Ongoing Legal Research Articles

Problems of Admissibility and Reliability of Metadata as Evidence

This paper examines the challenges surrounding the admissibility and reliability of metadata as evidence in civil proceedings. It explores the legal standards, authentication issues, and technical complexities involved in presenting metadata in court. The study analyzes key legal cases, technical methodologies, and emerging technologies that impact the use of metadata as evidence. It addresses concerns such as metadata alteration, spoliation, privacy issues, and cross-border challenges. The research highlights the importance of forensic soundness, expert testimony, and proper interpretation of metadata in legal contexts. Additionally, it discusses the application of traditional evidence rules to digital information and the evolving standards for burden of proof in electronic evidence. The paper concludes by considering future challenges posed by emerging technologies and the need for ongoing legal and technical education in this rapidly evolving field.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Trading in the Stock Market: A Legal Perspective

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted global stock markets, leading to unprecedented volatility and legal challenges. This study explores how the pandemic altered trading behavior and examines the associated legal ramifications. In March 2020, stock markets experienced a sharp decline, prompting the U.S. Federal Reserve and other regulatory bodies to intervene. While markets rebounded, volatility persisted, introducing heightened risks for investors. Non- professional investors became more active, complicating regulatory oversight. From a legal perspective, the pandemic raised concerns about stock price manipulation, insider trading, and market abuse. Regulators, like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), responded by implementing temporary measures to maintain market integrity. These legal frameworks, designed for traditional crises, struggled to address the unique challenges posed by COVID-19. Furthermore, the pandemic revealed gaps in existing laws, prompting calls for updated regulations to manage market disruptions during non-financial crises. The study underscores the need for ongoing legal adaptation to safeguard markets and prevent exploitation during global emergencies. As the pandemic evolved, so did the legal landscape, with cases emerging that highlighted both opportunistic trading and regulatory inadequacies. This research contributes to understanding the intersection of market volatility and legal frameworks in times of crisis.

Responsibility for climate change under the ILC Articles on the State Responsibility of States for International Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA)

The Articles on the Responsibility of States for International Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA) create a framework for the attribution of state responsibility for internationally wrongful acts. There is ongoing legal and academic discussion of whether the ARSIWA can be applied to environmental issues. The Climate Crisis is one of the most pressing contemporary issues. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the ARSIWA can be applied to the issue of climate change. The results of the research are that responsibility for the causes and impacts of climate change can be attributed to individual states under the ARSIWA, resulting in state responsibility for climate change. But that the ARSIWA are not likely to be applied to this area of law until implementation is complete. Overall, this paper identifies significant opportunity for the application of the ARSIWA principles to the issue of climate change.

Analysis Of The Role Of Journalistic Language In Building A Balanced Legal News Narrative

Legal news has a crucial role in providing information and understanding to the public about ongoing legal cases. However, often the news can be affected by certain biases or viewpoints, which can affect the objectivity of the news narrative. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the role of journalistic language in building balanced legal news narratives, by considering aspects of objectivity and equality of information. The research method in this study is qualitative. The data collection technique was carried out by literature study obtained from Google Schoolar and legal news articles published in the 2020-2023 period in various trusted mass media. The data that has been collected will be analyzed qualitatively using content analysis techniques. The results showed that a balanced legal news narrative must meet specific criteria, including prioritizing fairness, accuracy, and neutrality in the delivery of information. Democratic journalistic language avoids differences in level or rank in the use of language and prioritizes active sentences to be more easily understood by readers. In addition, journalistic language must also adhere to standard language rules and ethics to reflect honesty, sincerity and respect for individual privacy. By adhering to these criteria, legal news narratives can be considered balanced, able to provide a comprehensive picture, and respect the interests of society as a whole.

