Artificial intelligence systems increasingly generate conduct that appears intentional. They negotiate, advise, adapt to obstacles, and shape human decision-making. Yet they are not legal persons and lack minds in any conventional sense. We argue that the apparent impasse dissolves once legal intent is understood functionally rather than metaphysically. Across contract, tort, corporate, and criminal law, intent has never been a simple report on inner mental states. It is a normative tool used to gate legal effect, allocate blame, and manage risk, one that is routinely inferred, imputed, and even fictionalized in service of institutional goals. We reframe the AI question accordingly. Instead of treating AI systems as candidate legal subjects, we see them as non-personal agents whose conduct is attributable to identifiable human principals through doctrines of agency, respondeat superior, electronic-agent contracting, and corporate attribution that already do this work. Drawing on experimental evidence of goal persistence and emergent strategy formation in autonomous AI agents, we propose a three-layer framework distinguishing questions of legal status from questions of attribution and governance, and develop a factor-based approach for determining when AI-generated conduct should be treated as intentional for specific doctrinal purposes. We apply this framework to recent litigation, including wrongful death claims against an AI chatbot provider, and contrast U.S. and EU regulatory trajectories. Engaging with the substantial AI personhood literature, we conclude that the agency-attribution route does the practical work that personhood proposals are designed to do without importing their normative freight. Law can treat artificial agency as legally consequential without granting AI systems personhood, consciousness, or moral standing, preserving human responsibility while acknowledging that intention may no longer be exclusively human as a matter of law.
The booming development of open science and the digital economy has rendered scientific data a core productive factor and a legally protected investment asset under international investment agreements (IIAs). While China has established a nationwide scientific data-sharing system to advance data circulation and technological innovation, the mandatory data disclosure mechanisms, frequent policy adjustments, and imperfect data quality control embedded in this framework generate inherent tensions with IIA investment protection obligations. This paper defines its core research focus on normative conflicts between China’s scientific data-sharing framework and IIAs, relevant investment arbitration risks, and balanced solutions that reconcile international treaty compliance with China’s legitimate data regulatory authority. Drawing on doctrinal legal analysis, normative comparison, and arbitral case review, it systematically examines legal frictions between domestic data-sharing rules and IIA provisions. It first clarifies scientific data’s dual attributes as valuable economic assets and protected investments, then identifies three key dispute risks: data IP infringement and asset depreciation from mandatory sharing, rising compliance costs and frustrated investor expectations due to abrupt regulatory changes, and investment losses caused by uncorrected erroneous shared data. Further, it analyzes legal restrictions imposed by core IIA clauses that substantially curtail China’s domestic data governance autonomy. To balance regulatory sovereignty and international treaty compliance, this study proposes targeted optimization paths: clarifying the boundary of mandatory data sharing to protect data intellectual property rights, standardizing framework adjustment procedures to stabilize investor expectations, and constructing a full-process data quality control system.
American universities have always reached beyond knowledge development. They are constituted through and often defenders of rights central to free and fair democracy. This article makes a novel case for reinvigorated commitments to democratic civic education, including a normative commitment to the dignity of all persons that is institutionalized through equality before the law. The analysis cuts through contemporary pieties of the left and right. The focus is US higher education, including relationships with governments, law, policy, and civil society, proceeding in six significant sections. After defining key terms and the plan of this paper, I clarify the relatively recent innovation of rights and their absence around the world. Rights are foundational for free and fair democracy. I then review critical moments among state, civil society, the rule of law, and higher education across US history, demonstrating that values commitments are essential to establishing basic freedoms for a functioning democracy. The legal and cultural architecture of the rights tradition also undergirds sacred ideals in higher education, including academic freedom and institutional autonomy. That analysis leads to two highly contested issues—national security and policing—to suggest how contemporary institutional patterns undermine progress on critical university goals: deepened insight and/or principled disagreement. Evidence indicates courses related to policing and its critiques are siloed within curricula, student self-selection and institutional socioeconomic sorting undermine potentially related democratic dialogue, and both connect to position campus discourse out of step with marginalized communities. These issues intersect with a key point of this article: individual rights and the formal, legal embrace of shared dignity require government entities. In the final sections, I focus on institutional-level recommendations for civic education that expands commitments to human dignity and the rule of law within a free and fair democracy.
