Given the wide range of applications and possibilities of artificial intelligence (AI), it has become one of the key contemporary legal challenges. As AI reshapes modern justice systems, its impact on fundamental rights, including defence rights, remains uncertain.

This book examines the implications of integrating AI into criminal proceedings from a defence rights perspective. It considers important questions: How can AI systems be leveraged to support both the state authorities and the defence? What challenges do they present to defence rights? And does the current regulatory framework sufficiently safeguard against the risks to defendants' rights?

Through an examination of European defence rights standards, AI Act provisions, and real-world applications, it sheds light on the challenges of explainability, transparency, and the evolving role of defence in digitised proceedings. It sets out essential safeguards and standards to ensure that AI complies with defence rights, including the right to information, defence preparation, legal assistance, and translation.

For legal scholars, policymakers, and practitioners, this book is a useful guide to navigating the rapidly changing legal landscape at the intersection of technology and fundamental rights.

Die Dissertation untersucht die rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen staatlicher Datenzugangsrechte gegenueber privaten Unternehmen (Business-to-Government-Data-Sharing). Im Zentrum steht der grundrechtliche Schutz von Geschaeftsgeheimnissen. Ausgangspunkt ist die Beobachtung, dass datenbasierte staatliche Entscheidungen eine wesentliche Voraussetzung rationaler Gemeinwohlpolitik sind. Zugleich liegt in der Datengesellschaft ein erheblicher Teil hochgranularer Daten in den Silos privater Unternehmen. Diese Daten betreffen zentrale Bereiche staatlicher Aufgabenerfuellung - etwa Mobilitaet, Gesundheit, Umwelt, Energie und Katastrophenschutz. Aufgrund oekonomischer Anreizstrukturen halten Unternehmen sie faktisch exklusiv. So entsteht eine asymmetrische Datenlandschaft, in der staatliche Informations- und Interventionsmoeglichkeiten strukturell begrenzt sind. Nik Roeingh nimmt diesen Befund zum Anlass fuer eine dogmatische Analyse der Voraussetzungen, unter denen der Staat auf privatwirtschaftliche Daten zugreifen darf. Im Mittelpunkt steht das Spannungsverhaeltnis zwischen dem oeffentlichen Interesse an evidenzbasierten Entscheidungen und staatlicher Innovationsfoerderung einerseits sowie dem grundrechtlichen Schutz wirtschaftlicher Freiheitsraeume andererseits. Geschaeftsgeheimnisse partizipieren am Schutz der Wirtschaftsgrundrechte; ein voraussetzungsloser staatlicher Zugriff ist daher ausgeschlossen. Vor diesem Hintergrund klaert der Autor grundlegende grundrechtliche und verwaltungsrechtliche Fragen staatlicher Datenzugangsrechte. Ergaenzend werden oekonomische Ansaetze herangezogen, um die Auswirkungen von Datenzugangsrechten auf Innovation, Wettbewerb und die Datenoekonomie zu analysieren.
Die Dissertation analysiert bestehende und entstehende nationale und europaeische Regulierungsansaetze - insbesondere den Data Act - und entwickelt Kriterien fuer eine grundrechtskonforme Ausgestaltung staatlicher Datenzugangsrechte. Sie zeigt, wie sich das Spannungsverhaeltnis zwischen oeffentlichem Datenzugangsinteresse und privatwirtschaftlichen Geheimhaltungsinteressen rechtlich austarieren laesst, und leistet damit einen Beitrag zur dogmatischen Einordnung des Business-to-Government-Data-Sharing im europaeischen Digital- und Datenrecht.

Representative democracy grew out of struggles by excluded groups demanding a voice in politics. In this book, renowned political theorist Rosemary H. T. O’Kane asks why democracy is so deeply desired, yet why it often falls short in practice. She explores how democratic systems can be strengthened against the pressures that threaten them, showing democracy as a living system shaped by institutions, society and collective action.