A Brief Analysis of the Judgment in Women's Legal Centre Trust v President of the Republic of South Africa 2022 5 SA 323 (CC)

On 28 June 2022 the apex or Constitutional Court (CC) handed down a much-awaited judgment which impacts upon Muslim marriages concluded purely in terms of Islamic law in South Africa. Does the judgment mean that such Muslim marriages are now fully recognised for all purposes in the South African legal context? The simple answer is "no". The rationale for this conclusion is to be found in the two-pronged judgment. The first part of the judgment is wholly suspended and will only and automatically come into effect if remedial legislation is not enacted in 24 months. The second part of the judgment pertains to an interim order which takes effect immediately and applies retrospectively to all Muslim marriages that subsisted on 15 December 2014 (when the case was first launched by the Women's Legal Centre in the Western Cape High Court) and to Muslim marriages which, although terminated before that date, were still subject to ongoing legal proceedings at that date. While the case note briefly refers to the first part of the judgment, the main purpose of this case note is to highlight some of the practical problems that could be encountered by couples when effect is given to the orders pertaining to the interim relief granted in terms of the second part of the judgment. The problem areas are highlighted by looking at the CC judgment in the light of three fictitious scenarios. The case note provides a few critical comments on the judgment and ends with a few concluding remarks. Past experience leads us to expect that tangible progress will take place only by 2024, a date which coincides with South Africa's next presidential election. Until then the non-recognition of Muslim marriages will continue to prove burdensome to Muslim women and children.

A Focus on Contraception in the Wake of Dobbs.

A Focus on Contraception in the Wake of Dobbs.

Alcohol use disorder treatment delivered outside hepatology clinic.

Alcohol use disorder treatment delivered outside hepatology clinic.

Having your Privacy Cake and Eating it Too: Platform-supported Auditing of Social Media Algorithms for Public Interest

Social media platforms curate access to information and opportunities, and so play a critical role in shaping public discourse today. The opaque nature of the algorithms these platforms use to curate content raises societal questions. Prior studies have used black-box methods led by experts or collaborative audits driven by everyday users to show that these algorithms can lead to biased or discriminatory outcomes. However, existing auditing methods face fundamental limitations because they function independent of the platforms. Concerns of potential harmful outcomes have prompted proposal of legislation in both the U.S. and the E.U. to mandate a new form of auditing where vetted external researchers get privileged access to social media platforms. Unfortunately, to date there have been no concrete technical proposals to provide such auditing, because auditing at scale risks disclosure of users' private data and platforms' proprietary algorithms. We propose a new method for platform-supported auditing that can meet the goals of the proposed legislation. The first contribution of our work is to enumerate the challenges and the limitations of existing auditing methods to implement these policies at scale. Second, we suggest that limited, privileged access to relevance estimators is the key to enabling generalizable platform-supported auditing of social media platforms by external researchers. Third, we show platform-supported auditing need not risk user privacy nor disclosure of platforms' business interests by proposing an auditing framework that protects against these risks. For a particular fairness metric, we show that ensuring privacy imposes only a small constant factor increase (6.34x as an upper bound, and 4× for typical parameters) in the number of samples required for accurate auditing. Our technical contributions, combined with ongoing legal and policy efforts, can enable public oversight into how social media platforms affect individuals and society by moving past the privacy-vs-transparency hurdle.

Presumed Consent for Pelvic Exams Under Anesthesia Is Medical Sexual Assault

Unconsented pelvic exams under anesthesia are assaults cloaked in defense of healthcare education. Preemptive linguistic qualifiers “presumed” or “implied” attempt to justify such violations with flippancy toward their oxymoronic implications: to suggest a priori that consent can be assumed undermines its otherwise standalone social, ethical, and medico-legal reverence. In this paper I conceptualize “medical sexual assault” and argue that presumed consent for intimate exams exemplifies its definition. By bluntly describing pelvic exams as “penetration,” this work aims to reify the intimate reality of the clinical label “pelvic exam” and to call attention to cisheteronormative and androcentric assumptions involved in its practice. Additionally, this scholarship seeks to create a foundation toward broader work in conceptualizing clinical rape culture. Given recent national survey data indicating a surprising frequency of unconsented intimate exams, detailed language as to their problematics is necessary for ongoing legal and ethical efforts. Explicit consent for intimate exams must be the standard of care for conscious and unconscious patients.

