This chapter covers the reparation of harm suffered due to human rights violations. It examines the definition of compensable losses, the content of compensation, and the international legal protection of compensation awarded to victims. The chapter discusses the standards for determining and quantifying harm, the mechanisms for providing compensation, and the challenges in ensuring effective reparation. It also highlights the role of international bodies in monitoring and enforcing compensation awards, the importance of ensuring timely and adequate compensation, and the need for comprehensive measures to address the long-term impact of human rights violations on victims.

This chapter examines the political control mechanisms under the European Convention on Human Rights, focusing on the role of the Committee of Ministers and the judicialization of the supervisory process. It discusses the legal framework governing the supervision of the implementation of the European Court of Human Rights’ judgments, the increasing involvement of the Court in the execution process, and the impact of these developments on ensuring compliance with human rights standards. The chapter also explores the challenges and opportunities in balancing political and judicial oversight and the role of various stakeholders in the implementation process.

This chapter discusses the various interpreters of international human rights law, including international courts, regional courts, and domestic courts. It examines their roles, authority, and the plurality of interpreters in the human rights legal framework. The chapter explores how different judicial and quasi-judicial bodies contribute to the development and interpretation of human rights norms. It also highlights the challenges and opportunities in achieving coherence and consistency in the interpretation of human rights law across different jurisdictions. The chapter emphasizes the importance of collaboration and dialogue among interpreters to enhance the protection of human rights.

This chapter outlines the treaty-based structure of international human rights law norms, including various human rights treaties, and discusses the common legal regime for these treaties. It highlights the specificity and effects of human rights treaties on state obligations and freedoms. The chapter examines the different types of human rights treaties, including general and specialized treaties, and their impact on international human rights law. It also discusses the legal regime governing these treaties, including their interpretation, implementation, and enforcement. The chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the treaty-based framework of international human rights law and its significance in shaping state behavior and protecting human rights.

This chapter starts from the observation that, as far as the competitive allocation of some types of limited rights are concerned (licenses, financial grants), both EU and national legislators have not developed the relevant legal principles into more or less detailed rules yet, contrary to other types of limited rights (public contracts, sale of public assets). The central question this chapter seeks to answer is whether and to what extent these differing approaches can be rationalized. Given that a general theory is lacking, the chapter undertakes a bottom-up explanatory problem analysis of the various arguments that seem relevant for the decision of legislators to develop the principles into more or less detailed rules. The purpose of this analysis is to give a better insight into the contextual application of the various aspects that seem relevant whenever legislators consider and decide where to position the legal framework on the sliding scale between a principle-based only system, on the one hand, and a fully detailed rule-based system on the other.

The right to freedom of thought is enshrined in Article 32(1) of Kenya’s 2010 Constitution. This right aims to facilitate democratic discourse, critical thinking, and societal progress. However, despite its constitutional protection, the right remains underdeveloped statutorily, in judicial decisions, and in academic literature. Ambiguity persists in defining and qualifying violations of this right, as no court has thus far engaged in a comprehensive analysis to establish its content and scope. Instead, it has been intertwined with discussions on the scope, application, and limitations of freedoms of expression, religion, belief, and opinion, being regarded as the essential inner element necessary for the exercise of these freedoms. This chapter examines the scope of the right to freedom of thought in Kenya and the importance of recognising it as an independent right, despite its interconnectedness with the aforementioned freedoms. Ensuring this recognition allows citizens to develop their own set of ideals and belief systems without facing coercion to disclose their thoughts, punishment for holding certain thoughts, impermissible alteration of their thoughts, or a lack of an enabling environment to hold and express their thoughts. To establish this, the chapter explores the historical and legal framework of the right to freedom of thought in Kenya and examines its interplay with related constitutional rights such as freedom of expression, belief, religion, and opinion. It addresses contemporary issues, including the impact of technology, surveillance, and cancel culture on freedom of thought. Recommendations are then made on its applicability and how courts and academics can navigate the complexities surrounding its scope, content, and limitations.

This chapter first gives an overview of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), including its background and content. It then examines how major Western powers are responding to the BRI by proposing alternatives, thus illustrating its geopolitical and geo-economic implications. Following this, it deconstructs the legal framework of the BRI and explains the approach with which China is putting the BRI into practice. Finally, it explores what the BRI may bring about in the international legal order and the Chinese legal order. Through the prism of the BRI, this chapter will help appreciation of how China, as it becomes a leading state, exerts influence on the international order, which is experiencing a tremendous transformation.

Chapter 2 reviews the international and EU legal frameworks that apply to the international protection of persons fleeing contemporary armed conflicts from a gender perspective. The chapter explores the relationship between international law and armed conflicts, then turns to the interaction between international refugee law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law. The chapter emphasises the role of international human rights law in recognising the context of armed conflicts for the protection of human rights from a gender perspective. It then examines whether the Refugee Convention definition applies to persons fleeing armed conflicts in accordance with the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) , but also more broadly whether international refugee law is able to fulfil its purpose of international protection in light of the changing characteristics of contemporary armed conflicts. The central claim of this chapter is that interpreting the Refugee Convention definition to ensure the effective protection of persons fleeing contemporary armed conflicts requires the incorporation of existing knowledge found in conflict and gender literature. This interpretative obligation is then discussed in the context of EU Member States (MS) acting within the EU legal order.