The civic thought movement has produced many fine proposals for facilitating a more robust citizen education in multiple legal contexts, but these proposals have mostly taken for granted what it means to be a citizen of the United States in our time. However, if the movement seeks to bring about a true revival in civic education—legally, politically, and culturally—it must have a clear picture of what it is aiming at and what is possible in our current circumstances. To help clarify that picture, this paper asks civics educators to consider citizenship and civics education in light of their intimate relation to the regime and its legal underpinning, and to political theory. We illustrate these relationships by comparing the American Founding and 20th century Progressivism. We find that in the Founding citizenship was understood as an exclusive legal and moral privilege that came with a robust set of rights and duties. Conversely, while the Progressives similarly emphasized the importance of civic education, their understanding of citizenship differed from that of the Founding on account of their rejection of the Founders’ natural and civil law principles. We conclude with the suggestion that the civic thought movement must adopt a more robust political and legal theory to achieve its aims.
The use of artificial intelligence chatbots that mirror human interaction and emotional closeness has given rise to new forms of crime. Traditional online grooming is generally conceptualized as an offence in which a human perpetrator plans, initiates, and executes criminal conduct. However, the increasing involvement of artificial intelligence has introduced novel and complex scenarios. AI systems may either autonomously engage in conduct that facilitates the sexual exploitation of children or serve as tools that enhance, automate, or scale offenders’ activities. These developments challenge the traditional understanding of the offence and expose significant gaps in existing legal frameworks. Consequently, current regulatory approaches may prove inadequate to address the evolving nature of AI-assisted online grooming and associated forms of child sexual exploitation. This study investigates the case of grooming via social media using AI chatbots and discusses whether the current criminal legislation is sufficient to address this offence. Through a legal comparative method, this study examines the legal rules in the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and China, focusing on the elements of criminal acts and criminal intent and the consideration of the liability of platform operators, developers, and deployers of AI systems. The study also discusses the problem of intermediary liability rules and less mature AI governance policies to tackle the fragmented and hidden nature of algorithmic actions. The study concludes that existing criminal law frameworks face significant challenges in addressing AI-assisted grooming, particularly regarding criminal intent, foreseeability, and liability allocation. The fragmentation of responsibility among offenders, platforms, and AI developers creates regulatory and enforcement gaps in the law. Accordingly, this study advocates for a risk-based liability framework, enhanced platform accountability, greater algorithmic transparency, and stronger child-centered safeguards.
As part of their broad commentary on U.S. trade policy and the world trading system, the U.S. Trade Representatives during each of Donald Trump’s terms in office have offered a public critique of specific aspects of the WTO as a “contract”. In doing so, they offer a vision of the system that is very different from the current understanding. Along with these personal views put forward by individual Trump administration officials, as part of WTO reform discussions, the U.S. government is making formal proposals that would reshape the system in practical terms. Is the vision presented by the U.S. trade leadership, in both their personal and official capacities, workable? This article considers the implications of these high-level informal critiques and formal proposals for the future of the trading system.
This article examines the legal inadequacy of traditional piracy frameworks in responding to contemporary maritime threats. The legal definition of piracy, rooted in Articles 101 and 105 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), was designed for a narrower category of maritime violence than now exists, and this definitional gap produces enforcement failures across criminal, international, and maritime governance law. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature spanning maritime security, criminology, international law, cybersecurity, and organised crime research, the article identifies five principal threat categories that fall outside existing piracy law: organised maritime crime, maritime terrorism, cyber-enabled disruption, illegal fishing, and state-linked hybrid maritime activity. It further identifies structural legal vulnerabilities, including jurisdictional fragmentation, the high seas/territorial waters divide, the private gain requirement, and the absence of a unified cyber–maritime legal instrument, that prevent existing frameworks from adequately regulating contemporary maritime criminality. The article concludes with a normative argument for an expanded, adaptive legal framework integrating cybersecurity, grey zone activity, and organised crime into maritime law, alongside improved international coordination, intelligence-sharing obligations, and governance capacity. The paper contributes directly to ongoing debates about the fitness for purpose of UNCLOS and the need for supplementary legal instruments to address twenty-first-century maritime threats.
Swiss inheritance law is increasingly confronted with profound social and legal transformations that challenge its traditional foundations. This article analyzes how Swiss inheritance law is striving to adapt to these contemporary developments, particularly the diversification of family structures, the growing emphasis on individual autonomy, globalization, and the rise of alternative dispute resolution methods. The study first highlights the increasing mismatch between classical legal categories and modern realities, especially with regard to blended families and cohabiting partners. It then examines the persistent tensions between the freedom to dispose of one’s estate upon death and the protection of close relatives through the system of forced heirship, in a context where the testator’s margin of discretion is expanding. The analysis continues with an exploration of the increasingly international nature of inheritance situations and the significant challenges this poses in terms of legal coordination and predictability. Finally, the article underscores the growing role of mediation and arbitration in resolving inheritance disputes. It concludes that, despite significant developments, Swiss inheritance law still struggles to fully reflect social realities, calling for greater flexibility while preserving legal certainty and fairness.