Should we be leery of being Leary? Concerns about psychedelic use by psychedelic researchers.

Psychedelic research is proceeding rapidly, despite ongoing legal and regulatory barriers and lingering questions about study design, such as the difficulty of ensuring adequate blinding, the relative overrepresentation in studies of participants who have previously used psychedelics, and the importance of personal experience with psychedelics for those who provide psychedelic-assisted therapy. Here we wish to explore a distinct concern: whether personal use of psychedelics by researchers could threaten the objectivity and ethical conduct of psychedelic research itself. In 2020, Anderson et al. suggested that psychedelic use could lead even "conservative individuals to become wildly enthusiastic about the potentials of psychedelics to heal and transform". Recent popular press criticisms of psychedelic science, in particular critiques of the MAPS Phase II and Phase III MDMA-Assisted Therapy trials for PTSD, have also raised questions about whether personal use of psychedelic drugs by psychedelic therapists could compromise scientific objectivity, lead to the exploitation of research subjects, or promote biased reporting of results. Here, we elaborate on and attempt to delimit these concerns, with the goal of informing policy related to psychedelic research and the eventual clinical use of psychedelics. In particular, we explore whether the possibility that psychedelic use can directly and positively affect investigators' enthusiasm about psychedelics themselves raises concerns about bias and scientific integrity. We then discuss several practical strategies to reduce perceived conflict of interest.

Rachel Auerbach and the Eichmann Trial: A New Conception of Victims’ Testimonies

ABSTRACT Since the 1990s, international criminal law has struggled to find the proper role for victims in mass-atrocities trials. Notwithstanding the rise of the victim-centered trial, victims still participate in these trials mainly as witnesses for the prosecution, but not as full and proactive participants. In this article, I return to the forgotten contribution of Rachel Auerbach (1903-1976), a Jewish-Polish journalist, historian, and Holocaust survivor, and explore her important contribution to the Eichmann Trial, where she helped shape a new paradigm of a victim-centered atrocity trial in the wake of World War II. Auerbach's vision for the trial, as I shall present in this article, can be understood as an early precursor of later developments in both international criminal law and, more broadly, in the field of transitional justice. The contribution of women to the development of international criminal law has been marginalized for many years. Similarly, Auerbach's contribution to the Eichmann Trial has long been viewed as merely technical, limited to finding relevant witnesses for the trial as part of her work as the director of the Testimony Collection Department of Yad Vashem. I show that Auerbach had a groundbreaking vision of the Eichmann Trial and of the way law should perceive victims' testimonies in such trials, based on her “translation” of the legacy of the clandestine Oyneg Shabes archive enterprise in the Warsaw ghetto into a legal setting. In her view, the trial would become victim-centered, not only due to the survivors' testimonies, but also because it would recognize their initiative and agency in promoting a new conception of testimony. I argue that her approach to victims' testimonies and its connection to the crime of cultural genocide are still highly relevant to the ongoing legal and historical discussion about atrocity trials.

ONLINE ADVERTISING – HISTORY, EVOLUTION, AND CHALLENGES

The rise of the Internet was closely followed by the emergence of a new advertising medium – Online Advertising. Its rapid growth owes much to the tremendous advancements of the so-called Advertising Technology or AdTech. The AdTech improvements led to a substantial reduction in the cost of targeting and, consequently, to increased media investments from advertisers. Programmatic advertising, the most technologically advanced form of online advertising, makes use of advanced media trading algorithms, including machine learning. It involves a high degree of technological complexity coupled with a lack of transparency and has many advertisers complaining that it works like a ’black box’. The main technological evolutions that shaped the industry will be critically analysed, with a focus on the effects of this growing technological complexity over the market structure. The emergence of ever-more complex industry algorithms was fuelled by a growing quantity of user data and led to complaints from the general public and, recently, to legal actions against the two companies that dominate the market, Google and Facebook. Following an overview of the settled and ongoing legal cases, we conclude that the impact of the rulings, especially the potential ban on the use of 3rd party cookies, could present a huge challenge for advertisers and completely transform the industry. Non-cookie based solutions will need to be developed, but this could negatively impact the advertisers’ results. The Online Advertising industry, as a whole, will need to completely rethink its way of functioning, evolving towards a more sustainable and privacy-respectful business model. Our paper aims to present the emergence of Online Advertising, its evolution in the past three decades, the role of Advertising Technology (AdTech) in shaping the industry s practices and the impact of the legal actions it is currently confronted with.

