There certainly is. Much of the scholarly and popular writing on the Declaration has been marred by fundamental misunderstandings of the document and its historical context. My book One Nation Under Law: The Meaning of the Declaration of Independence counters two such misunderstandings.

First, scholars such as Garry Wills have insisted that the Declaration did not create one American nation, but thirteen entirely separate ones, each bearing no more legal relation to each other than they did to France or Russia.  This view is profoundly mistaken.  The Declaration of Independence announced the legal existence of the “United States of America,” in which the states were legally confederated together from the moment of independence.  That confederation would later be reduced to written form and explicitly confirmed in 1781, but in its first five years, the United States operated under an unwritten constitution, a form familiar from English practice.  Although the details of its internal structure were far from clear, and difficult questions of sovereignty were never conclusively resolved, anyone looking at the United States from abroad would have seen the emergence of one nation, not thirteen. Such a view is amply supported by the Declaration’s text, by the history surrounding its adoption, and by the views of later Americans in the political, judicial, and popular spheres, looking back at what the Declaration had accomplished.  One little-known illustration of this point: the first appeal from a state court to a federal tribunal was filed on July 4, 1776 (resulting in a reversal of the state court decision), a fact entirely inconsistent with the thirteen-independent-nations view.

Second, the Declaration is often portrayed as an ode to a minimalist night-watchman state.  Yet the Declaration’s extensive charges against George III are as much about ineffective and incompetent government as they are about tyrannical actions.  The very first charge is that the King had vetoed laws that were “the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.”  It is a demand for more and better law, not less.  The charges also have much to say about constitutional structure, illuminating how legislative, executive, and judicial power should be appropriately constituted to most effectively secure the people’s right to self-government.

Along the way, the book seeks to counter other myths that have hindered our understanding of the Declaration.  For example, the correct text of the Declaration of Independence is not to be found in the parchment copy currently enshrined in the National Archives.  Instead, it is in the first printing issued by Philadelphia printer John Dunlap on the night of July 4, 1776, and subsequently reprinted in newspapers across the country.  Similarly, it is a mistake to view Thomas Jefferson as the primary author the Declaration; the Declaration was authored by the Continental Congress in the voice of the American people.  And although the Declaration is not “law” in a strictly formal sense, it is nonetheless a legal document of continuing legal significance.

The post The History of the Declaration of Independence first appeared on Fifteen Eighty Four | Cambridge University Press.

In November 1957, the government led by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, submitted a law proposal that overhauled the tax and expenditure rules employed by the central government. Following the rules established by the regime, the bill was submitted to the Spanish Cortes. Its members proposed 44 amendments to the bill. However, Franco rejected most of those amendments and the bill was enacted essentially as proposed by the government in the first place.

What explains this variation in the outcomes of lawmaking processes across these two autocracies? Why are legislatures in some authoritarian regimes more powerful than others? Why does influence on policies and politics vary across dictatorships?

These questions guide our book, Lawmaking under Authoritarianism. In it, we argue that lawmaking institutions and outcomes in autocracies depend on the nature and dynamics of factional politics. When the factions within the regime are united and embedded, they are powerful enough to resist imposition by coalition partners. This leads to high levels of power-sharing and legislatures with greater influence. On the contrary, when the factions are not united n/or embedded, they are not powerful enough to resist imposition by coalition partners. This results in lower levels of power sharing and legislatures with a more limited role in policymaking.

To test these ideas, we combine methodologies and primary and secondary sources to comparatively analyze three authoritarian regimes with different factional politics: the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional in Argentina between 1976 and 1983; Franco’s regime in Spain between 1943 and 1976; and the military dictatorship in Brazil between 1964 and 1985.

In each case, we dive into archival collections, official documents, biographies, oral history archives, and historiographic accounts to identify, describe, and explain the nature and trajectory of the factions in the regime, the characteristics of the lawmaking institutions and outcomes, and the mechanisms linking them to the factional politics of the regime. 

This book improves our understanding of lawmaking under authoritarianism, specifying how and under which conditions legislatures perform their lawmaking function within authoritarian regimes, and by helping to elucidate how legislatures may be consequential to policy and politics. It also provides new perspectives on how the authoritarian regimes of Argentina, Brazil, and Spain operated and their place within the universe of authoritarian governments.

The post Legislating with the autocrat? first appeared on Fifteen Eighty Four | Cambridge University Press.

During the spring 2026 quarter, the Youth and Education Law Project (YELP) released a report titled “Strengthening Civil Rights Enforcement in California Schools: A Call for Sacramento to Fill the Gap Created by Washington D.C.”

