Contentious legality in decentralized governance: The rise and decline of cannabis social clubs in Spain.

In Canada, the insanity defense is outlined in both legislation and judicial case law and finds original basis in M'Naughten's case. Federal jurisprudence in Canada has addressed the second and more complicated branch of the not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder (NCRMD) test on wrongfulness, yet legal ambiguity persists in provincial courts. A recent Supreme Court of Canada decision, R v. Bharwani, adds clarity. Finding agreement on the primary matter of fitness, the Court's dissenting opinion, delivered by two of its esteemed jurists and joined by a third, casts aside the obiter dictum of the court of appeal on NCRMD and was unrefuted by the majority. Thus, Bharwani resists easy classification as to its jurisprudential authority. We review the relevant case law and consider application of hybrid authority to the NCRMD portion of the Bharwani dissent.

Background : In-flight medical emergencies (IMEs) represent a critical intersection of clinical medicine, public health, and aviation logistics, occurring within a uniquely challenging environment characterized by physiological stress, limited resources, and confined spaces. These incidents are further exacerbated by the context of a 2025 peak in global air travel, which has intensified the frequency and complexity of medical events at altitude. Additionally, this review considers the lasting impact of the pandemic in shifting IME patterns, noting a marked increase in presentations related to psychological distress and the implementation of enhanced infectious disease protocols onboard aircraft. This review aims to synthesize current evidence on the epidemiology, etiology, and management of IMEs, while evaluating the impact of recent global developments—including the post-pandemic travel surge and evolving aviation medicine technologies—on clinical outcomes and operational protocols. Methods : This narrative review was conducted in accordance with the SANRA guidelines. A comprehensive literature search was performed using PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar for articles published between January 2000 and December 2025. Keywords included "in-flight medical emergencies," "aviation medicine," "cardiac arrest," and related terms. Two independent reviewers screened articles, with disagreements resolved by a third reviewer. Results : A total of 28 articles met the inclusion criteria. The literature reveals an estimated incidence of 24 to 130 events per million passengers, with syncopal episodes constituting the most frequent presentation, while acute cardiac events, though less common, carry the highest mortality risk and operational impact. Successful management relies on a triad of prepared cabin crew utilizing standardized emergency equipment, ground-based telemedical consultation, and, increasingly, the voluntary assistance of passenger healthcare professionals. Conclusion : Persistent challenges include variability in crew training protocols, legal ambiguities for volunteer responders, and the integration of emerging technologies. This article consolidates current knowledge to inform clinical practice, guide policy development, and identify critical research gaps for improving outcomes in this specialized domain of travel medicine.

Sex work is a contested issue in academic, political, and public discourse, often polarised between abolitionist and labour rights perspectives. In Malta, where local research remains scarce, legal ambiguities, criminalisation, and stigma push sex work underground, exacerbating precarious conditions and restricting access to healthcare, legal protection, and social support. Despite ongoing public debates on regulatory reform, the absence of local empirical evidence allows misconceptions and legal uncertainties to persist. This article provides the first descriptive mapping of Malta’s sex work landscape rooted in empirical research. It integrates data from two independent research projects based on interviews with 81 participants, including sex workers (n = 45), non-sex-working stakeholders (n = 35), and one ‘pimp’. The aim is to offer preliminary insights into sex work in Malta across four key dimensions – actors, spaces, tools, and time – and present a nuanced analytical framework beyond traditional hierarchical approaches to sex work. The findings highlight the diversity of sex workers’ backgrounds in Malta, spanning different genders, nationalities, and socioeconomic circumstances. While some participants operate independently, including through digital platforms, others work under varying degrees of third-party management, revealing a spectrum of autonomy and constraint. Street-based workers face heightened risks of violence and police scrutiny, whereas digital platforms present both new opportunities and emerging vulnerabilities. In addition, entrenched stigma, unclear legal frameworks, and exclusionary service provision further hinder sex workers’ access to essential healthcare and legal protection. This study contributes empirical evidence to inform policy and public debate by documenting these complexities, challenging moralistic narratives, and advocating for an evidence-based approach. We encourage future research to expand this framework, engage with larger and comparative samples, and centre policy discussions on the lived realities of sex work.

