless, this research note suggests that the scholarly field of international investment law has much to gain from shifting some of its focus away from well-versed issues of investment protection and ISDS towards under-researched questions concerning investment facilitation and investment liberalization commitments.

Amid a new era of disruption spawned by looming climate threats and significant geopolitical tensions, an increasing number of countries have favored a more robust green industrial policy (GIP) to reduce carbon emissions and achieve other economic, political, and geostrategic objectives. The use of multi-purpose GIPs not only raises questions regarding the policies' compatibility with the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules but also, more broadly, profoundly implicates the interface between energy, trade, and the environment. This article selects China, the United States, and the European Union as case studies and provides a thorough analysis of the specific text and context of their GIPs to identify the new trends that deviate from past practices in order to capture the policy transformation. It highlights the disruptively adverse implications of the multi-purpose GIPs on the multilateral trading system. However, the WTO has an opportunity to mitigate such disruptions and avoid a seemingly unavoidable clash by facilitating international cooperation and coordination in the design and implementation of multi-purpose GIPs, particularly among major clean energy producer countries. In doing so, the WTO can strengthen its credibility and stability while also minimizing the misalignment of the diverse objectives and ensuring the decarbonization efforts will not undermined.

The commons are defined by non-excludability – the idea that none can exclude another from access or use. Likewise, space lawyers portray their discipline’s origin story as uniquely egalitarian and inclusive, in part because of how it was made. The 1963 Principles Declaration and 1967 Outer Space Treaty were drafted by a committee of 28 states that decided by consensus – the first permanent UN body to do so. They worked in the midst of significant colonial and Cold War tensions to form a body of law which implicated the interests of every state. This article argues that the lawmaking which made space ‘common’ was made possible by excluding the Third World. It uses historical sources from 18 archives to shed new light on the process of making space law from 1957 to 1967. Based on this, it explores various factors, from UN documentation practices to American racial segregation, that cumulatively prevented Third World representatives from meaningful participation in space lawmaking. These factors had broad impacts on the drafting committee’s membership, attendance, decision-making procedure, and final products. By seeking to understand this ‘small history’ of a niche field at a specific historical moment, this article also adds to ongoing work that questions the axioms by which international lawyers interpret treaties today.

This paper engages in a comprehensive analysis of the historical processes leading to the destruction of the Original Nations of Belarus and Latvia. The research is structured in three sections, with the first outlining the tribal roots common to both Latvian and Belarusian nations, serving as a foundation for subsequent analyses. The second section constitutes the core of the research, employing an Original Nation approach to dissect the impact of historic occupations in the five key waves—religious conversion, invasions of the Mongol-Tatar Yoke that led to administrative integration into states, a language push under the Russian Empire, identity erasure during Sovietization, and lastly, the restoration of independence in both countries. The last section surveys the modern states of Belarus and Latvia, emphasising their endeavours to revive their Original Nations, as both nations share the burden of recovering lost national elements, resisting cultural repression, and building a robust national identity.

Amidst initiatives and international agreements that call for a stronger consideration of sustainable development in international investment law, there is a need to assess whether the concept has found its way in decisions rendered by investment arbitration tribunals. References to the concept of sustainable development in investment arbitration can eventually make the adjudication of investment disputes more consistent with an increasingly important aspect of the context in which the terms of international investment agreements are embedded. Have arbitration tribunals acknowledged the relevance of the concept of sustainable development when adjudicating international investment disputes? To answer this question, this article adopts an exploratory research design and relies on a content analysis of 91 decisions that include at least one reference to the term ‘sustainable development’. It argues that the use of sustainable development by tribunals is both marginal and problematic, thus showing a strong disconnect from efforts deployed in investment policymaking and international adjudication. The article proceeds in three steps. First, it focuses on international initiatives encouraging the consideration of sustainable development in investment policymaking. Second, it briefly explores the reliance on sustainable development that has emerged in international adjudication, outside investment arbitration. Third, by analysing express references to sustainable development in international investment arbitration, it shows that these decisions demonstrate a general lack of engagement with the concept in the tribunals’ findings and a failure to fully acknowledge its integrative nature.