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) was formerly the place most families went with complaints of discrimination or harassment in public schools. After the OCR was effectively dismantled in early 2025, YELP began working with a statewide coalition of educational advocates to identify solutions for civil rights enforcement in California schools. Together with the coalition, YELP students created this report. See related post by partner organization, Disability Rights California.

This report points to California’s primary educational complaint mechanism, the Uniform Complaint Procedures (UCP), managed by the California Department of Education (CDE), as a solution to California’s civil rights enforcement gap. The report argues that an increase in funding, staffing, and legal training to the UCP is necessary to fill this gap. Furthermore, the report describes how the CDE could improve data analysis efforts and promote interagency collaboration on civil rights enforcement. 

In May, YELP’s Associate Director, Abigail Trillin took students to Sacramento to advocate for California to improve state-level enforcement of civil rights in educational spaces along with a coalition member from Disability Rights California, Conrad Crump.

The report is published here. 

Student Team: Aasim Yahya (JD ‘27), Meghan Gilmore (JD ‘27) 

The Framers of the United States Constitution understood from their own experience that democratic governance risks such majoritarian tyranny unless “ambition . . . [is] made to counteract ambition,” in the words of James Madison in Federalist 51. Although the founding generation spoke often of a need for republican virtue, they came to accept that human nature leads to the formation of political factions intent on commandeering the powers of government in service to private ends – what present day political economists call rent seeking.

In my book American Factions: How the U.S. Constitution Can End Extreme Partisanship I describe and explain the partisan nature of present-day American politics, document the history of the Framers’ multiple efforts to control the corrupting influence of political factions, and examine how over two centuries the three branches of the federal government have distorted the Framers’ thoughtful design.

American politics have always been partisan, as the Framers anticipated.  But with the exception of the Civil War, in which the South rejected the constraining influence of union, the Constitution of divided and limited powers has forced compromise on most matters of public concern. That is no longer the case. Congressional inaction and avoidance of responsibility, growth in federal power at the expense of the states, emergence of an ever more powerful executive, and judicial deference to legislative abdication and executive overreach have combined to empower minority and majority factions.

The Constitution proposed by the Philadelphia Convention and ratified by the states included several structural devices intended to limit the influence of factions: union of thirteen very different states; vertical separation of authority between a national government of enumerated powers and state governments of traditional police powers; horizontal separation between the legislative, executive and judicial functions of government; a bicameral legislature in which one branch represents the states and the other represents the people; executive veto of measures enacted by Congress; a judiciary with life tenure and authority to void unconstitutional actions of the other branches; a president elected not by popular vote but by a system giving slightly greater influence to less populous states; removal of a president by impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate; and amendment of the Constitution not by popular vote but by three-fourths of the states.  To be sure, all these institutional arrangements were the product of compromise among the delegates.  But with few exceptions, Federalists and Anti-federalists agreed that their compromises would help control the corrupting influence of factions. 

Erosion over time of some of these limits on direct democracy has contributed to the extreme partisanship that characterizes present-day American politics.  The best hope for ending extreme partisanship lies not in more virtuous representatives or a more democratic Constitution but rather in restoring and reinforcing the Constitution’s original constraints on political factions and majority rule. 

The post How the U.S. Constitution Can End Extreme Partisanship first appeared on Fifteen Eighty Four | Cambridge University Press.

The issue could not be more timely. Currently before the United States Supreme Court are two cases challenging state laws that categorically bar transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports. In ruling on these cases, the Supreme Court will need to decide whether the laws violate statutory or constitutional prohibitions on sex discrimination.

As a matter of legal doctrine, the answer is not clear. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 permits sex segregation in sports but says nothing about how transgender individuals should be classified. The Supreme Court held in 2020 that discrimination based on transgender status in employment–where transgender employees were engaged in the same conduct as non transgender employees–was a form of sex discrimination. The Supreme Court was explicit, however, that its holding said nothing about how transgender individuals should be assigned or treated in sex-segregated contexts. The Equal Protection Clause permits sex-based classifications only when the classification is substantially related to an important state interest. Courts have struggled with the question of whether categorical exclusion of transgender girls from girls’ sports is substantially related to the state’s interest in fair play. And, if transgender girls cannot be categorically excluded from girls’ sports, can cisgender boys?