Instead of rooting democracy in ancient Athens or engaging in abstract philosophical debates, O’Kane takes a fresh approach. She looks at real historical and contemporary cases (from the Chartists and Russia in 1905 to civil rights movements in Northern Ireland and the United States, and the UK’s anti EU campaign) while engaging with classic theories about bureaucracy, political parties, elites and power. These lessons, additionally informed by the cases of India, South Korea, Taiwan and Sweden, are then used to build a 'practical ideal' vision of representative democracy grounded in everyday realities. This practical ideal goes beyond elections and rights to include fair law, neutral bureaucracy and an active society marked by equality, civic participation and concerted action.

By blending case studies with theory, Wanting Democracy: Cases, Theories and Realization gives students a clear, accessible framework for understanding both the strengths and the limits of modern democracy today.

This volume provides a comprehensive legal analysis of the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the organization of work. As algorithmic management is proliferating across industries, market players have started utilizing automated decision-making tools throughout the entire employment lifecycle, from hiring to contract termination. The digitalization process has also paved the way to the creation of new professions as well as of unprecedented virtual spaces of work, which can potentially become a tool for the training and qualification of workers who are already employed (even in traditional jobs: e.g., drivers and janitors). Furthermore, as the widespread debate on the so-called Predictive Justice showcases, AI might be used in the adjudication of labour disputes by either Courts or Arbitrators. The book initially maps, from a theoretical point of view, the core issues emerging from the use of AI in the organization of work. The second part of the volume displays how the same issues are addressed by the policy makers and/or by the social partners in a selected pool of countries, both from the EU context and from the non-EU context. Especially - but not exclusively - for the non-EU Countries, the Authors investigate the role of other pieces of legislation, such as the rules in matter of privacy and/or the antidiscrimination policies, in the protection of workers from the risks associated with AI. The core message of the book is that AI is a driver of both risks and opportunities for work; hence, a moderate and careful approach by the policy makers and by the social partners is due in order to strike a fair balance between the promotion of the technological progress and the protection of workers' rights.

This foundational book on artificial intelligence and public relations aims to provide an in-depth perspective on integrating AI technologies within the public relations discipline. AI systems are not only tools for automating tasks but also instruments for enhancing creativity and judgement. While communication professionals have traditionally focussed on human-to-human interaction, the advent of AI systems has introduced the concept of human-machine communication, significantly impacting the public relations discipline.

Beginning with a historical overview of AI and its impact on public relations, the book delves into practical insights and explores the applications of AI tools in PR. It discusses the evolution of PR education with the integration of AI, exploring how AI can be adapted and incorporated into curricula to enhance creativity and judgement. The book also importantly tackles the ethical considerations of AI systems, addressing issues such as bias, discrimination, plagiarism, labour, and copyright.

With the growing importance of AI in public relations, it is essential for PR students and practitioners to be aware of AI tools, their applications, and how to use AI responsibly. This book aims to serve as a guiding resource for students, researchers, educators, and practitioners in the field of public relations, helping them navigate the complexities and opportunities presented by AI.

The study examines the extent to which, and by which legal instruments, supply traffic can be integrated into a concept of sustainable urban mobility in order to ensure the long-term provision of goods and services within urban neighborhoods. It proceeds from the premise that the current mobility transition appropriately reduces private motorized transport but does not sufficiently take into account functionally necessary supply traffic. Methodologically, the analysis combines a doctrinal legal approach with a systematic evaluation of the relevant regulatory frameworks, in particular road traffic law, planning and public construction law while also taking into account both formal and substantive constitutional law.
At the core of the analysis are specific regulatory constellations such as traffic restrictions and parking management measures in urban areas, which are initially examined with regard to their effects on supply traffic. Building on this, a normative framework for its consideration is developed by reference to higher-ranking law. The focus of the study lies on the analysis of ordinary statutory law, addressing how supply traffic can be integrated both de lege lata and de lege ferenda.
The study demonstrates that existing law already offers numerous starting points for taking supply traffic into account, for example through specific exemptions and differentiation mechanisms in the road laws of the federal states. At the same time, it reveals significant enforcement deficits as well as an ongoing need for further development of the law governing sustainable urban mobility.
The study contributes to both legal scholarship and transport policy debates by conceptualizing supply traffic as an independent and systemically relevant category of urban mobility. It concludes that integrated and functionally appropriate transport planning is a necessary prerequisite for ensuring the sustainable provision of goods and services in urban neighborhoods in the 21st century.

