The Smuggling Protocol and the Criminalization of Humanitarian Activities at Sea

This paper focuses on some recent events of criminalization of humanitarian activities at sea in Italy, and precisely the Open Arms and the Sea Watch 3 cases. It is stated that criminalization of humanitarian activities at sea is largely due to a substantial ‘implementation gap’ between the Smuggling Protocol and the current EU legal framework on people smuggling, that is the so-called ‘Facilitators’ Package’ of 2002. It is further contended that legal certainty requirements make legislative reform necessary in Italy to prevent the criminalization of humanitarian activities at sea.

A sociosemiotic exploration of medical legislation reform in China (1990–2021)

The medical service system is an important guarantee for human rights to survival, health and development of every social member, and thus it is significant to explore, interpret and explain the diachronic construction for its legislative reform. In a corpus approach, the study firstly collects the medical-related statutes from 1990 to 2021 in China to build the P.R.C. Medical Legislation Corpus (PRCMLC), and analyzes the keywords and their collocation in the exploratory, explosive and expanding phase of the medical legislative reform. Secondly, from the perspectives of sociosemiotics, the PRCMLC data is combined with the concrete medical laws and regulations for further discussion of the MSS, MIS, DSS and PHS in legislative system. Thirdly, the study explores the core legislative ideas and the relationships among the subsystems in the diachronic analysis, which provide a general overview of the legislative objects, target, participants and mechanisms in the medical reform of China.

Current Issues in Reforming the Institution of Acquisitive Prescription in Russia, England, Hong Kong and Australia

The author examines the problems of reforming the institution of acquisitive prescription in Russia, England, Hong Kong and Australia, and suggests some ways to solve them. The study was conducted with the aim of a detailed study of the institution of acquisitive prescription in continental and Anglo-American legal families. In addition, the author sets the goal of establishing the influence of foreign experience of changing the provisions on acquisitive prescription on the Russian reform of prescription ownership based on a comparative legal analysis of the already carried out legislative reform in England and the proposed changes in the real law of Russia, Hong Kong and Australia. The author makes conclusions on the controversial nature of the alleged provision on the rejection of the criterion of good faith of prescription ownership in Russia, on the narrowness of the declared goal of the Russian reform of the institution of acquisitive prescription; the indirect influence of the foreign experience of reforms in the jurisdictions of the Anglo-American legal system on the Russian reform of property law has been established.

Malicious uses of social media bots will rise

Significance In particular, bots are used to increase the speed and scale of misinformation campaigns and foreign propaganda. They make attribution of such activities to specific actors harder, while disorientating users and degrading public debate. With advances in text-generation methods and deepfake technologies, they are also becoming more human-like, making users more susceptible to manipulation. Impacts Artificial amplification of political messages via bots will remain a major problem, although its actual impact is difficult to measure. Legislative reform to ensure tighter content regulation would curb malicious bot activity on social media. Current foreign influencer campaigns rely on human-controlled accounts on social media.

Freedom's Sex Problem

In Third Republican Paris, newspapers' classified sections were cast as sites of sexual demoralization peopled by prostitutes, pornographers, and abortionists. Moralizing this space was no easy task: sex was discussed in code, making it hard to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate ads—between ads for midwives and those for abortionists. Could the law read symptomatically to make the distinction? Or was it limited to surface reading? This article shows how classified texts became sites of regulatory indeterminacy, staging tensions between the regulation of “deviant” sexuality and republican ideals. It reconstructs the legal history of “immoral” advertising through decades of legislative reform and judicial equivocation, which laid the cultural and legal groundwork for the restrictive 1920 abortion law and 1939 Family Code, both of which made it possible to police the unsaid, thereby privileging the control and management of sexuality in the interest of the nation's reproductive future over democratic freedoms. Au début du vingtième siècle, l'imaginaire des petites annonces des journaux parisiens se peuplait de prostituées, de pornographes, et de faiseuses d'anges. La « quatrième page » était alors un vecteur de démoralisation. Il n'y avait pas de solution simple : les annonces étant chiffrées, il était difficile de distinguer entre l'annonce légitime et l'annonce immorale, entre l'annonce d'une sage-femme et celle d'une faiseuse d'anges. La loi, pourrait-elle trancher ? Cet article montre la manière dont les textes publicitaires sont devenus autant de lieux indéterminés qui ne sauraient être régulés, en dépit de grands efforts législatifs pour mettre les petites annonces (et les femmes et les minorités sexuelles qui y opéraient) sous contrôle. Cet article reconstitue la chronologie de cette législation, sous la rubrique des « outrages aux bonnes mœurs », de ses origines dans la loi de 1881 sur la liberté de la presse, à travers les décennies de jurisprudence ambiguë, pour arriver enfin à la loi de 1920 sur l'avortement et le Code de la Famille de 1939, qui ont pour but, tous les deux, le contrôle de la sexualité en faveur de la vigueur nationale.