The current Supreme Court cases will not settle the issues. This is true for reasons both legal and political. Even if the Court upholds categorical bans as legally permissible, they will not be required. If the Court strikes down categorical bans, more limited ones will still be in play. States will continue to have leeway to pass laws permitting (or requiring) various degrees of inclusion—laws that will themselves invariably be challenged. At the federal level, Congress may choose to amend Title IX so as to make its demands with regard to transgender girls’ inclusion in girls’ sports explicit—a change which would then itself be subject to constitutional challenge.

Ultimately, and over time, judges, legislators and voters will need to decide how eligibility rules should be drawn. My book provides a framework for thinking about what society should require by focusing on what is at stake. Organized sports are associated with three primary types of benefits. The basic benefits of sports are the physical and psychological ones that athletic participants get from athletic endeavors. The special benefits of sports are the distinct set of goods—sometimes tangible sometimes not—that go to the small group of winners. The group benefits of sports are those that non participants get in the form of role-modeling and increased self-esteem from seeing those with whom they socially identify rewarded and celebrated. Although the benefits of sport attach to all levels of play, they attach to different levels in different degrees. At the early childhood and recreational levels, the basic benefits predominate as both the reason and the reward for play. At more elite levels, the special and group benefits of sports become more pronounced.  Sex and Sports suggests how, at each level of play, eligibility rules should be drawn so as to maximize the benefits of sports for girls and women—both transgender and cisgender—recognizing that under some circumstances the interests of the two groups will in fact diverge.

The post Sex and Sports: Transgender Rights and the Culture War Over Girls’ Sports first appeared on Fifteen Eighty Four | Cambridge University Press.

The Cambridge Handbook of Islam and Environmental Law, the first of its kind, publishes this month. Drawing on twenty-four contributors across fourteen countries and four continents, it maps Islamic environmental thought from classical fiqh to contemporary climate litigation. It is an act of recovery and of optimism. The legal tools exist. The issue, though, is whether nations and the international community will use them.

The Loss and Damage Fund, agreed at COP 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh and operationalized at COP 28 in Dubai, remains vastly underfunded relative to the scale of harm already visited on the most vulnerable nations. One underexamined dimension of that harm is military. Armed conflict destroys ecosystems, contaminates water supplies, and generates emissions that fall almost entirely outside the accounting frameworks of the Paris Agreement. The communities that survive war, and then survive the floods, droughts, and displacement that follow, bear compounded losses for which no fund has been designed. And just because more international and regional action is needed does not absolve countries from a justice-first mindset within their own political boundaries. At all political levels, we must strive to advance the cause of justice and work to protect the most vulnerable peoples and ecosystems first.

Islamic legal tradition developed responses to exactly this kind of compounded harm. Classical fiqh prohibited the destruction of trees, crops, and water sources in warfare, constraints on environmental harm during conflict that predate the Geneva Conventions by more than a millennium. The hima system, practiced across the Arabian Peninsula and into Andalusia, designated protected zones where extraction was prohibited and ecosystems were maintained for communal benefit. In Ottoman governance, waqf endowments, charitable trusts with perpetual legal standing, financed the upkeep of water systems, forests, and agricultural land across generations. In Al-Andalus, Islamic water law shaped and extended the acequia irrigationsystems of southern Spain, many of which remain in operation today: a living inheritance of Islamic environmental governance embedded in European land use.

These are worked-out models of what has, in fact, happened, and we should open our minds to using them to build frameworks for the future. The hima protected biodiversity before that word existed. The waqf created durable institutions for environmental management without state enforcement. The acequia systems distributed water equitably in conditions of scarcity.

What they have not had, until now, is recognized treatment alongside international climate law, comparative environmental law, and environmental justice scholarship. This Handbook argues that the resources for more just and more durable climate governance already exist in our historical, religious, and spiritual traditions, and that bringing them into the fore of the conversation, six months before COP 31 convenes in Turkey, is long overdue.

The communities least responsible for the climate crisis have the deepest legal traditions for living within planetary limits. That is where the academic, policy, institutional, finance, and governance fields need to look in a true spirit of humility with an open mind and heart. The scale of the planetary crisis demands no less. The moment to start is NOW.

The post What Climate Law Has Been Missing for 1,400 Years first appeared on Fifteen Eighty Four | Cambridge University Press.

Traditionally, relations between private individuals in the marketplace have been governed by private law. This area of law enables individuals to pursue their own interests while primarily seeking to ensure justice between them through doctrines such as good faith, misrepresentation, and the duty of care. It is enforced by aggrieved parties who bring claims before civil courts – a mechanism known as private enforcement. However, as markets have become increasingly regulated, particularly within the EU, private law now operates alongside market regulation in shaping interpersonal relations across areas ranging from product safety, consumer sales, and financial services to competition, digital services, and artificial intelligence. Unlike private law, market regulation is primarily designed to steer the behaviour of market participants in pursuit of public goals, such as market efficiency, sustainability, innovation, and consumer protection. It employs both public and private law instruments – such as authorisations for market entry and duties of care – and relies not only on private parties but also on regulatory agencies to ensure compliance, a mechanism known as public enforcement.