In the maelstrom of globalization and cyberspace, organized crime continues to defy definition. A diverse array of activities is perpetrated by criminal organizations, criminal groups and associations, and gangs, making it clear that one specific label is no longer adequate. This book offers a uniquely global approach to organized crime and the multitude of forces that shape it in the 21st century.

The new edition has been revised and reorganized to include even more global and comparative coverage of various forms of organized crime, spanning the USA, Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean, Russia and Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of the topics included are:

• Global definitions of organized crime
• The evolution of maritime piracy
• Female participation in organized crime and the overlap of the victim?offender binary
• Discussions on the contemporary drug crisis: opium and the Taliban, fentanyl crisis and the role played by China and Mexico, Myanmar and the Golden Triangle, and the impact of COVID on Latin American cannabis production
• Forms of environmental crime and the “ecomafia”
• Rise in cyber and technology?driven crime across Asia and Africa, including discussions on the Dark Net, deep web, TOR
• Reorganization of the Latin American criminal economies
• Updated coverage on terrorist groups
• Discussions on new international cooperation frameworks, the use of AI, case studies of Interpol and Europol cases in the 2020s, including Operation Lionfish Hurricane (2025) and Greenlight/Trojan Shield (2021)

This book is essential reading for students engaged in the study of global and transnational organized crime, with features including chapter overviews, key terms, critical thinking questions and case studies.

This book offers a detailed legal assessment of offshore ‘joint development’ agreements (JDAs) arising from cooperative negotiations between coastal States. These agreements focus on the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbon deposits within disputed seabed areas, overlapping continental shelf and Exclusive Economic Zones claims, or across delimited maritime boundaries.

Introducing ‘joint development’ as a framework for international agreements enabling States to collaboratively manage shared hydrocarbon resources, the book’s central theme focuses on comparative analyses of selected offshore JDAs, examined by international practitioners, officials, and academics. Through these case studies, it explores the legal complexities and practical applications of JDAs, emphasizing their role in fostering cooperation between States. It highlights the growing State practice in bilateral joint development agreements and proposes an international norm favouring such arrangements, particularly in disputed maritime areas with potential hydrocarbon deposits.

Targeted at legal scholars, policymakers, international practitioners, and academics specializing in maritime law and resource management, this book offers valuable insights into the evolving international legal framework. It serves as a guide for States seeking cooperative solutions to manage shared hydrocarbon resources in contested maritime zones.

Dogmatics constitutes the characteristic mode of communication in German(-language) legal scholarship in general and in constitutional law scholarship in particular. Its strength lies in its focus on the needs of legal practice. Yet this practical orientation comes at a price, as it more or less inevitably leads to the exclusion, reduction, or neglect of non-dogmatic approaches to understanding the law. Against this background, the question arises whether legal scholarship in general and constitutional law scholarship in particular possess - and require - additional disciplinary "languages" beyond the classical foundational disciplines of legal history, legal philosophy, and legal sociology in order to communicate beyond the sphere of legal application and to adequately grasp the legal world more broadly.
Particular attention should be paid here to constitutional theory, which, while clearly connected to (constitutional) dogmatics, cannot be reduced to it but instead points beyond it. In this way, constitutional theory could serve as a mediator between dogmatics and the classical foundational disciplines. The French example likewise helps to illuminate both the strengths of the "language model" of German(-language) constitutional law scholarship and its need for supplementation.

This book develops a general theory of synthetic data as an emerging object of corporate and financial law. As artificially generated datasets increasingly inform credit modelling, stress testing, ESG disclosure, algorithmic governance, and supervisory experimentation, they are transforming the informational foundations of market life. In modern markets, knowledge is no longer simply observed; it is increasingly constructed.

It argues that, once informational premises are engineered rather than discovered, law can no longer be limited to regulating the use of data. It must also govern the conditions under which data are generated and rendered authoritative. Drawing together corporate governance, financial regulation, prudential supervision, data protection, and AI law, it develops a unifying framework-Bounded Simulation Governance-through which synthetic informational environments become legally intelligible.