A NEW LOOK AT AN OLD QUESTION – PRECISELY WHERE DOES A CAUSE OF ACTION BASED ON CONTRACT OR DELICT “ARISE” IN THE CASE OF CIVIL CLAIMS IN THE MAGISTRATES’ AND SMALL CLAIMS COURTS?

One of the chief jurisprudential considerations of the new South Africa must be access to justice. Whilst various possibilities for the realization of this imperative are aired periodically, the principles on which the civil jurisdiction of the courts is based are seldom considered in this regard. However, complex and arcane rules of jurisdiction can place what this article argues to be unfair and largely pointless limitations on a plaintiff, particularly in respect of magistrates’ and small claims courts’ actions. Section 28(1)(d) of the Magistrates’ Courts Act, for example, which confers jurisdiction on a court in relation to the locality of the cause of action, can proveparticularly problematic in the case of claims based on contract. Jurisdiction cannot be conferred under this provision unless every “element” of the contract – offer, acceptance, performance and/or breach, has occurred within the same magisterial district. This article examines the many practical problems which arise as a result, as well as various interpretations of the existing case law, which may serve to alleviate these problems to a certain extent. The authors conclude, however, that legislative reform may be the only way in which to truly solve the many dilemmas which arise in practice.

Disinformation, Deepfakes and Democracies: The Need for Legislative Reform

Rapid technological advancement is changing the way that political parties, voters, and media platforms engage with each other. This along with cultural change has led to an emerging era of disinformation and misinformation driven by both domestic and foreign actors. Political deepfakes, videos created through the use of artificial intelligence, allow individuals to rapidly create fake videos indistinguishable from true content. These videos have the capacity to undermine voter trust and could alter electoral outcomes. Regulating disinformation however raises significant free speech concerns, as well as questions about where liability should fall. In particular, holding large technology and media platforms accountable for content could lead to unintended chilling effects around freedom of expression, harming rather than protecting democratic institutions. Proposed regulations should therefore be carefully analysed through the framework of the implied freedom of political communication, ensuring that any new laws are proportionate and tailored to the threat they seek to prevent. This article analyses how current Australian law interacts with political deepfakes and proposes two targeted amendments to our federal electoral regulations to reduce the threat they pose to elections.

Facilitators and Barriers to the Regulation of Medical Cannabis: A Scoping Review of the Peer-Reviewed Literature

Background: In recent decades, several political, legislative, and judicial processes around the world have advanced legalization efforts for the use of medical cannabis (MC). As MC usage evolves through legislative reform, with an increase in public acceptance and therapeutic potential, a need exists to further investigate the facilitators and barriers to MC regulation.Methods: A scoping review was conducted to identify the facilitators and barriers associated with the implementation of international MC regulations. MEDLINE, EMBASE, AMED and PsycINFO databases were systematically searched. Eligible articles included primary studies that evaluated the MC regulatory framework of one or more countries globally.Results: Twenty-two articles were deemed eligible and included in this review. Themes identified include: (1) effects of conflicts, mindset and ideology of state population, (2) the use of comparisons to analyze MC regulation, and (3) the need for more knowledge, advice and empirical/clinical evidence to inform future MC policies.Conclusion: We identified a number of facilitators and barriers to MC regulation and provide a holistic overview of what factors are proposed to affect MC regulation. In recognizing that the evidence-base surrounding MC, MC usage among patients, and general societal acceptance of MC are all increasing across many parts of the globe, our review allows for relevant stakeholders to better understand these facilitators and barriers to inform future MC policy making.