The collision between traditional, interpersonal justice-oriented private law and instrumentalist market regulation raises many questions. For instance, can a firm be held liable under private law for breaching regulatory duties? Can it comply with its regulatory duties yet still be in breach of its private law obligations? If a firm operates within a regulatory sandbox where regulatory requirements are temporarily relaxed, can it incur civil liability for harm arising from the experiment? Can aggrieved individuals rely on the findings of a regulatory agency in civil proceedings? To what extent can regulatory agencies be involved in providing compensation in cases of mass harm? Can a firm be subject to both an administrative fine and civil liability for the same regulatory violation? And can a whistleblower who exposes a regulatory breach be granted full immunity from civil liability?

These questions reveal tensions between the core values underpinning market regulation and private law: the common good and interpersonal justice; legal certainty and individual fairness; and uniformity and diversity. The central question underlying the book, therefore, is how market regulation and private law can be reconciled. To address this question, the book develops an integrated analytical framework that helps us better understand their interaction in both standard-setting and enforcement, within the EU and beyond. This novel framework emerges from analysing market regulation through the traditional private law lens and private law through the regulatory lens, along both descriptive and normative lines. It reflects elements of current legislative, judicial, and administrative practices across multiple jurisdictions and regulated sectors, and provides a basis for examining them.

I argue that market regulation and private law are two sides of the same coin. To reconcile them is to enable them to work in tandem, while acknowledging their distinctive characteristics and, where necessary, making trade-offs between the competing values that underpin them. This mode of interaction places demands on both discourses: private law should be receptive to the public interest logic of market regulation, while regulatory discourse should be receptive to the relational logic of private law. Fundamental rights – such as the right to private and family life, the right to non-discrimination, and the right to an effective remedy – can foster this interaction, serving as a bridge between market regulation and private law.  

Ultimately, reconciliation between market regulation and private law is essential to developing innovative responses to contemporary challenges. But how can this be achieved in practice? The book therefore also translates theory into practical guidance for legislators, courts, and regulatory agencies. It shows that such reconciliation can be pursued through incremental steps taken by each actor at both the EU and national levels. It further invites scholars and practitioners in regulation, public law, private law, law and economics, EU law, and national law to move beyond established modes of thinking and collaborate across disciplines while piecing together the reconciliation puzzle.  

The post Piecing Together Market Regulation and Private Law: The Reconciliation Puzzle first appeared on Fifteen Eighty Four | Cambridge University Press.

Congratulations to students in the Organizations and Transactions Clinic on a successful quarter. We highlight their work below.

What is actually happening is both more interesting and more important.

AI is already beginning to reshape civil dispute resolution, not simply by replacing human actors, but by changing how legal systems work around them. In The Cambridge Handbook of AI in Civil Dispute Resolution, we explore this transformation across a remarkably wide range of settings: public courts, online dispute resolution platforms, mediation, arbitration, access-to-justice tools, and systems designed to help people understand and navigate disputes before they escalate.

One of the central messages of the book is that AI in dispute resolution is not just about adjudication. It is also about access. In many legal systems, the real problem is not that people are judged by machines, but that they never meaningfully reach justice. Civil justice is often too expensive, too slow, too complex, or too inaccessible for ordinary users. Against that background, AI can offer real promise. It can help organise large amounts of legal information, support case management, assist users in understanding procedures, and make certain forms of dispute resolution easier to access.

But that promise comes with equally serious risks.

AI systems can reproduce bias, obscure reasoning, weaken accountability, and encourage overreliance on outputs that appear authoritative but are not necessarily accurate or fair. In the justice context, those risks are amplified. A small error in an entertainment app is one thing; a flawed recommendation in a legal dispute is another. That is why the debate cannot be reduced to a question of whether AI is “good” or “bad”. The real question is how it is designed, deployed, regulated, and supervised.

This is also why a comparative perspective matters. The book brings together examples from different parts of the world, from predictive and administrative tools in Brazil to generative AI in the Dutch legal system, China’s internet courts, and European debates shaped by the EU AI Act. These examples show that there is no single pathway for AI in justice. Technologies develop differently across jurisdictions because legal traditions, institutional capacities, and normative priorities differ.

So where does this leave us?