This article examines the legal and ethical issues posed by unregulated surrogacy in Ghana. Surrogacy is an arrangement where a woman (the surrogate) carries and delivers a child for an intended parent or parents. The egg and sperm used may originate from the intended parent(s), or may be obtained by donation or purchase. The article highlights the potential legal and ethical complications arising from the absence of comprehensive legislation governing such arrangements. The core problem is the lack of legal frameworks to address parentage, rights, and responsibilities in scenarios involving donated gametes and surrogate motherhood. This deficiency leaves children, intended parents, and surrogates vulnerable to disputes, exploitation, and legal ambiguity. The article explores the complexities of surrogacy, including instances where intended parents utilize donated eggs or sperm, or where same-sex couples seek parenthood. It emphasizes the risk of parental repudiation due to a lack of biological connection, a scenario with severe consequences for the child’s wellbeing. By comparing surrogacy regulations in other jurisdictions, the study underscores the urgent need for Ghana to enact specific laws. Key findings reveal that Ghana’s current legal framework only addresses birth certificate modifications through High Court orders, leaving broader surrogacy issues unaddressed. The article concludes that the absence of dedicated legislation creates a legal vacuum, necessitating the immediate development and implementation of comprehensive surrogacy laws to protect all parties involved. Keywords: surrogacy regulation; assisted reproductive technology; Ghana; reproductive tourism; the Casablanca Declaration; commodification of children; Ghanaian law.

Background: The instability of digital transformation in rural communities of Indonesia stresses several critical aspects that reveal how national policy goals do not align with local realities. In this case, it raises the question of whether digital transformation fosters trust or raises hesitation about the SDGs concept. However, significant state-led initiatives have been ratified within the scope of the SDGs. Interestingly, the digitalization of rural communities in Indonesia has been hampered by complex issues (e.g., legal ambiguity, institutional fragility, and low digital literacy) that need to be adequately addressed through the SDGs schemes. Methods: This study employed a qualitative descriptive approach with content analysis to explore digital transformation in rural communities in Indonesia, providing comprehensive insight into the tension between trust and hesitation. Findings: The essay identified three primary barriers in the rural community of Indonesia regarding digital transformation practices and the effects that influence the community in reality, including legal ambiguity, institutional instability, and the disconnect between connectivity and digital literacy, and so on this correlation also scale down the purpose of SDG’s in Indonesian context specifically in rural communities that must be accepted the benefits of digital transformations. Conclusion: The digital transformation must be people-centered, context-sensitive, and supported by strong institutions to ensure sustainable, inclusive outcomes for Indonesia’s rural communities. Novelty/Originality of this article: This study contributes to a theoretical and practical framework of rural digitalization as a socio-technical process, rather than a purely technological shift. Ultimately, the inspection offers actionable recommendations to eliminate key barriers and provides a new perspective on aligning digital policy with community participation and local capacities to ensure prospects’ and compliance with the SDGs scheme.

ABSTRACT When and how do authoritarian regimes turn artificial intelligence (AI) into tools for both economic modernisation and political consolidation? This paper offers a comparative political economy analysis of AI governance in China, Saudi Arabia, and Kazakhstan. I theorise authoritarian AI policy assemblages as institutional configurations that fuse bureaucratic coordination, market alignment, and infrastructural design to secure regime durability. These assemblages embed control within the very architecture of innovation, prioritising stability over ethics and innovation. Departing from data-driven approaches common in political economy, the study employs qualitative methods including policy analysis, stakeholder narratives, and deployment indicators to uncover how legal ambiguity, institutional elasticity, and state capital entanglement shape AI governance. These are not anomalies but structural features of techno-developmentalism in the Global South. The paper contributes to debates on authoritarian resilience, digital capitalism, and the diversity of institutional governance forms across the Global South by reframing AI policy as a political-economic project rather than a neutral site of innovation. It highlights how AI is not merely a technological tool but a strategic instrument for regimes to consolidate power while driving economic development.

