The challenges courts face in dealing with the demand for justice in the digital age have increased considerably in the last thirty years. These actors have always been under the spotlight as the traditional institutional mechanism to protect rights and ensure the rule of law, but have been increasingly confronted with limited resources and expertise, and an overwhelming amount of judicial workload. Digitalisation and automation have been seen as a possibility for political decision-makers to sort out new strategies and tools that ease judicial activity. This chapter argues that the increasing digitalisation of justice has resulted in two constitutional trends, respectively towards an increasing internalisation of AI and digital technologies into the judicial field, and externalisation of judicial functions to private actors and administrative authorities which also implement AI technologies. Both internalisation and externalisation raise constitutional challenges for judicial activities, touching the core of digital constitutionalism, primarily the protection of rights and the limits of power in the digital age.

This chapter analyses a decision of the Constitutional Court of Colombia, which devises a regulatory framework for judicial use of AI. I claim that as long as AI tools are responsive to legal queries, judges will continue to use them. This has significant consequences for the legal profession. Using AI for judicial decision-making prevents important discussions within the profession, which provide cohesiveness, certainty, and legitimacy to legal outcomes. Reliance on AI may undermine the role of professional socialisation in fostering convergent, predictable, and legitimate legal outcomes. Instead, it can facilitate the ‘colonisation’ of the legal field by a disembodied and unaccountable universe of programmers and training dataset authors from outside the (national) legal field. To fully illustrate the magnitude of AI’s effect on the profession, this chapter outlines the Constitutional Court’s decision and its limitations in effectively regulating AI. I then discuss the role of professional socialisation and how AI can displace it. The chapter concludes by suggesting that built-in restrictions in the algorithm itself should be the focus of any regulation of the judicial use of AI.

Accountability is a foundational judicial value and a tenet of the rule of law. Drawing on contemporary examples from the UK, EU, USA, Latin America, Taiwan, and China, this chapter examines how artificial intelligence (AI) is being used to assist judicial decision-making at varying stages – ranging from case-sorting tools and legal research aids to fully automated ‘smart courts’. By categorising these judicial uses by level of AI intervention, the chapter interrogates two common claims: (1) that greater AI involvement increases threats to judicial accountability, and (2) that judicial oversight ensures such accountability is preserved. Contrary to these common claims, we argue that accountability is compromised at all levels of AI integration. This occurs because AI systems: (1) obscure transparency and open justice; (2) erode judicial independence and reasoning by amplifying cognitive biases; and (3) hinder appellate review, thus limiting opportunities to contest decisions. While governments often assert that judicial supervision and discretion are sufficient safeguards, the chapter argues that such protections are increasingly ineffective amid pervasive and elusive AI systems.

AI applications are increasingly deployed in the judiciary for a wide array of tasks, denoted as ‘judicial AI’. The implications for the legal system are vast. In this chapter, I focus on the effects of judicial AI on the rule of law, given the judiciary’s essential role in safeguarding this value. After examining what is meant by the rule of law, three sets of questions guide my analysis. First, how does the turn from text-driven to code- and data-driven legal interpretation affect the nature of law? Is there a risk that instead of fostering the rule of law, this leads to algorithmic rule by law? Second, since AI applications are designed by human beings, delegating judicial tasks to AI implies a delegation to the coders developing it. To what extent can this result in a rule of coders? And last, what impact does judicial AI have on the separation of powers, given that the executive and legislative branch of power control the judiciary’s resources? Can it undermine the judiciary’s ability to check and balance the other branches of power? The answers to these questions force me to conclude that many concerns must be addressed prior to judicial AI’s wide-scale adoption.

Drawing from the archives of the League of Nations as well as those of the French Foreign Ministry, supplemented by press sources and official reports of the parliamentary debates, this chapter traces the essential role played by France in the development of compulsory arbitration and legal methods of settling international disputes, from the Geneva Protocol (1924) to the adoption of the General Act of Arbitration by the Ninth Assembly of the League of Nations in 1928 and its ratification by the French Parliament, almost unanimously, in 1931. France’s engagement in favour of compulsory arbitration for all conflicts was above all dictated by security concerns. Feeling exposed and vulnerable to an unstable and potentially revanchist Germany, France expected arbitration to provoke the implementation of the mechanisms of collective security provided for in the League of Nations Covenant, since it made it possible to identify the party that refused to submit the conflict to arbitration procedure as the aggressor. But whereas the Geneva Protocol had clearly established the close link desired by France between ‘arbitration’ and ‘security’ – a prelude to ‘disarmament’ – the General Act of 1928, for its part, failed to reproduce this link, and did not organize any system of sanctions.

The criminal justice system is becoming automated. At every stage, from policing to evidence to parole, AI tools and other technologies guide outcomes. Debates over the pros and cons of these technologies have overlooked a crucial issue: ownership. Developers often claim that details about how their tools work are trade secrets and refuse to disclose that information to criminal defendants or their attorneys. The introduction of intellectual property claims into the criminal justice system raises under-theorised tensions between life, liberty, and property interests. This chapter argues that trade secrets should not be privileged in criminal proceedings. A criminal trade secret privilege is ahistorical, harmful to defendants, and unnecessary to protect the interests of the secret holder. Meanwhile, compared to substantive trade secret law, the privilege overprotects intellectual property. Further, privileging trade secrets in criminal proceedings fails to serve the theoretical purpose of either trade secret law or privilege law. The trade secret inquiry sheds new light on how evidence rules do, and should, function differently in civil and criminal cases.

