The contemporary proliferation of ‘reimagining’ as a cultural practice has evolved from a largely personal or artistic pursuit into a broader societal and technological phenomenon. A diverse range of actors – artists, political actors, corporations, advocacy organizations, and minority communities – now routinely engage in the reworking of popular works, symbols, and culturally significant designs. Against the backdrop of the shift from a linear economic model toward a circular economy, this chapter contends that a substantive recalibration of IP law is required. It argues that reimagining practices should be protected from excessive control by IP rights-holders through both legislative and judicial intervention. In doing so, the chapter contributes to ongoing debates concerning the appropriate equilibrium between exclusive IP rights and the fundamental right to freedom of expression.

In Chapter 4, we contribute to the debate of aligning green transition goals with the incentive structures inherent in IP law, with a focus on design law. Bringing together theoretical and practical perspectives on upcycling in design, we review the state of the art in the scholarly literature and analyze findings from our qualitative research, including interviews with Nordic designers who integrate upcycling into their design and business strategies. We examine the economic incentives and disincentives of design upcycling and assess the competitive advantages and disadvantages of shifting from a linear to a circular approach in design. Against this background, we discuss the extent to which the European design law framework aligns with upcycling as a design and business strategy, including the effects of the scope of protection, the definition of infringement, limitations, and the doctrine of exhaustion. We emphasize that undue legal uncertainty arises from the ineffectiveness of limitations and exceptions, and that horizontal problems result from overlaps between IP rights. Taking stock of challenges and opportunities faced by design upcyclers we propose principles from circular economy that may be infused into design law to counterbalance the economic and legal disincentives that design upcyclers are faced with.

This concluding chapter synthesises insights from across The Cambridge Handbook of AI in Civil Dispute Resolution, offering a forward-looking reflection on the ethical, institutional, and technological dimensions of AI integration in civil justice systems. It traces the evolution of AI in dispute resolution – from rule-based automation in e-commerce to the emergence of agentic AI – and evaluates how foundational principles such as transparency, accountability and human-centred design must guide future developments. Drawing on the book’s thematic parts, the chapter emphasises the importance of hybrid human–AI collaboration, stakeholder-driven system design and robust governance frameworks. It warns against over-reliance on opaque technologies and highlights the need for legal professionals to maintain core skills in empathy, discretion, and communication. Ultimately, the chapter calls for a principled approach to AI adoption that enhances, rather than undermines, fairness and access to justice in both public and private dispute resolution contexts.

This chapter examines the evolution and deployment of AI tools in the delivery of dispute resolution in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) with particular focus on arbitration. The chapter draws on publicly available original data to argue that there indeed is greater opportunity to deploy AI in arbitration as a tool for efficiency, which may lead to cost and time savings. It also explores the emerging regulation of these tools globally, regionally, and in some SSA countries and concludes that regulation of the use of AI must maintain the right balance of achieving efficiency in the process of arbitration and mitigation of its negative effects.

This chapter takes a postcolonial-ecocritical perspective on a particular mode of empire referred to as ecological-agrarian imperialism. It examines aesthetic articulations of colonial agrarianism with a special view to James Fenimore Cooper’s Littlepage trilogy and The Crater, which are read in the context of Indian Removal and the Anti-Rent conflict in the Hudson River area. It argues that Cooper registers a remarkable critical awareness of the historical origins of the sociocultural conjunctions of soil depletion, food scarcity, biodiversity reduction, and colonial capitalism. Cooper’s works can help us think through the interrelated ecological challenges of our own time such as climate change, soil degradation, and biodiversity loss, and to reflect on utopian possibilities and roads not taken when the social and economic foundations of the United States were laid out.

Fashion upcycling offers unprecedented opportunities for the sustainable reuse of clothing: using second-hand garments as raw materials for new creations, upcyclers can transform used pieces of clothing into new fashion products that may become even more sought-after than the source material. The productive reuse of garment components in upcycling projects is socially desirable in the light of the overarching policy goal to achieve environmental sustainability. However, the more individual fashion elements are protected by IP rights, the more legal obstacles arise. Fashion items may enjoy cumulative copyright, industrial design, and trademark protection. Accordingly, infringement claims may be based on several rights. Seeking to enhance legal certainty for upcyclers in light of the overarching objective to ensure a circular economy, it is thus important to develop horizontal defences that are applicable across different domains of IP law. Against this background, the essay will explain how the referential use concept known from trademark law can be transformed into a cross-cutting defence that dispels concerns about infringement not only in trademark law but also in industrial designs and copyright law.