This article examines the role of international humanitarian law (IHL) in safeguarding artisanal fishing communities residing along the banks of the Magdalena River in Colombia after the recognition of the river as a rights-bearing entity1 and a victim of the armed conflict. The article also explores the potential of targeted peacebuilding interventions for achieving sustainable well-being, ecological restoration and enduring peace. Against the backdrop of historical conflict, the Magdalena River and its adjoining communities have suffered significant harm, requiring widespread reparations that go beyond immediate crisis management. The study proposes a comprehensive approach for achieving sustainable well-being, ecological restoration and enduring peace, acknowledging the complex connections between legal frameworks, environmental considerations and the cultural heritage of the riverine community.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a Chinese infrastructure and investment project launched in 2013 that seeks to link China with over 70 countries through transport, communication, and trading networks. The BRI consists of building and construction projects including railways, ports, roads, and other vital trade infrastructure. Importantly, the BRI also includes the establishment of a new “Digital Silk Road” (DSR) enhancing digital connectivity using the latest 5G high bandwidth, low latency mobile and satellite technology. In 2019, several Western states (notably USA, Australia, Canada, and the UK) banned Chinese telecommunications technology companies, such as Huawei, from rolling out 5G networks in their respective jurisdictions. The purported basis for the bans were security concerns over the ability of the Chinese government to control and potentially intercept communications over the Huawei systems. In the MENA region, no such bans have been adopted and the DSR is proceeding to connect MENA economies to China at a rapid pace. This places MENA countries in a precarious position between strategic links with the US as the global hegemon with a strategic interest in the region, and the emerging Chinese global political and economic order. The regulation of digital communication technologies is one dimension where legal frameworks must be designed with care and discernment to balance competing geopolitical forces. This article seeks to answer the question of how best to understand the legal regulation of new technologies in the MENA region and argues that the conceptual lens of “Tech-diplomacy” helps to provide such an understanding. In addition to privacy-centric, security-centric, and growth-centric philosophical and jurisprudential approaches to understanding data regulation, the predicament of the MENA region is a case study in how geopolitics can also inform our understanding of tech regulation.

This article investigates changes in the right to social assistance – a means-tested cash support programme, regulated by the Social Services Act – for irregularised migrants over a period of four decades, 1982–2022. The article makes the case that austerity policies have hollowed out the right to support, with significant repercussions for those with irregularised residency status. In doing so, it draws on a range of empirical data to shed light on the dynamics of legal change over time and across various settings, identifying both continuities and critical turning points. The latter include shifts in national or local migration policies, and novel intersections between migration law and social law, epitomised by court judgments that have redrawn the lines of inclusion and exclusion in the sphere of rights holders. The article also highlights continuous issues concerning inconsistencies in the legal sources made used of by courts, neglect of children’s interests and needs, and an application of requirements for participation in work-related activities that disadvantage migrants and citizens alike. Ultimately, the article offers insights into how social rights can be preserved in the context of increasingly restrictive migration and social policies.

Through a critical discourse lens, a review of formal police documents detailing historical contact with the perpetrator of Canada’s worst mass casualty event aims to demonstrate that the perpetrator’s Whiteness and socio-economic status deemed him benign and thus invisible to law enforcement officials during the early stages of the mass casualty investigation. This exploration contributes to a broader racialized analysis of who is deemed suspicious or harmless within the context of policing. By contrasting the experiences of Black Nova Scotians with the police to those of the perpetrator, this case study will demonstrate how institutional procedures and processes, influenced by biases, not only produce and maintain racial disparities within the criminal justice system, but also negatively impact law enforcement officials’ ability to conduct fair and thorough criminal investigations, ultimately impeding public safety. The impact on police legitimacy is also discussed.

Decision-makers rely on intelligence to make targeting decisions that comply with international humanitarian law (IHL), yet the relationship between intelligence and the law is not frequently discussed. This article explores crucial elements of intelligence and intelligence analysis that decision-makers should understand to increase their compliance with IHL, focusing on three crucial decision points: (1) the determination of whether a potential target is a military objective, (2) proportionality in attack analysis, and (3) the taking of effective precautions.

A decade ago, it seemed that America’s punitive system of mass incarceration was on the precipice of a transformation, stimulated by a legitimacy crisis as great as any in a century. A decade later, far more modest steps toward reform have been accomplished, and mass incarceration in the United States has proven stubbornly resilient. While overall imprisonment rates are modestly lower, there is little evidence of improving prison conditions or a fundamental reorientation of the use of prolonged incarceration. This prompts a deeply historical question, to which answers, of necessity, must be speculative. What makes the carceral state so resilient, not just in recent decades but also across centuries? Following recent law and society scholars, who have brought together the literature on the historical political-economy of punishment with new institutionalist accounts of the role of myth and ceremony in formal organizations and the bureaucratization of modern societies, this article identifies five “legal-rational myths” about crime and punishment that have perennially delayed a reckoning with its lack of alignment with central public values like respect for human dignity and racial justice. The article turns to California as the epicenter of this most recent legitimacy crisis to chart how myths work to bolster the carceral state against efforts to shrink or abolish it.