Преступление как уголовно-правовая категория: соотношение доктринально-методологического и законотворческого подходов (ретроспективный анализ)

Currently the key direction of criminal policy is to ensure state, public and personal security. The novelty of the research consists in characterization of the concept of criminal offence and its constituent features at different historical stages, considering political, legal, socio-economic and socio-cultural factors. The authors pay special attention to the relationship of legal values, scientific doctrine and law enforcement activities in the development of the definition of crime. The methodological basis of the study is a set of general and special scientific methods that lead to a comprehensive approach to the study of criminal law policy in the field of legislative definition of a crime as a legal category and its constituent features. As a result of the research the authors explore the legal nature of the crime, its essential properties and characteristics as a negative social and legal phenomenon, and show the trends in the regulatory process. The article shows the interdependence of the criminal law policy implemented in Russia and the legislative formula of the concept of crime at different stages of the formation and development of the national statehood, both by the ongoing political, legal and socio-economic transformations, and by the achievements in the theoretical and legal and criminal law doctrine at the national level. Conclusions. The authors offer an explanation to the factors that inspire the legislative regulation of the concept of crime and determine the tendencies of the legislative formalization of the concept and signs of crime in the domestic and foreign science of criminal law. Finally, the authors suggest a perspective on the correlation of formal and material signs of a crime as a criminal legal category.

Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography

Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography

Stakeholder-Oriented Firms Have Feelings and Moral Standing Too.

A central claim in stakeholder theory is that, if we see stakeholders as human beings, we will attribute higher moral standing or show more moral consideration to stakeholders. But would the same hold for firms? In this paper, I apply the concepts of humanization and moral standing to firms, and I predict that (1) individuals attribute higher moral standing to stakeholder-oriented than to profit-oriented firms, because (2) individuals attribute more experience (such as feelings) to stakeholder-oriented than to profit-oriented firms. Five experiments support these predictions across different operationalizations of stakeholder and profit orientations. The analyses show that moral standing attributions are not fully explained by attributions of agency (such as thinking) to firms, or by attributions of experience or agency to human stakeholders (instead of firms). By unearthing the importance of experience attributions for moral standing attributions to firms, this work provides novel insights in ongoing legal, philosophical and public debates related to firms’ moral standing. The findings also bring the debate about firms’ moral standing to the heart of stakeholder theory, and lead to new normative and descriptive research questions about the interests of firms and their stakeholders.

Political Rhetoric and Hate Speech in the Case of Shamima Begum

The relationship between political rhetoric and hate crime has been a topic of growing concern in recent years, with the narratives promoted by politicians widely seen as legitimating and inspiring hate crime as well as soothing or inflaming the tensions that result from antecedent hate crime events such as terrorist attacks. The potential return of so-called ‘IS bride’ Shamima Begum from a Syrian refugee camp in 2019, following her high-profile departure four years earlier, led to intense debate within the UK, particularly over the controversial removal of her citizenship by Home Secretary Sajid Javid. As an Islamist terrorism case with clear gendered dimensions, the Begum case was well-positioned to function as a hate crime trigger event. The divisiveness of this case was reflected in partisan political argument within the UK, and accompanied by high volumes of toxic and Islamophobic social media discussion alongside input from a variety of UK politicians. This paper offers a qualitative analysis of the political rhetoric promoted in the Twitter accounts of leading UK politicians in response to the citizenship decision, and subsequent developments between February and April 2019, such as the death of Begum’s child and the granting of legal aid to support her ongoing legal challenge. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis of politicians’ online rhetoric, this study aims to establish the contribution of UK political rhetoric to the hate speech discourses that emerged online in response to this case.