At the core of the argument is the concept of simulation risk: a distinct form of systemic vulnerability arising when institutions rely on shared generative environments, with the result that hidden coordination, informational monoculture, and correlated fragility take shape across formally independent actors. Synthetic data thus emerge not merely as technical artefacts, but as legal infrastructures of judgment, discipline, and oversight.

Combining doctrinal analysis, institutional practice, and normative reconstruction, this book offers an original account of how law must adapt when artificial informational worlds become integral to corporate governance and financial regulation.

Die Heidelberger Versammlung, die am 5. Maerz 1848 im Gasthaus Badischer Hof zusammentrat, bereitete den Weg zur Einrichtung einer Nationalvertretung in Deutschland. Angestossen durch die Februarrevolution 1848, in der das franzoesische Koenigtum endgueltig beseitigt wurde, kam es im Maerz 1848 in Teilen Europas zu revolutionaeren Unruhen. Die Teilnehmer der Heidelberger Versammlung plaedierten stattdessen entschieden fuer einen parlamentarischen Weg im Deutschen Bund, wie er wenige Wochen spaeter durch die Einrichtung des Frankfurter Paulskirchenparlaments realisiert wurde. 51 Maenner, zumeist Mitglieder sueddeutscher Staendeversammlungen, unterzeichneten einstimmig eine Erklaerung mit folgenden Zielen: keine deutsche Einmischung in Angelegenheiten eines Nachbarlands, kein Buendnis mit Russland, schleunigste Einsetzung einer nach Volkszahl gewaehlten und damit repraesentativen Nationalvertretung als Schutzwall fuer das ?deutsche Vaterland und die Throne", Akzeptanz der Besonderheit und die Selbstverwaltung der einzelnen Laender. Zur Realisierung dieses parlamentarischen Wegs wurden sieben Maenner bestimmt, um die Einrichtung der Nationalvertretung vorzubereiten. In mehreren Biografien der 51 Teilnehmer spiegeln sich das spaetere Scheitern des Parlamentarismus in Deutschland und der Triumph der monarchischen Repression.
Die Essays dieses Buchs wuerdigen die Bedeutung der Heidelberger Versammlung als Wiege des Parlamentarismus in Deutschland aus den Perspektiven von Geschichts-, Rechts- und Politikwissenschaft. Abgedruckt werden zudem zentrale Quellen sowie Kurzbiographien aller Teilnehmer der Heidelberger Versammlung. Der Band ist mit zahlreichen historischen Abbildungen aus Archiven, Bibliotheken und Museen illustriert.

The new edition of Consumer Behavior & Insights introduces an innovative approach to teaching consumer behavior by building on traditional psychological, sociological, and behavioral frameworks to embrace the practical implications and insights of those frameworks. Without sacrificing scholarly depth, it incorporates emerging research in areas such as neuromarketing, sustainability, and artificial intelligence, reflecting the evolving landscape of consumer research.

Key features include updated case studies in every chapter, offering fresh insights into a variety of global, real-world applications. The text also offers timely insights from the field, the executive suite, and academia to provide students with a 360-degree view of how consumer research is generated and how it can be applied. Importantly, the text showcases a wide range of consumption situations, cultural backgrounds, and viewpoints. In its entirety, these features make theoretical concepts and models engaging and relatable, inviting students to dig deeper and to think like practitioners.

This edition is designed to meet the needs of undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as professionals in marketing, business, and related fields. It serves as an essential resource for anyone seeking to deepen their understanding of consumer behavior and its practical applications in today’s dynamic global marketplace.

This book offers a comprehensive examination of the resulting trust, a foundational legal mechanism for determining the beneficial ownership of property in the absence of express evidence.

Arguing that the resulting trust fulfils a critical role in resolving property ownership disputes, the book explores three distinct factual contexts in which the trust is applied: property law, insolvency law and the interaction of the law with domestic relationships. In addition to a traditional analysis, this book presents an innovative focus on the resulting trust's applicability in cases of corporate insolvency. It contends that the resulting trust can either increase the asset pool available for distribution to unsecured creditors or enable creditors to bypass pari-passu distribution to claim specific assets. Through a theoretical reconceptualisation of the resulting trust, which integrates an updated analysis of existing legal precedents and literature, the book creates a more expansive, functional framework through which the resulting trust can be utilised.