Since 2018, the Belgian legislator has created several substantial exceptions to the traditional prohibition on agreements concerning future estates. Succession agreements make it possible to create, modify or terminate rights to a person’s future estate among the parties involved. A central innovation of the 2018 Belgian reform is the ‘global succession agreement’, also referred to as a family pact, which allows parents to establish and agree upon an individualized and subjective equilibrium with all of their children, taking into account both prior and present donations to the children, and several other elements deemed relevant to them. The equilibrium is subjective as it is not defined by objective, quantitative criteria, but rather by how the parties qualitatively, together as a family, feel about what constitutes a fair and balanced solution for them. This family confirmation of their own specific equilibrium constitutes a core condition for the validity of the global succession agreement. This contribution first examines how this equilibrium should be understood and how families can effectively attain it in practice, with particular attention to the role of family dynamics. Second, this article explores how global succession agreements can accommodate non-traditional family structures and complex family situations, with the aim of achieving a fair and equitable regulation that reflects the specific wishes and needs of all family members involved.
This article examines the impact of the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on stolen or illegally exported cultural objects thirty years after its adoption, placing the emphasis on the legitimacy of acquiring cultural goods. The Convention has reshaped the allocation of risk, responsibility, and evidentiary burden in the international art market, redefining the relationships among possessors, intermediaries, and source states under an affirmative standard of due diligence. In doing so, it departs from the traditional focus on transactional security that characterizes both civil-law and common-law systems. The article further considers the Convention’s capacity to address the traditional reluctance of courts in market-state jurisdictions to enforce foreign public law on cultural property. Despite these achievements, the Convention’s limited ratification by a substantial number of states has constrained its overall effectiveness. The article concludes by reflecting on potential strategies to enhance its reach, including broader ratification and harmonized implementation measures, underscoring the Convention’s continuing role in shaping the jurisprudence of cultural property disputes over the past three decades.
This article critically examines Türkiye’s ongoing peace process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Initiated by the ruling bloc in October 2024, the process has been conducted through an illiberal approach primarily aimed at achieving negative peace. The government maintains that its central objective is to end terrorism by disarming and dissolving the PKK. At the same time, democracy, the rule of law, and human rights have been in significant decline in Türkiye. In parallel with global democratic backsliding, authoritarian practices have intensified, shaping both the structure and the substance of the peace process. Drawing on the illiberal peacebuilding literature, the article analyses the ongoing initiative through three dimensions: the governance of the process, the understanding of conflict and peace, and the political implications of the process. The article further argues that illiberal peacebuilding and authoritarianism have a reciprocal relationship in the Turkish case. While authoritarian governance shapes the conduct and substance of the peace process, the process itself may contribute to the further consolidation of authoritarian rule. This article explores whether positive and sustainable peace can be achieved through illiberal peacebuilding under conditions of deepening authoritarianism.
Canada played a pivotal role in the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and it was the first country in the world to incorporate the Rome Statute in its domestic law when it passed the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act (CAHWCA) on 24 June 2000. The CAHWCA allows the application of universal jurisdiction for the prosecution of those persons responsible for “atrocity crimes” who are present in Canada. Yet, Canada’s record for the prosecution and conviction of those who are responsible for “atrocity crimes” under CAHWCA is far from enviable. Rather than taking a leadership role in the prosecution of those responsible for “atrocity crimes,” Canada has avoided doing so. Thus far, Canada has prosecuted only two atrocity crimes cases under universal jurisdiction: R. v. Munyaneza 2009 QCCS 2201 [2009] QJ No 4913 conviction and the denial of its appeal in R. v. Munyaneza 2201. (Quebec Court of Appeal, 7 May 2014); and an acquittal in the R. v. Mungwarere (Superior Court of Ontario, 5 July 2013) case. This article will analyze the ratio decidendi in these two precedent-setting cases that rest on the credibility and trustworthiness of the testimonial evidence presented. It also considers other factors that militate against the criminal investigation and prosecution of those who are allegedly responsible for atrocity crimes. This raises the fundamental question of whether it will be possible to “end impunity for international crimes” and advance international justice when States, such as Canada, are failing to prosecute and convict those who are responsible for atrocity crimes through universal jurisdiction. It calls on States to allocate adequate funding for criminal investigations and prosecutions under universal jurisdiction and to develop more rigorous, detailed, and refined methods for gathering and adducing credible and trustworthy testimonial evidence for the prosecution of cases involving these serious international crimes.
The judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Case C-713/23, Wojewoda Mazowiecki, constitutes a significant development in the Court’s case law concerning the recognition of personal status acquired in another Member State. While the decision has primarily been discussed in the context of civil registration and the free movement of Union citizens, its implications for cross-border succession have received little scholarly attention. This article examines the consequences of the judgment for the application of Regulation (EU) No. 650/2012 on succession, with particular emphasis on Slovak succession law, which neither recognises same-sex marriage nor registered partnerships. Using doctrinal legal analysis and a contextual interpretation of the Court’s jurisprudence, the article argues that the judgment should be understood through the concept of functional recognition. Although Member States remain competent to regulate marriage, they may be required to recognise the legal effects of a same-sex marriage lawfully concluded in another Member State where such recognition is necessary to ensure the effectiveness of EU law. The article demonstrates that this approach may influence the determination of heirs, the status of the surviving spouse, matrimonial property settlement, and the legal effects of the European Certificate of Succession. It concludes that Slovak authorities should apply a functional, case-by-case assessment that reconciles national constitutional identity with the effective protection of rights guaranteed by EU succession law, thereby contributing to the broader debate on the interaction between national family law and European private international law.
As an inherent part of Chinese indigenous legal tradition, dian originated from customary practices and was gradually incorporated into the national legal framework, reflecting a distinctive historical evolution, structural composition, and value orientation. Historically, dian evolved from a simple customary transaction into a formalized legal institution. It first took shape during the Tang Dynasty and matured through the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Structurally, long-term practice produced unique concepts and rules that embodied the dual nature of both usufructuary and security rights. In terms of value, dian was not merely an economic transaction tool but also reflected ethical norms and pragmatic wisdom of traditional society. It played a vital role in protecting the interests of the mortgagor, promoting circulation of land, and alleviating financial shortages. In the Civil Code era, the value of dian lies particularly in its ability to reconcile individual interests with social needs and to enhance the efficiency of property utilization.
The digitalisation of healthcare is transforming not only clinical practice but also the legal architecture through which health rights are protected, coordinated, and operationalised. Using Italy as a doctrinal case study within the European Union (EU) framework shaped by the General Data Protection Regulation, the European Health Data Space, and artificial intelligence (AI) regulation, this article argues that digital healthcare is moving beyond consent-centred protection toward governance-based safeguards. The Italian trajectory is especially revealing because regionalised healthcare governance intersects with centralised digital coordination through the Fascicolo Sanitario Elettronico, the Ecosystem of Health Data, and EU rules on the secondary use of health data. The article contends that this shift does not displace consent as a legal or constitutional value, but requires stronger substitute and complementary safeguards when consent can no longer operate as an effective practical control mechanism. These include clear legal bases, differentiated access regimes, data minimisation, secure processing environments, meaningful patient information, democratic accountability, human oversight, anti-discrimination duties, and clearer allocations of responsibility among clinicians, institutions, and technology providers. AI-mediated care is treated as a downstream test case for whether governance-based legality remains compatible with autonomy, dignity, and responsibility in clinical care.
This article provides a comprehensive overview of the case law of the European Court of Justice related to the rebuttal of the principle of mutual trust in the process of judicial cooperation in criminal matters. It analyses ten judgements of the Court, which were delivered in preliminary ruling procedures that concerned the ground for refusal—established by the Court in its jurisprudence, hence referred to as unwritten ground—in cases when the execution of the judicial decision would have possibly jeopardised the protection of fundamental rights. This article provides a thorough analysis of the cases, shedding light on the gradual extension of the scope of the unwritten refusal ground, the Court’s resolve to protect the original structure of the Aranyosi test, the exceptional derogations from this resolve, and the various procedural aspects of carrying out the Aranyosi test. It argues that the rules governing the application of the unwritten refusal ground have been clarified, so much so that they may be ready to be translated into secondary legislation. As such, the aim of this article is to provide a legislative proposal for implementing the unwritten refusal ground into secondary sources of EU law based on the case law analysis.