Uncertainty and Confusion Regarding Transgender Non-discrimination Policies: Implications for the Mental Health of Transgender Americans.

Recent policies have restricted the rights of the US transgender people; there is a need to explore transgender people's knowledge and attitudes regarding such policies and related mental health. In 2019, 580 transgender adults living in the Northeastern US completed a survey assessing demographics, knowledge/attitudes toward transgender-related policies, and mental health. Multivariable logistic regression models, adjusted for age, gender, race, and prior abuse, were fit to examine the association of concerns about the implementation of discriminatory policies and depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Many participants were confused about the status of federal and state protections for transgender people, and 48.4% were concerned that their state would pass policies that took away transgender rights. In adjusted models, compared to participants who were not concerned, those who were concerned about the enactment of state-level, anti-transgender policies had greater odds of depression, anxiety, and PTSD (p < 0.05). Our findings highlight the uncertainty around changing policies and potential mental health implications as well as the need to ensure legal protections for transgender Americans. There are several pending lawsuits seeking to overturn Trump-era policies that restrict the rights of transgender individuals. At the same time, lawmakers in several states are pushing anti-transgender legislation. Findings from this study can be cited as part of future and ongoing legal and legislative efforts from advocates seeking to ensure equal protections for transgender people under state and federal law.

The Ethnopolitical Motivation behind the Formation of New Municipalities in Montenegro

In this article, we deal with the problematics of the creation of new municipalities in Montenegro. We put the ongoing legal and political dynamics regarding local government organization in Montenegro in their historical and regional context before analyzing the political developments that led to movements for the formation of new municipalities. We explore specific cases in order to examine the ethnic/national background of such movements and to study the causes and consequences of such a way of creating local organizational units. As the central issue is the influence of ethnopolitics on the formation of local administration units in Montenegro, particular emphasis is placed on how the dynamics of Montenegrin party politics influence the country’s legislative framework of local administration and its implementation. The article analyzes the role of the parties representing national minorities in the decentralization process, and the developments of minority–majority relations in regard to local ethnopolitics. It also investigates the effects of decentralization in Montenegro on ethnic tensions and strengthening of local ethnic identities over national identity. As there was no existing literature dealing with ethnic decentralization in Montenegro, this article attempts to fill a gap in this research area. Through our analysis of the case of Montenegro, we try to emphasize and compare wider tendencies in the post-Yugoslav Western Balkans, using a combination of legal, political, and historical sciences perspectives. Population censuses and legal sources are used, showing the volatility and diversity of the ethnonational map of Montenegro; besides, a number of legal documents are extensively analyzed.

Comment: Ethiopia’s Ongoing Criminal Justice Reform: Modus Operandi, Methodology and Observations

This Comment relates to activities undertaken by the Criminal Justice Working Group (WG) under the auspices of the Legal and Justice Affairs Advisory Council (AC). It covers the period between 17 August 2018 and December 2020. The Comment highlights factors calling for reform of Ethiopia`s criminal justice, institutional arrangement for the ongoing legal and justice reform in Ethiopia and three principal tasks carried out by the WG. It also briefly forwards issues of concern and expression of gratitude.

The end of the transition period: Implications for UK data protection after Brexit

This paper considers the implications for UK (United Kingdom) data protection after Brexit of the European Union (EU)–UK Withdrawal Agreement, the UK’s prospects of receiving, retaining and valuing a positive adequacy decision from the EU, and the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Schrems II. It highlights that although these developments considerably narrow the scope for post-Brexit divergence from EU data protection law, there remain possibilities that cannot be dismissed as minimal. In particular, it cautions that the potential erosion of data subject rights post Brexit may disproportionately impact members of lower socio-economic groups and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic individuals. Any adequacy decision will furthermore be subject to ongoing legal challenge and precarity. The UK Government is likely to engage in brinkmanship with the Commission and the CJEU regarding adequacy and its obligations in the Withdrawal Agreement. If the UK fails to gain, or loses, an adequacy decision, then the Standard Contractual Clauses will face a similar set of ongoing legal challenges. The picture is not a happy one.