This article examines the subversive mobilities and vernacular legal navigation of Uzbek migrants in Finland and Sweden, highlighting their tactical responses to restrictive Nordic migration regimes. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork (2022–2025), including interviews, focus groups and digital ethnography, we explore how migrants with precarious statuses navigate legal ambiguity, administrative opacity and discretionary enforcement. Through informal knowledge networks, cross-border mobility and performative compliance, Uzbek migrants creatively reinterpret and circumvent institutional constraints. We advance the concept of subversive mobilities (Cohen et al., 2017) and introduce ‘vernacular legal navigation’ to theorise how migrants engage with law as a plural, culturally mediated field. These practices reveal tensions between formal legal frameworks and migrant agency, contributing to socio-legal and migration scholarship. By bridging strategic mobility and everyday legal consciousness, we re-theorise migrant agency as adaptive, relational and situated within the moral and bureaucratic complexity of European migration regimes.

The issue of adoption laws in India remains fragmented due to the existence of diverse personal laws governing different religious communities. While the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act (HAMA), 1956, provide a structured legal framework for adoption among Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Parsis largely rely on guardianship laws under the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890, due to the absence of formal adoption provisions. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, serves as an enabling legislation, permitting adoption across religious communities, but it does not completely unify adoption laws under a singular legal framework. This paper explores the inconsistencies in adoption laws across different personal laws, their impact on legal rights, and the need for a uniform adoption framework under the Uniform Civil Code (UCC). The study employs doctrinal research, analyzing statutes, judicial pronouncements, and scholarly literature to examine legal ambiguities, challenges in interfaith adoptions, and inheritance rights issues arising due to the absence of uniformity. A review of international best practices highlights the advantages of a secular adoption framework that prioritizes child welfare over religious considerations. Judicial decisions, such as Shabnam Hashmi v. Union of India (2014), have underscored the necessity of uniform adoption rights, reinforcing the argument that adoption should be a fundamental right. The paper further assesses legislative efforts, particularly the role of the Juvenile Justice Act, in bridging legal disparities. The study concludes that a unified adoption law under the UCC will provide legal clarity, ensure gender-neutral and religion-neutral adoption rights, and protect the best interests of the child. Recommendations include codifying a secular adoption law, balancing religious rights with legal reforms, strengthening the role of the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), and fast-tracking adoption procedures to create a more inclusive and effective legal system.

The climate change discourse that emerged in the 1990s has foregrounded climate-induced migration; yet, terms such as environmental refugee or climate migrant, frequently invoked in public debate, remain undefined within international refugee law, generating legal ambiguities and gaps in protection. This absence is not merely terminological but reflects historical frameworks that excluded ecological considerations from migration governance. Drawing on political ecology, Marxist scholarship, and Moore’s world-ecology approach, this paper critically examines the limitations of climate migration debates when disconnected from the structural dynamics of global capitalism. It situates mobility within the long-term transformation of socio-ecological relations, emphasizing that displacement is both a product and a driver of capitalist expansion, ecological change, and uneven power relations. By framing climate-induced migration within historical and structural processes, the paper highlights the necessity of critically reassessing mobility classifications in light of alarmist and securitarian frameworks and the war regime emerging from the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s military action in Gaza since 2023.

Despite high internet penetration rates, the benefits of digitalization remain unevenly distributed in Indonesia’s densely populated urban areas. This study investigates RT/RW Net, a community-driven internet network that has emerged as a grassroots response to the digital divide in Jabodetabek. While often viewed primarily through a legal or technical lens, the socio-economic implications of these networks remain under-explored. Using an interpretive phenomenological approach, this study analyzes data from in-depth interviews, observations, and document analysis involving network managers, users, and local community leaders. The findings reveal that residents adopt RT/RW Net primarily due to affordability and flexible payment schemes. Beyond connectivity, these networks function as mechanisms for Community Driven Digital Inclusion (CDDI), fostering social cohesion through "digital gotong royong" and enabling micro-economic activities. However, sustainability is threatened by legal ambiguity and the risk of enforcement actions. The article concludes by recommending a regulatory framework that legitimizes community networks through cooperative licensing models to ensure inclusive digital transformation.