In our view, AI should not be understood as a substitute for justice, but as a structural force that is already reshaping it. That makes careful governance essential. We need systems that are transparent, human-centred, and attentive to due process, fairness, and inclusion. In the European context, this is not merely a policy preference: the EU AI Act treats certain AI systems used in the administration of justice as high-risk.

We also need to move beyond slogans, whether utopian or catastrophic.

The future of civil justice will not be decided by technology alone. It will depend on the choices lawyers, judges, policymakers, designers, and users make now.

The real challenge is not whether AI will enter civil dispute resolution. It already has. The challenge is whether we can ensure that it serves justice rather than distorts it.

In this spirit, we present a book with 22 chapters, which we hope will inspire and interest you.

The post Not a Robot Judge: What AI Is Really Doing to Civil Justice first appeared on Fifteen Eighty Four | Cambridge University Press.

This conflation is particularly visible in the context of the so‑called “global war on terror,” but it is far from unique. Ongoing debates regarding whether military operations by the G5 Sahel Joint Force are regulated  by IHRL or IHL, or a combination of the two illustrate the continued uncertainty. Similar questions have arisen concerning whether confrontations between security forces and criminal organizations in Rio de Janeiro, or between competing drug cartels in Mexico, satisfy the NIAC threshold. Increasingly robust UN peacekeeping mandates have prompted further discussion about whether UN forces may themselves become parties to a NIAC. Most recently, President Donald Trump asserted that U.S. strikes against “drug cartels” in the Caribbean were lawful under international law on the basis that the United States was engaged in a NIAC with these groups.

Even where the existence of a NIAC is uncontested, significant ambiguities persist regarding the personal, geographic, and temporal scope of the applicable law – issues that carry profound consequences for determining who may be detained without charge or targeted without warning. In the absence of any central authority to resolve these matters in real time, states continue to exercise wide discretion – and controversial practice is expanding.

Clearly identifying the existence of a NIAC entails profound and reverberating legal significance. This is demonstrated by the impressive range of international actors engaged in conflict identification. For example, both national and international criminal tribunals must determine the existence of a NIAC to prosecute war crimes. The UN Human Rights Council engages in conflict identification to assess whether violations of IHL or IHRL have occurred, while human rights courts and UN treaty bodies undertake similar assessments when interpreting and applying IHRL. At the same time, national courts and tribunals engage in conflict identification to assess asylum or subsidiary protection claims, while insurance firms determine the existence of a ‘war’ to activate war exclusion clauses.

The motives that drive each of these actors to identify armed conflict inevitably influence their respective determinations. This can be seen with respect to not only the existence of a NIAC, but also the geographical and temporal scope of NIAC. Indeed, it is not uncommon for multiple actors to reach different conclusions as to the existence of a NIAC based on the same factual circumstances. These conflicting interpretations are not only the result of the motives that drive them, but equally the result of a broad spectrum of uncertainties surrounding the legal concept and contours of NIAC.

Image credit: fabrikasim / Freepik

The post Armed Violence and International Law: Identifying Non-International Armed Conflict first appeared on Fifteen Eighty Four | Cambridge University Press.

Kingson was right. The way people live, work, and save is changing rapidly, but our tax system was built for an earlier era when people lived in one place, worked in one place, and belonged to one political community for most or all of their lives. Today, people relocate and their lives and livelihood, their families, their jobs; their wealth and economic activity effortless transcend national borders. Yet taxes on individuals — the most important source of revenue for almost every country—still rely on old assumptions about residence, nationality, and community that globalization has rendered outdated or even meaningless.

On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the writing of the first model tax treaty—we met at Oxford for a conference the results of which are presented in this  new book: on Taxing People: The Next 100 Years.  Globalization complicates taxation. It generates unprecedented mobility of people, resources and economic activity. The digital revolution and the merging of social and cultural communities across national borders removed barriers and allowed people and businesses greater flexibility in operating major aspects of their operation across national borders.

Alongside these changes in technology and daily life, we have seen major changes in tax policy and governance: the rise of interstate tax competition, the development of new institutions, and the expansion of some actors’ influence alongside the diminishment of others’. These developments have had major effects not only on the power of states to tax, but also on the legitimacy of taxation, raising concerns for justice at the national and international levels.

The chapters of this book reconsider individual’s taxation looking forward to the next 100 years: They reconceive the goals of taxation and the role of international taxation and consider the potential roles of governments and international institutions in designing a tax system that puts people at its core.

