My purpose is to provide a survey indicating some of the differences within the common law between one country and another. I must immediately make clear that there is at least one person, perhaps several, in this room (including the other speakers) who know very much more about any one of the topics I shall consider than I claim to do. I hope that they will excuse me for any inaccuracies or lapses of understanding in their own areas: my only purpose is to make general observations on the diversities between common law countries as I see them.

The dust has not yet settled after the referendum on Britain's relationship with the EU, which took place on 23 June 2016. UK voted to leave the EU by 51.9% to 48.1%, which is a winning margin of almost 1.3 million votes. However, it is not yet clear what ‘Brexit’ means or how it will come about – legally and constitutionally. This article seeks to answer the latter question from the standpoint of UK and EU law. The discussion begins with the domestic process before beginning the initial withdrawal negotiations, which is governed by UK constitutional law. The focus then shifts to the process of withdrawing from the EU, which is set out in Article 50 TEU. This article further examines whether ‘Brexit’ can be stopped once Article 50 has been triggered. The penultimate section of the article looks at the legal nature and substantive content of the agreements that might be concluded between the UK and the EU if ‘Brexit’ were to become a reality. The final section of the article examines the UK rules on ratification of such international agreements.

Despite nearly 100 years of international organization and practice, international refugee law is confronted today with the critical challenges of globalization, securitization and an increasingly mobile world. Large-scale movements have exposed serious cracks in the European project; the EU's stated policy goal seems simply to keep refugees away. Elsewhere, numerous refugee situations are “protracted,” while persistent underdevelopment continues to drive the movement of people between States, in a context in which States appear unable to manage “irregular” migration. If a generous asylum policy is in practice, contingent on well-controlled external borders, can the basic rules of protection survive? Or are asylum and the principle of non-return to persecution (non-refoulement) at risk in a new international legal order? These are the issues addressed below.

We are in an uncertain and complex period for data protection and privacy in Europe, and especially so in the UK, following the result of the ‘Brexit’ referendum on 23 June 2016. Information law, and data protection in particular, are of increasing concern for those in the business of knowledge sharing and information dissemination: media organizations, academic institutions and libraries. The notion of the ‘right to be forgotten’ is particularly troublesome, as lawyers, archivists, historians and philosophers grapple with the theoretical and practical implications. This article presents a selection of recent European and British policy and legal developments, and discusses how they are changing social practice and citizens’ engagement with information rights.

Over the past few decades, a new process has dominated how States treat foreign investment and the consequences to States for breaching international standards. The system's key feature, the means for settling a foreign investor's dispute with a State that hosts the investment, lacks traditional elements of State judicial systems. Instead, it is a creature of State consent as reflected in international investment agreements (IIAs). In IIAs, States promise to treat foreign investment and the investors in a certain, fundamentally fair, way. Many IIAs authorize foreign investors and States to select private arbitrators to resolve claims that host States breached their promises under the IIA. The arbitrators, in turn, are empowered to issue arbitral awards.

Open access (OA) in the United States is similar to a crazy quilt. There is a patchwork of OA policy and practice among the many federal, state, and local jurisdictions in the United States, as well as individual policies and practices in individual institutions, whether those are academic, business, or governmental. By way of a reminder, the United States is a federal republic consisting of 50 states, plus Washington, D.C., five major territories, and various possessions. Most readers know that already, but what one should also understand is that each of the states and territories has its own policies with respect to OA, as does the Federal government.

Several years ago, the Australian Information Commissioner decided that, subject to security and privacy and so forth, all of its public-sector information should be, “free, easily discoverable, machine readable and re-useable.”

The presentation delivered in Oxford during IALL's 35th Annual Course on Law and Legal Information offered my perspective on Open Access to legal information within the context of Access to Justice in Canada. Please find below an overview of my presentation.

This short overview will focus on three points: open access of primary sources, access to journal articles highlighting the experience of the repository of Toulouse 1 Capitole university, and perspectives for the future with a proposed French bill “for a Digital Republic.” These three parts will be illustrated with three websites.

This article provides an overview of the current status of UK national open access (OA) policies, their implementation, and the responses of HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) and other key players. Prior to 2012 a number of funders' OA policies had been published. Although many medical scientists were publishing OA articles and subject pre-print repositories were active in some disciplines (for example ArXiv and RePEc EconPapers), most academics were not complying with their funder's OA policy, the policies were not being policed, and in many disciplines, OA was not on researchers' radar.

The article concludes that OA in the UK has changed considerably in recent years and is continuing to evolve rapidly, mainly due to the effect of UK funder OA policies. There is an urgent need for increased automation to support greater accuracy and efficiency, which needs input from, and will benefit, the major players: researchers, universities, funders, and publishers. Sustainable funding needs to be coupled with efforts to drive down costs. The reasons behind the push for OA needs discussion with researchers, some of whom view OA as an additional burden. The value placed on OA needs to be weighted more towards the benefits of OA within a less compliance dominated environment. There is a long way to go, but reflecting on the last four years, the UK has made enormous strides towards widespread OA.