The context of this paper is the several innovative reforms since the Australian government changed the family-law system more than forty years ago with the enactment of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth). Whilst no-fault divorce was introduced over four decades ago, the watershed effect of replacing a blaming culture with a collaborative problem-solving approach to family disputing has provided a stepping stone for a progressive pathway to less adversarialism in family conflict. This narrative resonates throughout the family-law system today. It also continues to guide the justice discourse in family matters. This paper focuses on developments in the family-law system canvassing several legislative amendments that demonstrate the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) as a means of improving access to justice in relation to family disputes in Australia. It is argued that, in the family-law system, justice and ADR are inextricably linked. In support of this contention, the growth, development and evaluation of family dispute resolution is considered; access to justice issues that arise are highlighted. Finally, it reviews ramifications for the future considering recommendations from the recent inquiry into the family-law system.

This article discusses three questions. First, what drives business to ignore human rights, or even worse, consciously undermine the achievement of human rights? Second, given the state of affairs of business and human rights, why is there not a quick regulatory fix to the problems that we see? Third, in light of the failure of business and of regulation so far, what can be done? The article posits that reform of company law is key to ensuring business respect for human rights, as an intrinsic element of the transition to sustainability. The article outlines how company law can facilitate sustainable business. It concludes with some reflections on the drivers for change that make it possible to envisage that the necessary reform of company law will be enacted.

The fields of business and human rights (BHR) and business for peace (B4P) have overlaps in how they view business in society and in their multidisciplinary nature. This paper seeks to build on the work of BHR scholars in connecting with the B4P scholarly community, to bridge the divide by explaining the elements of the B4P literature that might be of interest for BHR scholars, and to describe a joint research agenda for scholars in both fields. The paper begins with a literature review of the major assertions and findings of B4P on the role that business can and should play in enhancing peace. Similarities and differences in approach and theories between BHR and B4P are then noted. A common research agenda is proposed that BHR and B4P scholars may use as a starting point for broader collaboration.

COVID-19-related controversies concerning the allocation of scarce resources, travel restrictions, and physical distancing norms each raise a foundational question: How should authority, and thus responsibility, over healthcare and public health law and policy be allocated? Each controversy raises principles that support claims by traditional wielders of authority in “federal” countries, like federal and state governments, and less traditional entities, like cities and sub-state nations. No existing principle divides “healthcare and public law and policy” into units that can be allocated in intuitively compelling ways. This leads to puzzles concerning (a) the principles for justifiably allocating “powers” in these domains and (b) whether and how they change during “emergencies.” This work motivates the puzzles, explains why resolving them should be part of long-term responses to COVID-19, and outlines some initial COVID-19-related findings that shed light on justifiable authority allocation, emergencies, emergency powers, and the relationships between them.

While the world rushed to develop treatments for COVID-19, some turned hopefully to drug repurposing (drug repositioning). However, little study has addressed issues of drug repurposing in emergency situations from a broader perspective, taking into account the social and ethical ramifications. When drug repurposing is employed in emergency situations, the fairness of resource distribution becomes an issue that requires careful ethical consideration.This paper examines the drug repurposing in emergency situations focusing on the fairness using Japanese cases. Ethical issues under these circumstances addressed by the authors include: maintaining the evidence level, integrity of clinical research ethics, and voluntary consent by original indication patients. In order to address these issues, they argue that rapid accumulation of ethically and scientifically valid evidence is required, as is obtaining information on resource quantity.

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, open science has become central to experimental, public health, and clinical responses across the globe. Open science (OS) is described as an open commons, in which a right to science renders all possible scientific data for everyone to access and use. In this common space, capitalist platforms now provide many essential services and are taking the lead in public health activities. These neoliberal businesses, however, have a problematic role in the capture of public goods. This paper argues that the open commons is a community of rights, consisting of people and institutions whose interests mutually support the public good. If OS is a cornerstone of public health, then reaffirming the public good is its overriding purpose, and unethical platforms ought to be excluded from the commons and its benefits.

When mediation places decision-making power in the hands of lay disputants it raises troubling issues. Can justice be delivered without judicial assistance? What is the effect on the legal system? And how should outcomes thus achieved be regarded? Critics have tended to answer negatively, pointing to a range of harms including individual oppression and the vanishing trial. Such views, focusing too narrowly on conformity to legal norms, overlook ordinary people's capacity for justice reasoning. A recent Scottish pilot study of small-claims mediation parties illustrates the richness and complexity of their thinking around whether, and for how much, to settle. This suggests that mediation settlements, rather than representing second-class justice, may enhance the legitimacy of the legal system. Implications for theories of justice are considered.