Chapter by chapter, prominent tax academics explore urgent questions regarding how belonging, work, and investment impact and should impact taxation.  Among the questions the book asks are: Who owes taxes where?  Should the obligation to pay taxes depend on citizenship? Residence? Source? Something else? How should tax systems adapt to aging populations, gig and remote work, new forms of belonging and migration, and the aftermath of colonialism?  What is the right timeline for taxation?  A year? A lifetime?

International institutions coordinate tax rules across countries, but they face criticism for failing to represent the interests of poorer regions or for relying on frameworks that reflect colonialism. Some of the chapters of this book imagine new forms of tax governance built from the bottom up, empowering  citizens within states, as well as regions or groups historically left out of international tax policymaking. Others look to more radical experiments, such as allowing taxpayers to allocate part of their tax payments directly to other jurisdictions — a kind of democratic crowdfunding for global redistribution. The authors evaluate modern modes of cooperation  from theoretical, practical, and historical perspectives.

Meanwhile, social transformations impose new demands on tax systems. Remote work blurs boundaries between home and workplace. Aging populations and lengthening lifespans strain welfare systems. Care work—often unpaid or underpaid—creates gender and wealth inequalities that current tax systems fail to address.

The world where a person worked in their sole nationality state for a single employer for their entire career are done and unlikely to return.  Our new world is increasingly borderless, not only in terms of human mobility, but also in terms of economic, political, and moral allegiance. People are living longer and forging more numerous and varied bonds with multiple states.  These changes are profound and likely enduring, and they have implications for how societies fund public goods and redistribution. If taxation is to remain legitimate, effective, and fair, it needs to address the way people live now and be flexible enough to adapt to the ways people and their states will operate in the future. To prepare for the second century of taxing people, this book invites us to rethink the fundamentals.

The post Taxing People: Yesterday Versus Today first appeared on Fifteen Eighty Four | Cambridge University Press.

Kelsen unequivocally rejects what has become one of the main tropes of the populist rhetoric: namely, the opposition between “the People” and the political “elites”. For him, this dichotomy rests on a dangerous fiction: the belief that a unified, homogeneous entity (the Volk) exists outside representative institutions whose will can and must be directly embodied by a single leader (the Führer), self-professedly untouched by the corruption of the political establishment and thus best positioned to champion the interests and claims of the “true”, hard-working people. Against this dangerous simplification and deliberate illusion, Kelsen emphasizes pluralism, social conflict, and the (often uncomfortable) complexities of party democracy. Political will, he argues, is not discovered or revealed but constructed through institutionalized processes of mediation, negotiation, and compromise. Political indirectness, intermediary bodies, and the challenges of electoral representation – specifically, the relationship between majority rule and minority rights and the tension between inclusivity and accountability of elected governments – are best understood not as a betrayal of democracy but as structural conditions of its very possibility in complex mass societies.

Kelsen’s sophisticated analysis of political leadership is especially relevant in democracies increasingly tempted by authoritarian figures. Democratic leadership, on his account, differs fundamentally from autocratic rule. In a liberal democracy, leaders do not govern by virtue of superior insight, charismatic authority, or privileged access to transcendent truths. They remain contestable, accountable, and – crucially – peacefully removable (by means of periodic, free, and truly competitive elections). Whereas democratic authority is constantly forged through an open-ended process of creation and circulation that empowers citizens’ critical thinking, autocracy relies on the myth of exceptional leaders who claim a monopoly of Truth and cast themselves as messianic redeemers. By doing so, they set themselves above and beyond the democratic principles of accountability, moderation in the exercise of executive authority, legitimate opposition, and rotation in office – that is, the backbones of party democracy.

In an era pervasively marked by populist simplifications and authoritarian temptations, Kelsen’s sober, procedural, and pluralist vision of democracy remains a vital source of insights for thinking about democratic resilience, and for recognizing the first symptoms of an autocratic involution of democratic leadership.

Finally, one of the distinctive strengths of Kelsen’s contribution lies in his sustained attention to the gap between the ideal image of democracy and the way it actually works in mass, heterogeneous societies where partisanship and disagreement are inevitable. Rather than concealing this gap behind tempting abstractions or moralizing rhetoric, Kelsen insists on confronting it directly. Democracy, in his view, is not weakened by the acknowledgment of its imperfections. Rather, it is strengthened by a vision of politics that places social conflict and partisan views at its core, promotes an ethics of compromise that genuinely respects the legitimacy of political antagonists, and thus prevents its drowning at the hands of populist ventriloquists and potential autocrats in disguise clothing themselves in the mantle of electoral legitimacy.