The book will be of interest to researchers in the field of property law, equity and trust law and insolvency law.

This book shows that State accession to an international legal text is understood differently in different parts of the world and, moreover, that many conventions in the practice of international law are justifiable because of the assumption that accession is agreement.

The dominant understanding of accession as agreement has its roots in European legal traditions, where the notion that a legal text can represent an ascertainable and static “meeting of the minds” underpins the logic of adversarial procedures, declarative judgment, punitive sanctions, and concepts such as necessity. This book shows how the 1955 Bandung Conference articulated a largely neglected vision of accession as acceptance, rather than agreement?one much older than those used at the 1945 San Francisco Conference establishing the UN Charter, one much older than the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights that became a mandatory precondition of modern statehood, and one from which perspective different legal concepts, such as non-intervention and consensus-based dispute settlement, can be derived. Following the Bandungian idea of “accession as acceptance” through subsequent decades of international law, the book chronicles the legacy of the acceptance-agreement disconnect in Third World engagements with international law. The book then argues that the consent as agreement assumption infuses the very process of adversarial judgment?a process almost indivisible from the practice of international law?with a self-sustaining imperial ideology. Finally, the book offers suggestions for procedural reform.

This book will appeal primarily to scholars interested in international adjudication, the history and theory of international law, Third World approaches to international law, as well as others with an interest in the lasting impact of colonialism on global institutions.

This book provides a detailed comparative analysis of Independent Police Complaints Bodies (IPCBs) in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the UK. It explores the distinctive political, cultural, and institutional contexts shaping police accountability arrangements within each country, as well as the transnational dynamics behind the remarkable proliferation of IPCBs over the past three decades, assessing the prospects for future convergence around international standards.

Drawing on findings from the international project 'Police Accountability: Towards International Standards', the book examines the inherent dilemmas and challenges in the everyday functioning and dynamics of IPCBs. Each chapter presents integrated comparative analysis of key themes co-written by experts on police accountability in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the UK. The scholars involved approach the topic from range of scholarly disciplines: police studies and public administration, law, sociology, human geography, and history. Its qualitative comparative analysis adds to the existing literature on IPCBs based on single-country research.

The book facilitates exchange of knowledge and experiences across political cultures and linguistic boundaries, revising theoretical perspectives and, through its empirical findings, providing scholars, complaint practitioners, and rights activists with unique frameworks to contextualise and assess current and emerging IPCB models in any country or jurisdiction.

This book will be useful reading for all those engaged in policing, public administration, rights activism, and law and policymaking.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 International license.

With a New Preface

A renowned expert on genocide argues that there is a real risk of violent atrocities happening in the United States

If many people were shocked by Donald Trump's 2016 election, many more were stunned when, months later, white supremacists took to the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting "Blood and Soil" and "Jews will not replace us!" Like Trump, the Charlottesville marchers were dismissed as aberrations?crazed extremists who did not represent the real US. This book makes the case that, rather than being exceptional, such white power extremism and the violent atrocities linked to it are a part of American history. And, alarmingly, they remain a very real threat to the US today.

Alexander Hinton is an award-winning author on the topic of genocide in Cambodia who served as an expert witness at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. In It Can Happen Here, he explains how murky politics, structural racism, the promotion of American exceptionalism, and a belief that the US has achieved a color-blind society have diverted attention from the deep roots of white supremacist violence in the US's brutal past. Drawing on his years of research and teaching on mass violence, Hinton details the warning signs of impending genocide and atrocity crimes, the tools used by ideologues to fan the flames of hate, the origins of the far-right extremist ideas of white genocide and replacement, and the shocking ways in which "us" versus "them" violence is supported by structural racism.

Now featuring a substantive updated preface discussing new dynamics related to the second Trump Administration, It Can Happen Here offers an essential new assessment of the contemporary dangers of democratic backsliding, political violence, and white power extremism in the United States. While revealing the threat of authoritarianism and atrocity crimes that loom over the country, Hinton offers actions we can take to prevent it from happening, illuminating a hopeful path forward for a nation in crisis.

