Amicus Curiae

Editor's introduction

Pablo Cortés — 2026-07-02

Law in the Accusative

Michael Murphy — 2026-07-02

Relational Legal Pluralism (RLP) provides a critical jurisprudence designed to deconstruct the structural pathologies of contemporary governance. While the preceding article, “The Jurisprudence of the Threshold” (Murphy 2026), diagnosed the modern administrative state, the “K-machine”, as a topologically closed shell, this article, “Law in the Accusative”, translates that diagnosis into a tactical methodology for structural intervention and reconstitution. The article argues that the state maintains its “architecture of foreclosure” through translation capture, epistemic insulation, and a temporal cage. This effectively empties the embodied reality of the governed. To escape this managerial pacification, RLP continues the spatial–ethical inversion, shifting the genesis of law from sovereign decree to the “wound”: a juris-generative rupture in the relational fabric (aidagara). The article operationalizes this ontology through the Aesthetic Impact Statement, an evidentiary counter-audit that inserts the somatic fact of “combat breathing” directly into the state’s documentary apparatus. This intervention weaponizes the administrative duty to inquire as a jurisdictional tripwire, triggering a Lexicographic Triage Rule and an Apophenia Veto to filter out reactionary grievances and secure biological survival. By framing resistance as Spatial Nullification via a suspensive remand, RLP empowers the substrate to halt the state’s mechanistic treadmill. This destituent praxis reimagines the rule of law as a compelled Logistical Treaty, replacing the sterile dictates of the ‘epistemic machine’ with a transmodern, agonistic settlement grounded in present-tense survival and raw material friction.

Keywords: Relational Legal Pluralism; critical jurisprudence; admissibility architecture; a-legality; Spatial Nullification.

The Algorithm and the Tribunal

Harry Meliniotis — 2026-07-02

This article asks whether English law should extend party autonomy to recognize the output of a fully autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) system as a binding resolution of a construction dispute. It argues that the real issue is not current technical weakness, but whether algorithmic decision-making can ever satisfy the conditions of legitimate adjudication so as to justify state-backed enforcement. Drawing on philosophy and doctrine, the article contends that adjudication is a human practice of responsible judgment and that the existing routes to enforcement are unlikely to succeed. It further argues that the greatest threat comes from within: hybrid human-AI decision-making, which risks hollowing out the very conception of judgment itself.

Keywords: AI; algorithmic decision-making; statutory adjudication; arbitration; expert determination; party autonomy; natural justice; construction disputes; public policy.

Shaping the Law Curriculum with Authentic Assessment

Faye F Wang — 2026-07-02

This article updates the author’s earlier study, “Online Dispute Resolution Simulation: Shaping the Curriculum for Digital Lawyering” (Wang 2021a), while advancing a distinct pedagogical contribution: it extends the original online dispute resolution (ODR) simulation framework to incorporate dispute system design (DSD) as a means of teaching students not only to participate in dispute resolution, but also to design, evaluate and govern technology-enabled dispute systems. The original study demonstrated how ODR simulation workshops create a virtual learning environment in which students develop both legal and digital competencies for future professional practice. Conducted since 2007 with undergraduate and postgraduate law students at Brunel University of London and other institutions and initially supported by funding from the Nominet Trust in 2010, these workshops promote active participation, intercultural communication and reflective practice, while strengthening skills in legal reasoning, problem-solving and digital communication. Building on this foundation, the article evaluates DSD as a new teaching initiative implemented within the University of London distance learning Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) module and Brunel University of London’s Internet Law module. While ODR simulation and DSD differ in emphasis—practical dispute resolution versus system design—both employ authentic assessment, requiring students to apply knowledge and skills to realistic scenarios. Together, these approaches deepen engagement, foster critical reflection and enhance professional readiness for technology-enabled dispute resolution and digital lawyering.

Keywords: online dispute resolution; dispute system design; artificial intelligence; authentic assessment; team-based learning; student-centred learning; research-informed teaching.

Barriers to Medical Cannabis in the UK

Lydia Kitchen — 2026-07-02

Although legislative amendments in 2018 legalized medical cannabis in the United Kingdom, access remains severely limited. Private prescriptions have increased, but National Health Service treatment is exceedingly rare. As a result, individuals using cannabis to manage health conditions are often forced to risk criminalization, undermining their rights and deepening existing inequalities. The discriminatory effects of drug law enforcement are well documented, particularly the disproportionate targeting of ethnic minorities. Similar inequalities affect women and those with disabilities, who may be more likely to experience health conditions treatable by medical cannabis yet face barriers to lawful access. This reflects not only the injustice of ongoing criminalization but also a broader failure to uphold core human rights, particularly autonomy and equality. This article examines the legal and systemic barriers to medical cannabis through a combined doctrinal and socio-legal approach. Analysed in light of Articles 8 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the article shows how current laws constrain access, entrench disadvantage and perpetuate harm, and argues that decriminalizing possession of cannabis for personal use is the most practical step towards addressing these inequalities.