The post Revisiting Kelsen’s Democratic Theory: Lessons for Contemporary Democracies first appeared on Fifteen Eighty Four | Cambridge University Press.

This book, at its core, is a renouncement of a belief system: doctrinal legal approaches to ‘law and torture’ research and practice. At the same time, it is articulation of new belief in disbelief: critique and the disciples of that disparate tradition. And it is a stringing together of all that which allowed me to frame provocative questions of doctrine – and all that didn’t quite find a home in my doctoral dissertation, because it was either somewhat distant or dangerous to defend in a traditional institution as a law school. Diplomatically put, this book is an attempt to enrich (though not as to correct) what I view as a relatively impoverished field of ‘law and torture’, namely dominant doctrinal legal approaches to torture’s adjudication (and by extension prevention). I say impoverished because legal practice and research remain mostly oblivious to the wider discussions around core questions of pain, the state, violence, responsibility, recognition etc.

Genesis

I was set up on this path engaging with the work of Vicky Canning, Toby Kelly, Andrew Jefferson, Steffen Jensen, Stanley Cohen, Lutz Oette, and Danielle Celermajer – the last of which propelled me to weigh in to the point where I use her recurring phrase ‘widening the apertures’ as my subtitle. Danielle’s discussion of her book ‘The Prevention of Torture: An Ecological Approach’ in Copenhagen more than five years ago defined a generative shift for me. I could plainly see how it split colleagues seated around me – some were not ready to receive her messages and grew grumpily defensive as others were remarking how it would’ve been the book that they would’ve written. The conversation grew as those in the Celermajer camp (particularly Andrew Jefferson and Tomas Max Martin) introduced me to what were to become intellectual muses including Veena Das, Austin Sarat, Thomas Mathiesen, Judith Butler, David Garland, Nils Christie, Scott Veitch, Emily Kidd White, Pierre Bourdieu, Talal Asad.

Provocations

I draw up five core provocations from these inspirations: (1) that legal doctrine dominates but disconnects important elements in understanding torture’s lifeworld; (2) that linear understandings of progress conceal failures of doctrine; (3) that human rights law has exceptionalised torture in a state-deferential manner; (4) that evidentiary discretion on the part of authoritative courts and committees has served this exceptionalisation; and (5) that potent clues are to be found in engaging with ideological and imaginational dimensions.

Those who’ve read my work before^[1] might have charged me with not offering answers. And I’ve also been guilty of posing the question of utility to other colleagues. The value of any work like this (and what drives me) is (1) etching out a critical position for others to reflect on or reference and (2) to help myself and others to (perhaps riskily^[2]) pick up and pick at their doxa.

Those who find all this too provocative can readily flick the channel to doctrine, enjoy the programming, the echo chamber, though the world burns. Law will surely not save us. In that sense this is a bleak book, for those more into their Bosch than their Botticelli.

^[1] And this is its thorough reworking.

^[2] I say risky not only because it might lead to disillusionment and putting oneself out of an otherwise rewarding job as a legal advisor but more importantly because it can feed state strategies against anti-torture work. A cross-cutting argument I shield myself with in the book is that that anti-torture work is unreflectingly state-deferential anyway.

The post Law and Torture first appeared on Fifteen Eighty Four | Cambridge University Press.

As the world’s second-largest economy, China is a major source of companies seeking overseas listings. These overseas-listed Chinese companies have played a significant role in host markets, with important implications for international securities regulation. It is therefore critically important to develop a proper understanding of China’s approach to the development and regulation of cross-border listings, particularly at a time of ongoing and escalating geopolitical tensions.

This book represents a serious attempt to address this need. Specifically, it examines several important questions, including: why Chinese companies pursue cross-border listings; under what circumstances Chinese courts may exercise the extraterritorial jurisdiction of securities law in matters relating to such listings; how national security considerations may affect cross-border listings; how the legality of the variable interest entity (VIE) structure should be assessed; how China–US audit oversight disputes have evolved; how cross-border securities misconduct should be regulated; whether foreign securities judgments can be recognised and enforced in China; and whether China will further open its capital markets to allow foreign companies to list. These issues revolve around the central concern of investor protection, which is already challenging in a purely domestic context and becomes even more complex in a cross-border setting, where regulatory and judicial cooperation across jurisdictions is required.

The book has several key features that will benefit readers. First, it offers a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the cross-border listings of Chinese companies, enabling readers to develop a holistic and accurate understanding of this important area of law. Second, it provides a context-based and practical analysis of the subject from a Chinese perspective. To this end, the book not only explains what the law is, but also why it has developed in its current form within China’s specific institutional context. Finally, it goes beyond the letter of the law to examine the political, economic, and social factors that shape the environment in which the law operates. This broader perspective helps readers understand the rationale behind past regulatory actions and anticipate future developments. In sum, the book is of both theoretical and practical significance for understanding the regulation of cross-border listings from a Chinese perspective.