The world awaits a SARS-CoV-2 virus (i.e., COVID-19 disease) vaccine to keep the populace healthy, fully reopen their economies, and return their social and healthcare systems to “normal.” Vaccine safety and efficacy requires meticulous testing and oversight; this paper describes how despite grandiose public statements, the current vaccine development, testing, and production methods may prove to be ethically dubious, medically dangerous, and socially volatile. The basic moral concern is the potential danger to the health of human test subjects and, eventually, many vaccine recipients. This is further complicated by economic and political pressures to reduce government oversight on rushed vaccine testing and production, nationalistic distribution goals, and failure to plan for the widespread immunization needed to produce global herd immunity. As this paper asserts, the public must be better informed to assess promises about the novel vaccines being produced and to tolerate delays and uncertainty.

Russia remains the destination of choice for Tajik migrants. Its migration policies have profound implications for migrants’ legal status and capacity to remit and return home. This article draws on ethnographic research in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and explores how the enforcement of Russia’s immigration laws affects Tajik migrants and their families. By 2016, over 300,000 Tajik migrants were issued entry bars (zapret na v’ezd) for three or more years for two or more administrative offenses, including the lack of a work permit or a residential registration and a traffic violation. Migration and the transnational lifestyle increase agency among Tajik men and women, informing gender transformations. Entry bars produce temporary constraints to spatial and social mobility as migrants readjust to well-defined gender roles in their home country. We note how immigration laws affect men and women in different ways, contextualizing the gendered effects of entry bars through the lens of gender relations and understandings of masculinity and femininity in Tajikistan. We argue that the constraints to migrants’ mobility developed by Russian migration policies inform the reconstitution of gender relations in Tajikistan.

Adopting an Optimality-theoretic approach, this paper examines gemination in English loanwords in Ammani Arabic (AA). Data come from a corpus of 1200 loanwords as produced by 12 AA monolingual native speakers. Results show that gemination, which is not attested in the source input, is induced to satisfy AA structural constraints and to render the output better well-formed. Of particular interest, results show that the introduction of English loanwords into AA highlights the activity of a constraint that requires prosodic words in AA, and probably many Arabic dialects, to be left-aligned with a foot. This constraint enhances our understanding of many aspects of Arabic phonology such as stress assignment and foot formation. The study has important implications for Arabic phonology, loanword phonology and second language acquisition.

In many parts of the world, the adoption of alternative dispute-resolution (ADR) processes was premised on creating better access to justice for citizens, particularly those with lesser means (Woolf, 1996; Access to Justice Advisory Committee, 1994). ADR's foundational link with access to justice is in relation to not only justice as a process for the resolution of disputes, but also justice in relation to equality of access and equitable outcomes. This Special Issue focuses on the relationship between ADR and access to justice in various contexts and jurisdictions, including Australia, China, England and Wales, Scotland and Singapore, and within the family-law system in Australia. The papers engage in a critical discussion of ADR's contribution to access to justice in the resolution of disputes and, in particular, the extent to which ADR has contributed to improved access to justice. In doing this, the papers highlight the role of access-to-justice discourse in the development and growth of ADR; where available, review evaluations of access to justice in relation to ADR initiatives; and, finally, reflect on the future of ADR and access to justice.

Research on the demographic impacts of mining in sparsely populated areas has focused primarily on relatively large towns. Less attention has been paid to smaller villages, which may experience different impacts because of their highly concentrated economies and their small populations, making them more vulnerable to demographic “boom and bust” effects. This paper examines demographic change in four small villages in northern Sweden, which are located close to several mining projects but have evolved through different degrees of integration with or separation from mining. Using a longitudinal “resource cycle” perspective, the demographic trajectories of the villages are compared to understand how different types of settlement and engagement with mining have led to different demographic outcomes in the long term. While the four villages experienced similar trajectories in terms of overall population growth and decline, their experiences in relation to more nuanced indicators, including age and gender distributions and population mobilities, were different, and potential reasons for this are discussed. Due to data limitations, however, the long-term demographic consequences of mining for local Sami people remain unclear. The paper problematises this research gap in light of general concerns about mining impacts on traditional Sami livelihoods.