Martech Management: Aligning Marketing Technology with Business Strategy offers a clear and practical guide to navigating the complex world of Marketing Technology (Martech). This book empowers marketers to harness Martech tools and data effectively, aligning their marketing strategies with business objectives to drive measurable growth and revenue.

Offering a step-by-step process for identifying objectives, understanding stakeholder requirements, and creating business process maps, this guide helps readers confidently navigate the Martech landscape and make informed decisions. Each chapter includes key definitions to clarify technical concepts and terms, extensive notes to provide background and context, and discussion questions to encourage critical thinking and conceptual understanding. Real-world mini-cases and a thoroughly developed case study about an Indian pharmaceutical firm that successfully implemented a Martech makeover help students relate theory to practice.

Providing the knowledge and tools needed to harness Martech effectively, this text is recommended reading for postgraduate and executive education students studying digital marketing strategy, business process management, and digital business more generally, as well as Marketing professionals. It is rooted in the author's extensive background in managing marketing in big firms and small.

Supplementary resources include an Instructor's Manual, Lecture Slides, Exam Questions, and In-class Exercises and are available at martechmgt.com.

In today's volatile business environment, professionals face relentless pressures that erode confidence and self-esteem. Too often, worth is confused with performance-rising with each "victory" and collapsing with every "defeat." This book challenges that cycle, showing how true self-esteem can remain steady, resilient, and empowering without tipping into arrogance or slipping into impostor syndrome.

Drawing on proven techniques, it demonstrates how resilience means bouncing forward from setbacks rather than retreating, and how self-worth must be distinguished from efficacy. By breaking free from herd mentalities, external validation, and self-doubt, leaders and teams can reclaim their autonomy, project confidence, and thrive in times of disruption.

The methodology outlined here equips readers to:

• Gain rapid acceptance of ideas and accelerate career growth in any organizational setting

• Improve health and well-being by reducing stress, guilt, and fear

• Achieve greater success in entrepreneurial ventures, partnerships, and solo practices

• Develop a clear, independent perspective on business and the world

• Build trust in one's own judgment, enabling faster, more confident decision-making

This book is a practical guide to cultivating self-esteem as the foundation of resilience, adaptability, and leadership. It empowers professionals not just to survive change -- but to lead it.

Justice begins in the fragments. While the legal system excels at classification and resolution, it often fails at recognition. Written from the bench by an Irish High Court judge, this book challenges the administrative sublime of modern bureaucracy, which sees persons too often converted into risk scores and bullet points.

Blending lived judicial experience with queer theory, literature, and philosophy, this book proposes a jurisprudence of attentive refusal to let the human disappear into procedural fluency. From piccolo paeans to global postage stamps to reflections on the moral motion of the soul, this book redefines the judge's task as being not just to decide, but to listen for the stutter and the shimmer that the official record can forget. Structured as a reflective journey across hemispheres - from the Global North to the Global South and back to Ireland - the book weaves the thoughts of various thinkers, from Aquinas and Baldwin to Butler and Munoz, into a form of lyrical jurisprudence. Reflecting on the inner life of judging, that is to say the moral and imaginative dimensions of law as they unfold in attention, silence, and refusal, the book offers a companion to legal practice that invites readers to think again about what it means to judge, to recognise, and to stay near the lives that law touches. Judgment, it maintains, is not mere decision but an act of ethical attention, a form of seeing that keeps the human in view.

This book will appeal to academics and advanced students in the areas of jurisprudence, legal theory, ethics, and law-and-literature, as well as others with an interest in the ethics and practice of legal judgment.

Transgender Philosophy: The Basics is an introduction to the exciting and rapidly growing world of trans philosophy.

The book covers a wide range of central themes in transgender philosophy, bringing the reader up to speed with both foundational texts and new ideas from this increasingly global tradition. It addresses key questions, including:

• What is gender? How is it related to gender identity?
• Why are we justified in believing someone when they identify as a member of a gender?
• Why do trans people transition, and how should we think about the desire to transition?
• What is the relationship between transness and colonialism, and how is it related to race?
• Should we get rid of gender? What would we look like if we didn't have genders?
• How should society be changed to improve the lives of trans people?