The book has received warm endorsements from a diverse group of internationally renowned scholars, including John Armour (Oxford Law Faculty), John C. Coffee Jr. (Columbia Law School), Eilís Ferran (Cambridge Law Faculty), Jill E. Fisch (University of Pennsylvania Law School), Jesse M. Fried (Harvard Law School), and Curtis J. Milhaupt (Stanford Law School). It also features thoughtful forewords from two key figures involved in formulating the legal framework for cross-border listings of Chinese companies in the 1990s: Mr Anthony Neoh, SC (Chairman of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission from 1995 to 1998; Chief Adviser to the China Securities Regulatory Commission from 1999 to 2004) and Mr Xiqing Gao (General Counsel of the China Securities Regulatory Commission from 1992 to 1995; Vice Chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission from 1999 to 2002).

The post China’s Development and Regulation of Cross-border Listings first appeared on Fifteen Eighty Four | Cambridge University Press.

The emergence of MDTs has introduced challenges that are unprecedented for both society and legal frameworks, requiring policymakers and scholars to move beyond established modes of thinking and adopt fresh perspectives. This imperative shaped a pivotal decision early in my research: to treat the governance of neurotechnology and emotion technology as interconnected challenges. While traditional approaches have often conceptualised neurotechnology as an isolated phenomenon, A Datafied Mind advances a more holistic perspective, arguing for an integrated, nuanced, and multilayered regulatory framework.

A second deliberate choice in my research was to focus on secondary law. This decision reflects both the procedural and political challenges of adopting new primary legislation and the potential of secondary law to serve as a responsive avenue for regulation. Accordingly, the book critically examines existing regulatory gaps and limitations and explores potential policy pathways to strengthen the framework. It also demonstrates how secondary law can provide agile and adaptable tools to address many of the risks posed by MDTs, especially when these technologies extend beyond the narrowly defined medical field. This approach complements ongoing debates on international regulatory instruments and facilitates an analysis of secondary law’s role within a multilevel governance framework.

Two legal instruments are central in this context: the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act). Under the GDPR, MDTs are most commonly associated with the category of biometric data. However, accurately classifying data processed by MDTs under the correct biometric category is highly complex, leaving substantial amounts of data without enhanced protection. This gap is particularly pronounced for data processed by text-based MDTs. Given the widespread deployment of large language models, this regulatory blind spot is increasingly concerning. A Datafied Mind argues for a conceptual shift: away from focusing solely on the technology or the biophysical parameters used to datafy people’s inner state of mind and towards safeguarding the information that truly warrants protection. To this end, the book proposes the introduction of “mind data” as a sui generis special category of personal data under the GDPR.

Although the GDPR establishes foundational protections for personal data, its provisions were not designed to address the specific challenges posed by AI-driven technologies. In response, the EU has adopted the AI Act to regulate such systems directly. The AI Act is the first legislative instrument to specifically address Emotion Recognition Systems (ERS), establishing a multilayered regulatory approach. Viewed in its broader context, the AI Act’s treatment of ERS reflects a nuanced legislative effort to enable innovation and technological development in a nascent field while simultaneously imposing first regulatory guardrails. Nonetheless, A Datafied Mind argues that the AI Act cannot be regarded as a definitive regulatory framework for MDTs. It should instead be treated as a general baseline, to be supplemented by further legal measures, including sector-specific restrictions or prohibitions.

Following a general analysis of these two regulatory pillars, the book turns to four concrete use cases: mental health and well-being, commercial advertising, political advertising, and employment monitoring. It examines how sector-specific legislation complements the general framework, drawing on both established instruments and more recent ones. The analysis shows that, through strategic adaptation and effective deployment of existing legal instruments, the regulatory framework governing MDTs could be significantly strengthened. In some areas, more stringent substantive rules are urgently required; in others, the principal challenge lies in ensuring effective compliance and enforcement.

Ultimately, A Datafied Mind seeks to inform evolving debates on the governance of emotion technology and neurotechnology, promoting responsible innovation and the development of regulatory frameworks capable of addressing the risks posed by these transformative technologies.

The post When Minds Are Turned Into Data: Governing Emotion Technology and Neurotechnology under EU Law first appeared on Fifteen Eighty Four | Cambridge University Press.