For their politics lessons Susanne Staschen-Dielmann and Saskia Helm create a digital learnscape based on the well-known simulation Model United Nations (MUN) – usually based on the organisation of an international conference. The idea of a digital MUN emerged during the first lockdown in Great Britain and was refined using pluriliteracies principles during the second one. Within the authentic setting of a United Nations conference, learners are guided through more and more sophisticated text-production tasks. These include writing a policy cycle analysis, a draft resolution and an opening speech. Learners take part in a highly formalised debate, which requires the use of an extremely elaborate register. The digital learning space is used to ensure formal and informal communication and information exchange within groups of varying sizes as well as providing meaningful feedback.

To tackle hydrological hazards, an adaptive legal framework based on biophysical and social conditions is essential at emerging conurbations involving multiple water administrations. To secure sustainable natural resources and improve livelihoods, Chinese laws stipulate policies that guide water governance and regulate hazards. The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) in China is a regional development initiative which requires a novel and flexible transboundary legal framework for its increasingly complex and uncertain water systems due to unprecedented climate variability and socioeconomic connections. This legal framework should be able to deal with water availability, accessibility, and hazard prevention issues. It should also be able to address limitations of vagueness, rigidity, and fragmentation in the existing Chinese water legal framework. Therefore, this adaptive legal framework is suggested to manage complexities and uncertainties of regional water security issues, based on big data and social participation. Rapidly advancing big data approaches play important roles in visualizing biophysical conditions of water systems to provide tangible evidence for decision making processes. Meanwhile, participatory approaches aim to motivate the public to engage in decision making and legal reinforcement for collaborative social regulations. These approaches also facilitate efficient information flow for monitoring and evaluating hazards to support legal improvements within the China’s Five-Year Plan cycle. This chapter provides an integrated hazard management framework for dynamic sustainable development in changing climates by highlighting the importance of big data and social participation. Based on physical and social data over different locations, other regions in the world can draw lessons from this suggested framework to develop an adaptive legal framework for water governance.

This chapter considers the protection afforded to documents as part of the litigation process. The documents in question include both the pre-trial documents discussed in both Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 and documents that are produced at trial. It is more difficult to protect the confidentiality of documents produced at trial because most trials are held in open court. Civil dispute resolution inevitably involves the provision of information between parties and this can come at a significant cost to party confidentiality. Litigation involves an even greater sacrifice of confidentiality as the key requirement for open justice means that confidential material discussed in open court can become public knowledge through judgments, court transcripts or media reporting of open court hearings.1 However, even litigation attempts to minimise the invasion of party privacy, and privilege is one of the key protections the law provides to ensure that the need to put material before the court does not create perverse incentives for parties.

Key Learning Points

1. 1. Professional regulation and legal framework closely interact in providing care of patients in intensive care.

2. 2. Legal and ethical issues closely interplay with common law, statute and public law.

3. 3. The Mental Capacity Act and safeguarding process have introduced a robust decision-making process.

4. 4. Clinicians have to be aware of the legal framework whilst making treatment refusal and life-sustaining treatment decisions.

5. 5. Patients with capacity can refuse or influence any treatment, but cannot demand any specific treatment.

This chapter deals with the penalty of day fines in Spanish criminal law, examined both from the perspective of its legal regulation and its practical implementation. Particular attention is paid to explaining a remarkable peculiarity of the way in which day fines are applied in Spanish judicial practice: routinely lawyers, prosecutors and judges pay only superficial attention to the indications of the Spanish Penal Code as to how the daily fees of this penalty should be calculated. Hypothetically, the sole criterion for setting the daily unit should be the overall financial situation of the convicted, including not only his regular personal income but also property and other assets, debts, other sources of income, family obligations and other personal circumstances. However, in practice, in the vast majority of cases certain routine quantities are used through a method that is halfway between custom and intuition. Therefore, it can be said that theday fines system in Spain represents, instead of a way to take wealth seriously, rather one of taking income lightly

Having defined the field, Chapter 3 critically analyses the surrounding contemporary formal legal framework for indigenous peoples’ land rights that speak to development projects. This chapter examines jurisprudential strands and structural gaps such as poor accountability of private actors and the fragmented due diligence in this field. Emerging from this analysis are identifiable themes that matter for rights in development project contexts. The point is to assess the existing coping strategies of formal law in this setting, to give hard law context to the private mechanisms explored and to appreciate judicial and non-judicial mechanisms as part of an ecosystem of remedies in this field. The chapter asks why, despite the array of indigenous rights cases and legal declarations, international and domestic norms rarely pierce the highly regulated veil of private mechanisms that secure a transnational development project – failing to work as a legal threat. Whilst later chapters illustrate other reasons such as power and short-term behaviour that contribute to law’s overshadowing, my aim here is to show how the law endogenously contributes to insecurity for indigenous communities in development contexts.

This section wraps the book's analysis of the conflict in Syria and points to the indeterminacies that still remain. They include, among others, the shape and form of the emerging political structure of Syria, how the refugee crisis will be resolved, and whether international justice could be achieved. The conclusions of the volume portray guidelines for political or legal attempts that will be made to resolve those indeterminacies. It is the mapping and analysis of how the fundamental norms of the international community were brutally violated and the difficulties of restoring justice at the moment, while also elaborating on the developments within the political arena in which all of these events take place, that provide keys for coping with future challenges for both Syria and the international community.

The conclusion of the Syrian war suggests an international failure to prevent a mass calamity and to protect those millions of innocent civilians Irrespective of the developments within Syria, it is already clear that the implications of this conflict will accompany us for years to come and it is not unthinkable that a new chapter of this war will be ignited again in the future.

This chapter acts as an introduction to the book by discussing the intersection of law and technology. The topics examined include formalism versus contextualism, form versus context, enforceability, and regulation.