This paper examines the key societal developments underpinning the growth of mediation in Singapore with a view to analysing the evolving conceptualisation of justice within mediation. The introduction of mediation corresponded with a shift from adversarial justice to an indigenous form of conciliatory justice, in which a respected mediator played an adviser role for the disputants and was trusted to ensure the fairness of the process. However, this trajectory was tempered by the need to ensure that Singapore mediation practice conformed with international practices concerning the protection of parties’ autonomy. The ambivalence concerning the mediator's role has resulted in uncertainty about whether the mediator bears primary responsibility for ensuring procedural and substantive fairness. The paper discusses the implications of this ambiguity and proposes ways to resolve it. The current phase of professionalisation in Singapore's mediation movement offers the opportune moment to resolve these existing tensions and to crystallise the mediator's role in facilitating access to justice.

Since 1978, we have observed the steady development of institutions, mechanisms and processes of dispute resolution in China. In the last ten years or so, we then noted frequent issuance of new rules and measures as well as revision of existing laws, the promotion of mediation as the preferred method for resolving disputes and, more recently, the promotion of an integrated dispute-resolution system as a national strategy for comprehensive social control (as well as for resolving disputes), in the name of reforming and strengthening ‘the Mechanism for Pluralist Dispute Resolution’. Careful examination of these latest developments suggests that fundamental changes are taking place that may potentially alter the course of the development of the Chinese dispute-resolution system. These developments are the focus of this paper with an aim to ascertain the nature of the developments and their future direction or directions.

Recent research into right-dislocated pronouns has provided details of the form and functions of lone pronoun tag (ProTag) constructions in Present-day British English. In this article, we present the first systematic investigation of ProTag constructions in an earlier variety, Early Modern English. Using as our corpus the dramatic works of Jonson, Marlowe and Shakespeare – writers already known to make use of tag questions in their works – we identified and analysed ProTag constructions. Our findings reveal that ProTag constructions in Early Modern English differ from their Present-day British English equivalents with respect to possible functions: in the earlier variety ProTag constructions could have a ‘Question’ function, the same as tag questions. We also found the relative frequency of demonstrative ProTags compared to personal ProTags to be significantly different: personal ProTags are far more frequently attested than demonstrative ProTags in our corpus of Early Modern English drama texts; this is the reverse of what has been found for Present-day British English. We propose that a key factor in the observed change is extension of the types of referents that demonstrative ProTags can have. This study offers a new perspective on ProTag constructions, their classification and development.

In England and Wales, the judiciary, Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunal Services (HMCTS) and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) have embarked on an ambitious reform whose aims are to radically transform and restructure court services and introduce digital justice for the overall purpose of improving access to justice in relation to the resolution of disputes. The reality in the courts of England and Wales is that the current reform means automation of processes. Digital transformation offers a real chance to improve access to justice particularly for low-value claims where a simplified process is more proportionate to the value of the dispute. This paper argues therefore that, for everyday low-value civil disputes, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes should be at the core of any design. In addition, fashioning new means to deliver access to justice should not just be about increasing government efficiency, but also about using technology to design and create innovative, new, agile and ‘user-centric’ pathways.

In the last four decades, there has been a significant increase in the number and variety of appropriate dispute-resolution (ADR) institutions and processes in Australia as a critical aspect of improved access to justice. Although more people can get assistance to resolve their disputes, the issues of whether this access is shared equally within the community, how the disadvantaged fare in these processes and what type of justice is provided by the various ADR processes are explored. The relevance of legislative objectives of ADR fora and processes to justice outcomes is highlighted. It is argued that ADR processes need to be designed and implemented bearing in mind the type/nature of the dispute, parties involved and availability of resources, and to have an overarching objective of promoting access to justice for users. Additionally, improved access to justice requires ongoing and rigorous evaluation of ADR processes to ascertain whether justice objectives are being achieved.

César Falliet's trans-imperial biography sheds light on the dynamics of belonging in early modern Manila, a city that was both a cosmopolitan centre of trade and a stronghold of Spanish colonial power. Falliet's integration into Manila's social world depended on his ability to convince elites that he was Catholic, loyal to the Spanish king and useful to his empire; attributes that he proved by fighting Islamic and Protestant pirates. These credentials were ultimately tested in five theatres: Manila, Batavia, India, the Americas and the Sulu Zone. Manila's inter-Asian and transpacific ties profoundly shaped foreigners’ lives in the city.