This concluding chapter addresses the urgent imperative to establish Islamic environmental law as a formal discipline capable of responding to unprecedented planetary crisis. Drawing on insights from 26 chapters examining the intersection of Islamic jurisprudence and environmental governance, this conclusion argues that Islamic environmental law offers transformative frameworks for addressing climate breakdown, biodiversity collapse, and ecological injustice through principles of khilafah (stewardship), mizan (balance), and maslaha (public interest). The chapter outlines comprehensive strategies for institutionalizing Islamic environmental law as an academic discipline, including curriculum development, research infrastructure, and methodological innovations that integrate environmental science with traditional Islamic legal reasoning. It examines critical research priorities spanning climate jurisprudence, Islamic environmental finance, and environmental justice frameworks that connect ecological protection to human dignity. Recognizing the scale of environmental crisis, the chapter proposes institutional innovations including Islamic environmental courts, shariah-compliant regulatory mechanisms, and revitalized traditional institutions like waqf and hima adapted for contemporary conservation needs.

The aim of this chapter is to evaluate the potential contributions of Islamic finance as an important faith-based approach for financing environmental policies and programs in Islamic countries. While the need for environmental protection and sustainable development have been recognized in the laws of virtually every country on earth, countries often struggle to mobilize environmental finance, i.e the financial resources and tools needed to implement environmental protection programs. The global rise of green or environmental finance as an approach to meet climate change mitigation and adaption financing has highlighted the nexus between environmental finance and Islamic finance as both share similar underlying ethical principles and social and environmental objectives. In this regard, Islamic finance has recently witnessed the development of green sukuk, a new asset class targeting projects that address climate change. The chapter discusses the potential of Islamic finance as a viable environmental finance alternative. In so doing, it will first discuss the ethical and legal principles underpinning Islamic environmental finance. Second, it will discuss the legal and institutional gaps that currently hinder the wide scale integration of Islamic finance into environmental law in Islamic countries.

Chapter 19 explores the legal and political constraints to finding a systemic answer to collective security and general disarmament by delving into three aspects: first, the legal and political gaps and inconsistencies left by the League of Nations Covenant; second, the fast-moving geopolitical and multilateral context that hindered a fruitful connection between collective security and general disarmament during the 1920s and early 1930s; and third, the increasing, and by the mid-1930s openly frustrated, legal bewilderment around core concepts of the existing collective security system: how should it be enforced? And how should it be revised? The study zeroes in on key moments in the League’s existence, and important protagonists of its functioning – the Secretary-General, the leading international lawyers of the time – and draws the conclusion that the League of Nations was too consumed by upholding its fragile and always-contested order to pursue collective security and general disarmament in a systematic, comprehensive, and connected manner.

Through a new account of three early disputes, Chapter 16 revisits the novel role of the League Council in interstate dispute settlement. This role was delimited by a legal threshold: the question of whether disputes arose out of a matter purely within a state party’s national jurisdiction or domaine réservé. Application of this test, nominally left to the Council, prompted considerable experimentation with institutional forms, and particularly recourse to ‘committees of jurists’, an understudied, flexible, and protean mechanism which would go on to be deployed in many spheres of League activity. Drawing on contemporaneous legal scholarship and a range of archival materials, the chapter sketches the Council’s procedural management of three key disputes, redirecting focus to the larger landscape of institutionalized dispute settlement beyond the Permanent Court of International Justice. In this larger landscape, the chapter teases out the diverse characteristics associated with recourse to avowedly ‘legal’ expertise and reasoning. This close reading of varied ‘legal’ deliberations recovers the multifaceted relationship between institutionalization and legalization of dispute settlement – and suggests the complexity of relations between legal reasoning and peaceful ordering, both for contemporaries and for us.

This chapter examines a landmark constitutional petition that challenges governmental inaction on forest conservation in Pakistan, situating the case within broader discourses of environmental justice, constitutional rights, and the public trust doctrine. The petitioner, a practicing advocate, brings a critical legal challenge invoking fundamental constitutional rights, including the right to life (Article 9), human dignity (Article 14), access to public spaces (Article 26), and state obligations for leisure provision (Article 38(b)).

Central to the petition is the alarming statistic of Pakistan’s rapidly diminishing forest cover, which has decreased to a mere 1.9% of the national territory. The legal action seeks a writ of mandamus compelling government implementation of multiple environmental policies and laws, including the Forest Act, Trees Act, National Climate Change Policy (2012), National Forest Policy (2015), Forest Policy Statement (1999), and Punjab Forestry Sector Policy (1999).

The case represents a significant judicial intervention that mobilizes the public trust doctrine to reframe environmental resources as collective heritage rather than objects of private ownership or commercial exploitation. By challenging the commodification of natural resources, the petition articulates a constitutional framework for environmental protection that prioritizes public interest, ecological sustainability, and intergenerational environmental justice.