Given the current global trend of actively exploring the integration of AI into dispute resolution, we contend that, under existing theoretical and normative frameworks, there is as yet no sound basis for incorporating AI—least of all for replacing judges—into these processes. This is not to dismiss AI’s contribution to dispute resolution; rather, we seek to clarify how AI can be responsibly strengthened in this field. Rather than adopting simplistic technological skepticism, we develop a comprehensive theoretical framework that integrates perspectives from computer science and jurisprudence. By tracing the logical sequence of dispute resolution—goal setting, data input, subject identification, algorithmic processing, and the output and attribution of responsibility—we identify five fundamental issues. First, at the goal-setting stage, a fundamental conflict arises between algorithms, which aim to optimize efficiency, and the judiciary, which pursues multiple values (such as a just resolution and a swift one). Second, at the data-input stage, the principle of “garbage in, garbage out” manifests as the intractable and dynamically interactive problem of “algorithmic bias.” Third, at the subject-identification stage, allowing AI to replace human adjudicators—whether fully or partially—alters the judicial proceedings and undermines procedural justice. Fourth, at the algorithmic-processing stage, the black box and the hallucinations of deep learning are in sharp tension with the judiciary’s exacting demands for certainty and reasoned explanation. Finally, at the accountability stage, outsourcing judicial authority to private developers creates a supervisory vacuum and weakens the state’s liability for compensation. We therefore propose that the legal responses and rule-making needed to address these foundational issues be put in place before, not after, technological implementation.
Digital activities of statutory bodies are an emerging area in environmental governance and green information systems (Green IS) research. Copyright societies in India, under Section 33 of the Copyright Act, 1957, are crucial gatekeepers of the cultural economy and manage royalties on behalf of millions of creators through vital web portals. In this study, we examine the interface between their statutory role and digital environmental accountability, filling a research void at the interface of information management, sustainability, and policymaking. The researcher undertook website carbon auditing to determine the emissions of all seven registered copyright societies and found that 66.7% have high-emitting websites, with an average emission rate of 2.49 g CO2 per page view, compared to the benchmark of 0.615 g CO2 per page view for compliant websites. Significantly, there is a policy void: while societies are subject to detailed rules on financial and tariff matters, there is no statutory requirement on the sustainability of their digital operations. Our analysis shows that green hosting is insufficient and that there is a risk of symbolic compliance, thereby extending Green IS theory to statutory digital ecosystems. The researcher recommends theoretically informed interventions that include amending the Copyright Rules to require digital carbon statements, using existing corporate social responsibility (CSR) requirements, green procurement, and developing a Green IS governance model that is applicable to digital infrastructure in the public sector.
Peru’s tax dispute system—administrative claim, Tax Court appeal, and contentious-administrative review—has increasingly migrated toward electronic files, e-invoicing, interoperable databases, and data-driven oversight. This article examines whether artificial intelligence can reduce avoidable tax litigation without weakening taxpayers’ rights and identifies the institutional conditions required to reconcile administrative efficiency with due process, reason-giving, and effective contestation. Using a legal-doctrinal and policy-analytical design, the study analyzes Peru’s tax dispute architecture, digital evidence environment, and AI-related risks in compliance and administrative litigation. The findings show that only bounded decision-support applications are institutionally appropriate, including audit triage, anomaly detection, document classification, workflow prioritization, compliance assistance, and consistency checks, provided that they do not replace legally attributable human judgment. AI is compatible with digital tax justice only when six safeguards are institutionalized: legally meaningful explainability, evidentiary and computational traceability, meaningful human oversight with override authority, lifecycle auditability, effective contestation, and distributional equality. The analysis further demonstrates that facially neutral digital requirements and risk models may generate unequal effects when disparities in connectivity, digital literacy, record-keeping capacity, and access to professional assistance translate into differences in audit exposure, compliance costs, evidentiary burdens, and practical contestability. The article proposes a rights-compatible framework for AI-supported tax enforcement in Peru.
In the era of global data exchange, banking secrecy is no longer absolute, becoming part of a more transparent tax administration system. International exchange of tax information has necessitated a legal analysis of issues related to tax secrecy and banking secrecy in Kazakhstan. The authors analyse the relationship between banking, tax and official secrecy, as well as international and national mechanisms for protecting confidentiality in the context of growing demands for tax transparency. The article discusses international initiatives, including CRS, FATCA and the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (OECD), as well as their impact on the legal framework governing financial information in Kazakhstan. Focusing on international standards, the article highlights the lack of legal clarity in Kazakhstani legislation regarding the mechanism for ensuring banking secrecy when transferring information to tax authorities. Measures are proposed to harmonise regulatory acts aimed at ensuring a balance between the confidentiality of taxpayer information and the obligation of banking organisations to assist the tax authority in performing its tax administration tasks, as well as legal certainty in the handling of confidential information.