This paper analyses the effectiveness of the international legal framework in mitigating the combined risks of orbital collision and cyber interference, and assesses how a global Space Traffic Management (STM) regime could enhance stability and security in outer space. Using Yin’s single-case study design, the global space governance regime is examined through Bowen’s qualitative document analysis of treaties, policies, and twelve scholarly studies, interpreted via Dunn’s public-policy analysis framework. The findings show that existing instruments establish broad norms of responsibility and liability but lack operational authority, cyber-resilient procedures, and enforceable “rules of the road.” Fragmented institutions and divergent national strategies perpetuate legal ambiguity and impede coordinated manoeuvre decisions. Cyber dependencies in orbital systems further magnify risks of misinterpretation and escalation. The study argues that an integrated STM regime—combining binding collision-avoidance authority, mandatory cyber-security standards, and interoperable data architectures—would materially reduce uncertainty and strengthen collective security. Policy recommendations include establishing a supranational coordination centre, codifying minimum separation and priority rules, and linking participation to verifiable cyber compliance. The proposed framework operationalises due regard through authority, assurance, and accountability, transforming space governance from permissive norms to enforceable safety mechanisms. By fusing legal, institutional, and technological dimensions, the research provides a practical pathway toward a secure and predictable orbital environment.

This comparative organizational ethnography examines how two physical science PhD programs, operating under state affirmative action bans, navigate legal compliance while sustaining their commitments to diversity. Drawing on inhabited institutionalism and legal endogeneity, we show how, despite similar policy and disciplinary environments, each program interpreted the law differently and constructed distinctive admissions routines. One program broadened its definition of merit to emphasize community contribution, while the other leveraged evaluative technologies to standardize evaluations, incorporating race-neutral indicators associated with broadening participation. Findings reveal how committees navigated legal ambiguity, activated local culture to enable compliant adaptation, and expanded conceptions of merit. We offer a framework of race-neutral compliance logics to advance theory on how organizations enact law while pursuing equity.

Village land use planning in Tanzania is a critical instrument for sustainable rural development, environmental management, and equitable access to land. Despite the enactment of the Village Land Act R.E 2023, the Land Act R.E 2023, and the Land Use Planning Act R.E 2023, the implementation of statutory land use planning faces numerous legal challenges. This study identifies and analyses seven major challenges, including the conflict between customary land tenure and statutory frameworks, weak enforcement of planning provisions, overlapping authority between central and local government, marginalisation of vulnerable groups, corruption, limited institutional capacity, and inadequate dispute resolution mechanisms. The research employs a doctrinal legal methodology, relying on statutory interpretation, judicial decisions, and scholarly works, including books and journal articles, to critically examine the laws governing village land use in Tanzania. The study reveals significant gaps between statutory provisions and practical implementation, showing that cultural practices, institutional weaknesses, and legal ambiguities undermine the effectiveness of land use planning. Recommendations are provided to harmonise customary and statutory systems, strengthen enforcement, protect vulnerable groups, enhance institutional capacity, and improve dispute resolution processes. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of legal reforms needed to ensure equitable, transparent, and sustainable village land use planning in Tanzania.

This Article explores the intersection of legal frameworks and archaeological practices in protecting underwater cultural heritage (UCH), focusing on historic shipwrecks. It traces maritime law from medieval European customs treating wrecks as res nullius or subject to royal claims to modern regimes like the 1982 UNCLOS and 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage (CPUCH). UNCLOS is critiqued for its fragmented provisions (Articles 149 and 303), which offer limited protection and often prioritize commercial salvage over heritage preservation, enabling treasure hunting in EEZs and high seas. The UNESCO Convention provides a stronger framework by mandating professional archaeological standards, in-situ preservation and rejecting commercial exploitation. Case studies, the successful public preservation of the Mary Rose (UK), commercial salvages like the Atocha (USA), destructive looting of the Geldermalsen and state-sanctioned exploitation of a Chinese wreck in Indonesia highlight how legal ambiguities and economic pressures disproportionately affect developing nations. The article entails a balanced model for poorer states, temporary "loaning" agreements with capable parties for excavation, exhibition and tourism revenue generation, allowing cost recovery before reverting control to the country of origin. This aims to ensure financial sustainability, equitable heritage protection and prevention of loss to unregulated salvage.

