Chapter 6 will explore paths to moving forward with police interrogation reform in the United States, parting from the lessons of other countries that have undertaken reform, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Norway, and Canada, while focusing on three key areas: 1) police interrogation techniques, 2) the interview of vulnerable populations, and 3) changes in case law related to the reading of rights, invocation of rights, the use of trickery and deception, as well as the use of confessions to build and prosecute a criminal case. The goal of the chapter is to consider ways in which the issues presented in this book can be revisited to change the current state of police interrogation in the United States. This will require changes across the board: legislative, legal, police interviewing training, and also an acknowledgment of the role of cognitive, cultural, and sociolinguistic factors in police-suspect discursive interactions. A change of perspective on the presence of counsel in the interview room is also explored, looking at other jurisdictions outside of the United States which provide access to counsel to custodial suspects.

This chapter explores the judicial forum as a political space relatively free from censorship in which some lawyers and litigants scrutinized aspects of the social order under Spanish rule. Some expressed their dislike of slavery and their aspirations for change. The chapter looks at litigation and intellectual culture in Popayán, where the lawyer Félix José de Restrepo asserted that slaves were people with dignity who deserved judicial compassion. The government, he argued, should facilitate slave emancipation, a trademark of prudent legislation. The former slave Pedro Antonio Ibargüen even argued that all vassals of the king, rich and poor alike, deserved equal protection from the magistrates. With a political crisis shattering the viceroyalty in 1810, political revolution had new implications for these positions. Some patricians who sympathized with independence now criticized the viceroyalty’s “pact” with Spain as "slavery." Pushing the boundaries of this metaphor, some slaves in Popayán saw their own freedom as a necessary extension of the freedom from Spain demanded by their masters. A few patricians now began to discuss a formal plan to reform slavery through legislation.

In 1995, the Northern Territory, the smallest of Australia’s states and territories, was the first jurisdiction in the world to enact operative legislation allowing voluntary euthanasia (as it was then called). This legislation was short-lived, being overturned by the Commonwealth government approximately nine months after it commenced operation. Since that time, and despite over forty attempts in all Australian states but one, voluntary assisted dying remained unlawful in Australia. But this changed when Victoria passed its Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 (Vic) in November 2017, which became operative in June 2019. This chapter explores the Victorian experience as a successful model for voluntary assisted dying law reform. The reform process, led by the government with the personal support of key politicians was thorough, methodical and considered, and was undertaken in a staged way with extensive consultation. This approach may prove to be a successful formula for legislative reform in a country where ongoing and high-level public support for change has been met by equivalent ongoing political resistance to reform.

It is often assumed that an open-ended limitation to copyright, such as the fair use defense, is alien to the civil law tradition as it gives too much power to judges to design the contours of copyright law on a case-by-case basis. However, the increasing use of fundamental rights in copyright disputes in many civil law countries is challenging that assumption, raising the question of whether a sort of “fair use” limitation is not already being wielded through the weighing of interests and use of the proportionality test, both of which are required when the judiciary is applying fundamental rights. It will be shown in this chapter that even in France, traditionally considered an exemplar of civil law reasoning in copyright matters, a recent and highly commented-upon decision of the French Supreme Court concerning the balancing of freedom of artistic expression with copyright has paved the way for a judicial in concreto assessment of copyright limitations. This change in approach by the courts can be witnessed not only in France but also in many other civil law jurisdictions across Europe, and even by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), thus strengthening the argument for the introduction of an open clause for limitations in EU copyright law.

This chapter shows how the adoption of constitutional and legislative women’s rights reforms have converged in the Maghreb region, but also how the Maghreb has diverged from the Middle East in this regard. I discuss the adoption of unified legal systems, which set the stage for future women’s rights reforms. I then examine constitutional reforms followed by a discussion of key areas of legislative reform since 2000, particularly areas showing variation within the region and where we have seen legislative reforms improving women’s status. This allows us to identify the key differences between the Maghreb countries and the Middle East, but also where variance cuts across the entire region.

This chapter discusses the divergence and commonalties between the Maghreb (Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria) and the Middle East when it comes to advancing women’s rights. I hypothesize several possible explanations for the divergence: (1) Maghrebi leaders adopted the political strategy of advancing women’s rights in order to present a modernizing image of their nation to the world and to neutralize Islamist movements, especially extremist ones; (2) the ruling parties, including Islamist parties, sought to stay in power by advancing women’s rights, knowing it would cost them if they did not adopt such reforms; (3) women’s movements exerted pressure resulting in demands for greater accountability (often these reforms occurred in the context of a critical juncture after a change of leadership, the end of a war, a coup d’état, or other major social upheaval); and, finally, (4) the women’s movements in all three countries communicated with each other, thus diffusing goals and strategies. The chapter briefly engages with alternate explanations for women’s rights reforms in the region. One set of explanations relates to cultural factors like kinship and religion, and the other looks at structural factors relating to women’s education, economic growth, the presence of oil rents, and international pressures.