Keywords: medical cannabis; decriminalization; human rights; Article 8 ECHR; Article 14 ECHR; equality; autonomy; drug policy.

Evaluation of the Efficacy of the Corporate Insolvency and Restructuring Act 2020 (Act 1015) of Ghana

Jennifer Abena Dadzie — 2026-07-02

Before 2020, corporate insolvency in Ghana was governed by a liquidation-focused framework under the Bodies Corporate (Official Liquidations) Act 1963 (Act 180), which was criticized for its limited capacity to rescue distressed companies. The enactment of the Corporate Insolvency and Restructuring Act 2020 (Act 1015) (CIRA) marked a shift towards a rescue-oriented regime aligned with international best practices. This study evaluates CIRA’s effectiveness after its introduction through a comparative analysis with the United Kingdom. The article finds that, while CIRA represents significant progress, challenges remain in judicial specialization, procedural efficiency, and institutional capacity, necessitating targeted reforms to enhance corporate rescue outcomes.

Keywords: corporate insolvency; corporate rescue; restructuring agreement; administration; liquidation; moratorium; creditor rights; judicial oversight; cross-border insolvency; comparative insolvency law; insolvency framework; creditors; insolvency practitioners; courts.

Editor's introduction

Paolo Vargiu — 2026-07-02

Justice in Panels

Paolo Addis — 2026-07-02

This article explores the use of comics and graphic narratives as tools for teaching and studying constitutional law, with particular attention to their capacity to illuminate the “dark side” of legality. The contribution argues that graphic narratives provide a critical laboratory for reflecting on legal dysfunctions, the limits of legal regulation, and the ways in which legal norms may reproduce exclusion and discrimination. Through their visual and narrative language, comics are especially effective in dramatizing the instability and ambiguity of legality, enabling students to confront the tension between formal legality and substantive justice in a more immediate and engaging manner than conventional doctrinal approaches often allow.

Keywords: constitutional law; legal education; comics and law; graphic narratives; legal dysfunctions.

The Racialization of the Rape Crisis? Revisiting BBC’s Three Girls Following Baroness Casey’s National Audit on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse

Megan Johnson — 2026-07-02

This article examines the racialization of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) in the United Kingdom through an interdisciplinary analysis of Baroness Casey’s National Audit and the BBC drama Three Girls. Situating both within wider political and cultural discourses, it explores how ethnicity is mobilized in policy, data collection and dissemination, and media representation. The article demonstrates that limited ethnicity data, alongside selective narrative emphasis, risks reinforcing racialized rape myths that construct non-white men as inherent sexual threats of white women and girls. It argues that such framings marginalize non-white victims, distort public understanding of CSEA, and undermine equitable justice responses.

Keywords: sexual offending; group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA); race; ethnicity; perpetration; victimization; interdisciplinary; socio-legal.

Juridical Cohesion and Tactics of Shadow and Fog

Frans-Willem Korsten — 2026-07-02

The issue central to this article involves tactics used by Dutch agro-industries in close cooperation with successive Dutch Governments and the Ministry of Agriculture to hide the real extent of, and responsibility for, pollution caused by pesticides, herbicides (like glyphosate) and, in particular, an excess of nitrogen emissions. One tactic is to avoid confrontations in court and to operate in what has been called the “shadow of the law”. The other one is to hide the reality of things through a discursive or representational “fog”. One aim of such tactics is to make the prosecution opt for settlement instead of fully enforcing the law, what is defined here as the “withdrawing shadow of the law”. A second but connected aim is to weaken a society’s juridical cohesion, imagined metaphorically here as law’s “dark matter”. Physically, this is the elusive mass that is needed to explain what holds together galaxies; juridically, it is what holds societies together under a rule of law that serves justice.

Keywords: shadow of the law; rule of law; corporate legal tactics; juridical cohesion; dragging.

The Trial and Exposure

Persio Tincani — 2026-07-02

This article offers an interpretation of Roger Waters’ “The Trial” (The Wall, 1979) by comparing it with Franz Kafka’s The Trial and “The Judgment” and with Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Die Panne (commonly known as A Dangerous Game), in order to highlight the profound affinities among the four works in their representation of the trial as a process of exposure that leaves the defendant’s life stripped bare and laid open both to the gaze of others and to their own. Thus, whatever the verdict, the trial naturally culminates in shame; shame is therefore the necessary punishment of both the convicted and the acquitted.

Keywords: Pink Floyd’s The Wall; Roger Waters; Friedrich Dürrenmatt; Franz Kafka; shame; trial; society.

News and Events

Eliza Boudier — 2026-07-02

Full issue

Pablo Cortés — 2026-07-02