ABSTRACT Many studies focus on cases where domestic political imperatives animate the timing, framing and adoption of eliminationist policies. This article directs attention to the regional geopolitical pressures that can motivate, or even force, such policies, particularly non-deadly eliminationist policies. Through an in-depth analysis of Jordan's 1988 disengagement from the West Bank and the accompanying denationalisation of its roughly one million residents, I make two main contributions to this special issue. First, I show that states can frame eliminationist policies as geopolitically necessary and externally imposed—many Jordanian officials portrayed the disengagement as supporting Palestinian nationalism. These officials viewed the erasure of West Bank Palestinians from the Jordanian citizenry as a prerequisite for becoming citizens of a future Palestinian state. Second, I demonstrate that eliminationist policies can be intentionally ambiguous to facilitate reversing them if political circumstances change—the Jordanian disengagement is riddled with legal ambiguities, including whether the policy was legal and if it constituted law. Overall, drawing from extensive archival research and personal interviews with Jordanian ministers, bureaucrats and lawyers, this article highlights that the rhetoric of eliminationist policies can reflect external pressures, while the legally ambiguous adoption of these policies can reveal domestic leaders' resistance to those pressures.

Purpose This paper aims to examine (i) the impact that Chile’s unique system of property rights over lithium has in limiting the expansion of this industry and (ii) what this reveals about the evolution, limits and design of property systems more generally. Design/methodology/approach The study combines doctrinal analysis of Chile’s constitutional, mining and lithium-specific rules; historical institutional legal analysis of reforms spanning from the 1960s to the present; and conceptual frameworks drawn from contemporary property theory. Findings The main problem of Chile’s property regime over lithium is its lack of “modularity”, that is, of relatively free-standing units that can easily be exploited without interference of third parties’ rights. This results from two distinct anti-commons tragedies involuntarily created by Chile’s proprietary regime over lithium. The first is a “real” anti-commons, arising from the collision between rights over lithium and rights over other physically linked mineral resources. The second is an “apparent” anti-commons, resulting from legal ambiguity as to the legal status of certain lithium reserves generated by the 1980s reforms that are the bedrock of Chile’s modern mining law. Attempts to bypass these problems through “special operation contracts” have added complexity to the system without resolving underlying structural flaws. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first in-depth legal study of the Chilean property regime over lithium that connects its doctrinal structure to broader theoretical debates on the structure and evolution of property law.

"I can't help them like I used to": Evolving prenatal genetic counseling practices in a post-Roe U.S.

Increasing mental health concerns in Malaysia have intensified the focus on emotional harm within marriage, specifically cumulative and private abuse that lacks physical evidence. This study investigates the legal and procedural barriers faced by women seeking fasakh (divorce) on grounds of emotional abuse within the Shariah court system of Terengganu. Despite Terengganu recording the highest score in the Malaysia Happiness Index 2024 (8.64), psychological harms remain a hidden challenge. Adopting a mixed-method design, the research analyzed a cross-sectional survey of 31 Shariah lawyers via SPSS and performed a structured content analysis of 33 fasakh case documents. The findings reveal three critical challenges to women's rights: (1) evidentiary limitations and social stigma that complicate the burden of proof; (2) legal ambiguity in the framing of emotional abuse leading to inconsistent judicial outcomes; and (3) a lack of integrated psychological support within court processes. The study concludes that to protect women's matrimonial rights, there is an urgent need for clearer operational guidelines on emotional abuse, enhanced procedural directions for non-physical evidence, and strengthened court-linked psychological referral pathways.

This article considers how notions of sovereignty and solidarity influenced the response to boat refugees at sea between 1979 and 2001. It argues that states responded with prolonged solidarity when helping boat refugees served to support their foreign policy goals and fitted with the moral zeitgeist. When such conditions did not exist, states successfully used the legal ambiguity of the sea to intercept, repatriate and in some cases strategically confine boat refugees to offshore detention centres located beyond the reach of national courts. Restricting boat refugees on the high seas served to bolster governments’ claims that they could control unwanted immigration and, in doing so, rescue their territorial sovereignty. Yet this created a notable paradox: by allegedly preserving territorial sovereignty in their dramatic and very visible border spectacles with boat refugees, governments felt it necessary to cheat national and international law.