Accessibly written, this book offers a rigorous overview of the arguments in transgender philosophy, from abstract concerns of philosophical method to grounded and applied political issues.

Transgender Philosophy: The Basics is designed for beginners with no prior knowledge of philosophy, but it also serves a source of new insights and perspectives for students and scholars of philosophy and gender studies.

This book brings together intercultural philosophy and human rights by focusing on how the theory and practice of human rights evolve differently in a plurality of contextual realities but coincide in the affirmation of key universal values.

Introducing a philosophical perspective on intercultural communication, the author considers Karl Jaspers’s idea of the Axial Age but expands it in dialogue with authors such as Jurgen Habermas and Enrique Dussel, who help define “Axiality” as a broader framework to address the plurality of cultures and norms that influence geopolitics, economics, human rights, and peace today. Focusing on Western Europe and South America as two examples of regional integration, the author argues that emerging regional blocs are not simply a matter for political economy but also for considerations on normativity, historical progression or regression, democratic participation of civil society, and the promotion of human rights and peace. In each region there are alternative discourses, practices, and systems that reveal, promote, and teach these values. Understanding the plurality of initiatives supporting human rights and peace and using intercultural communication to learn about their common claim to universality can help us address the challenges we face in the 21st century.

This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of human rights, philosophy, political theory, history, anthropology, theology, international relations, policy studies, cultural studies, and more broadly to the wider humanities and social sciences.

In 2018, member states of the African Union signed the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) to implement a single continental market for goods and services and establish a continental customs union. This book discusses regulatory developments across the African continent meant to accommodate and/or further drive economic realities on the ground. The focus here is on the trade in goods.

Divided into three parts, the first presents the big picture of Africa's economic integration and AfCFTA's role in this process, addressing cross-border trade facilitation, the shift from Eurocentric to Afrocentric investment policy, and the Agreement's economic and welfare effects. Part II turns to the AfCFTA's dispute settlement mechanism, weighing its debt to WTO procedures against the balance it strikes between state sovereignty and effective adjudication. Part III examines regionalism as a foundation of African economic governance, from Regional Economic Communities and rules of origin to non-tariff barriers, Chinese lending, and prospective investment ties with the Eurasian Economic Union.

Written by a combination of academics and practitioners, the work will be a valuable resource for those working in the areas of International Economic Law, International Trade Law, African Law and Development.

Adopting a pioneering ‘post-eclectic’ paradigm, this book systematically establishes that private international law must integrate ‘global common values’ into its normative foundation.

Building upon this theoretical framework, the author provides a practical roadmap for resolving ‘vertical’ normative conflicts in four critical domains: the digital economy, decentralised finance, transboundary ecological supply chains, and cross-border bioethics. Drawing upon recent landmark judicial decisions across various jurisdictions and the latest developments in Chinese private international law, the book explores how domestic legal systems can adapt jurisdiction, choice of law, and the recognition and enforcement of judgments to safeguard these global common values.

This monograph serves as an essential resource for legal scholars, practitioners, and policymakers seeking institutional solutions to secure a sustainable and just globalised world.

How definitions of childhood in early America codified social hierarchies and remain with us today

As of 2025, in the United States an eleven-year-old child can be charged with a federal crime while in many states it's illegal to leave a twelve-year-old home alone. Twenty-six states allow children younger than sixteen to marry while the legal drinking age remains twenty-one. Are these age-based laws really protecting children, and if not, why do they exist? Holly N.S. White uncovers the answers to these questions through a history of America's first age-based laws.

Analyzing trial records, newspapers, personal letters and diaries, as well as legal statutes from the founding era to the Civil War, White shows how restrictive age-based laws were implemented to benefit those who already held power. Over time, these new laws?coming out of child murder and rape trials as well as guardianship and underage marriage disputes?increasingly circumscribed the rights of young Americans in the early republic. As White shows, race, class, status, and gender influenced who came to benefit from the label of "child" in post-revolutionary America. In so doing, Constructing American Childhood explains why Americans continue to be guided by the age-based legal definitions of childhood and adulthood of our past.