The chapter examines the adjudication of AI-related disputes as well as the application of AI-driven technologies in international commercial courts (ICommCs), a relatively new adjudication forum. It argues that ICommCs are well-suited for resolving digital technology disputes due to their publicness, transparency, and capacity to develop jurisprudence for the digital economy – advantages that set them apart from ADR and ODR mechanisms. Their international nature also aligns with the transnational character of digital disputes. Additionally, ICommCs are ideal for integrating AI-driven innovations in dispute resolution, as they are more agile and adaptable than other forums, particularly ordinary domestic courts. Their specialised judges, manageable caseloads, and ability to swiftly address emerging technological challenges further enhance their suitability.

This chapter describes the evolution of agriculture sector policies during the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rule. Most Rwandans still live in rural areas, and agriculture continues to employ most Rwandans. Prior to RPF rule, the Grégoire Kayibanda and Juvénal Habyarimana governments presented their parties as prioritising rural interests, as well as the production of cash crops for export (particularly coffee). However, since the RPF assumed power, policy priorities have shifted to diversifying agriculture exports (including producing higher-value coffee and tea) and encouraging the market-oriented commercialisation of agricultural production. The RPF’s attempts at reorganising rural society has been characterised by rural resistance and increasing inequality. However, there have been some successes, which have been driven by RPF-affiliated firms, sometimes in partnership with philanthropic investors. Successes include upgrading primary commodities and diversifying agricultural exports. However, agrarian policies have also been marked by increased land differentiation and rural inequality. Ultimately, sustained structural transformation is inhibited by elite vulnerability. The chapter highlights that there are few signs of the emergence of leading domestic agrarian capitalists.

In a 2009 op-ed in the New York Times, journalist Paul Krugman described the vitriol between the Obama administration and its opponents as ‘the politics of spite’. Political relations in the US have not improved – if anything, polarisation seems worse. If negative emotions play a role in partisanship, spite is surely among them. When we’re spiteful, we are gleeful when our opponents fail or suffer setbacks. Worse, we often revel in what they reject just because they reject it. It’s tempting to think that getting over spite would help address polarisation. In this chapter, I argue that spite all by itself isn’t the problem. Spite is an emotion of defiance: we feel it towards people who we believe are trying to boss us around. We’re liable to spite because we value our independence and we want to be the authors of our own lives. I argue that spite is not to blame for the ugly forms of partisanship. Instead, the culprit is what I call ‘adversarial self-expression’. Self-expression becomes adversarial when we either: (a) interpret people’s self-expression as a challenge to our own or (b) use our self-expression as a way to provoke others.

Race has been a dominant theme in studies of US black art and politics in the 1910s and 1920s. This chapter shifts focus to imperial concerns during a period marked by US occupations in Haiti, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic, as well as the acquisition of the Danish Virgin Islands. It explores how the era’s print culture both revealed and obscured the expansion of a US Empire or Greater United States in the Caribbean. US governance in places like Haiti did not go unchallenged in leftist and race-conscious periodicals such as The Nation, The Crisis, and The Crusader. While non-fiction provoked anti-imperial analyses, fiction did not prompt the same responses. Assessing reviews and commentary of fiction, including Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, Carl Van Vechten’s Nigger Heaven, Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem and Eric Walrond’s Tropic Death, this chapter examines why anti-imperial reading proved so elusive in this context.

Melville is one of the canonical writers without whom a literary history of empire could not be imagined. This chapter contextualizes Melville as a continental thinker and, from this comparative perspective, reconsiders his insights on empire with an eye to Spanish imperial history, US empire, British empire, and the overlap among them. The chapter concludes with a turn to José Martí, another intellectual-activist without whom the story of empire in the Americas could not be told.

This introductory chapter maps the evolving field of European media law and policy and unravels the roles that the Council of Europe, the European Union and European states play in the shared regulatory space. The chapter provides an overview of the key standards and instruments in European media law and policy. It critically reflects on overarching challenges for European media policy that result from the digital transformation of the media ecosystem, the dominance of global tech platforms, the enlargement of the European Union, rising political pressures on independent media and disruptive new technologies such as generative AI. Lastly, the chapter offers a roadmap to the contributions in the handbook.

This chapter explores potential advancements in co-regulatory settings to better cope with basic rights and democratic requirements when tackling disinformation online. While dubious information has become increasingly prevalent on social media platforms and might cause individual and societal harm, regulatory measures have depend on state regulation, self-regulation, and traditional co-regulation. In view of the disadvantages of state regulation and self-regulation, co-regulatory approaches are seen as the way forward in disinformation governance. The chapter argues that current co-regulatory settings have inherited structural deficits from state regulation and self-regulation when dealing with the specific challenges of disinformation, especially in cases of ‘awful but lawful’ speech. The chapter examines the requirements of adequately advanced co-regulatory approaches, the roles of the relevant actors, and the implications for future EU audiovisual policies.