The purpose of this paper is to examine the contours of evolving jurisprudence on offensive expression and negative messages, and to suggest that it can best be understood by reference to the concept of stigma. At the European Court of Human Rights, there appears to have been an increasing willingness to recognise the harm of offensive expression through an interpretation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, but the reach of this case law remains uncertain. In particular, while some cases associate negative expression with negative stereotyping, not all of these cases do, and there are potential conflicts with freedom of speech. In the domestic context, these issues recently arose in a significant case from the Court of Appeal, R (Crowter) v Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. In this case, the appellants argued that a legal provision sends a negative ‘message’, through the negative stereotyping of disabled people, but this ‘message’ is implicit, rather than explicitly articulated. While these developments raise important questions about the future evolution of case law, we propose that a focus on stigma can more clearly highlight the harms involved.

This paper explores the way in which childhood is socially constructed in the context of child marriage regulation. Despite extreme social and cultural diversity, there is a core ideology in UN human rights instruments, around which official versions of childhood pivot. International law recommends setting the minimum age of marriage at 18years. This article problematizes the progressively depoliticizing effects of a seemingly neutral regulatory drive at the heart of the UN’s promotion of a standardized construction of childhood. The immediate purpose of this article is not to offer solutions to child marriage, but to bring together some elements that may form a basis for understanding the way in which conceptions of childhood are contextually constructed. My hope is that a familiarity with these social perceptions will help to explain the present struggle and resistance to apply universal rights constructions of childhood to non-western societies.

The relationship between scholarship and adjudication has attracted considerable attention in recent years, especially in those areas where significant academic expertise has been developed and academic scrutiny of decisions is common. Yet the role of scholars and scholarship in the context of the adjudicatory practices of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has remained palpably under-investigated. This article begins to fill this gap in the literature by carrying out the first large-scale empirical study of the use of scholarship by the ECtHR. The authors rely on a purpose-built dataset comprising all the citations made by the Grand Chamber of the Court in judgments and separate opinions appended to it. The study finds that the Court's majority uses scholarship for the purposes of reviewing facts and interpreting international and domestic law but does so rarely. The majority of the ECtHR does not use scholarship to interpret the European Convention on Human Rights or for persuasive purposes, unlike the individual Judges in their separate opinions. Indeed, individual Judges refer to scholarship more often, for more varied and arguably different purposes. This use, however, is inconsistent in terms of both frequency and the types of sources referred to.

In international human rights law, the notion of due diligence concerns a qualifier of behaviour to realize human rights protection, including the protection against non-state actor interferences. However, the question remains what due diligence obligations of states in the context of non-state actor interferences exactly entail in international human rights law. The present article aims to address this matter by comparing case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) with that of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). Using a working model of due diligence that has been introduced in recent scholarly work, this article further explores this model and attempts to give further meaning to its two paradigms: ‘regulation’ and ‘risk management’. In that way, it maps out the relevant elements of this foundational concept that lies at the heart of human rights protection.

The trend toward the “humanization” of international law reflects a greater emphasis on individuals rather than simply states as objects of concern. The advance of human rights law (HRL) has been an important impetus for this trend. Some observers suggest that humanization can be furthered even more by applying HRL rather than international humanitarian law (IHL) to hostilities between states and nonstate armed groups, unless a state explicitly declares that it is engaged in an armed conflict. This essay argues, however, that a court should not defer to a state's characterization of hostilities, but should base its analysis on whether hostilities meet the criteria for an armed conflict. Applying HRL to hostilities that effectively are an armed conflict but not acknowledged as such risks diluting the legitimacy and normative force of HRL. On the one hand, if a court applies conventional stringent HRL standards, this body of law may be seen as unrealistic and is likely to be ignored. On the other hand, a court that adapts HRL standards to armed conflict may need to take a consequentialist approach at odds with HRL's deontological foundations. Clearly differentiating between HRL and IHL may thus best promote the humanization of warfare.

On 22 June 2022 the Bill of Rights Bill to replace the Human Rights Act 1998 was introduced to the United Kingdom (UK) Parliament. Just over a year later, it was withdrawn. This was not a minor update, as claimed by the Conservative government, but a wholesale revision of a fundamental feature of UK constitutional arrangements. Given that the UK has no codified constitution, it is not out of the ordinary for constitutional change to proceed via ordinary Act of Parliament. But what was unusual was the informal methods used by the government in its attempt to push through its bill of rights. Searching for a word or phrase to capture what happened over this time in the UK is difficult, not only because of the absence of a conventional method for constitutional change. Most scholarship focuses on formal rather than informal processes for amendment. The purpose of this article is therefore to make a contribution towards filling this gap by introducing the phrase ‘autocratic method’ to describe a particular method of constitutional change as opposed to its substance. Using existing scholarship, and examples from other States, a preliminary definition and essential features of the autocratic method are set out. Further detail is gained through a study of the attempted replacement of the Human Rights Act. Whilst the Bill of Rights Bill is no longer going ahead, this episode in UK constitutional history contains important lessons not just for the UK but for any State embarking on a process of constitutional change.

ChatGPT launched in November 2022, triggering a global debate on the use of artificial intelligence (AI). A debate on AI-enabled lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) has been underway far longer. Two sides have emerged: one in favor and one opposed to an international law ban on LAWS. This essay explains the position of advocates of a ban without attempting to persuade opponents. Supporters of a ban believe LAWS are already unlawful and immoral to use without the need of a new treaty or protocol. They nevertheless seek an express prohibition to educate and publicize the threats these weapons pose. Foremost among their concerns is the “black box” problem. Programmers cannot know what a computer operating a weapons system empowered with AI will “learn” from the algorithm they use. They cannot know at the time of deployment if the system will comply with the prohibition on the use of force or the human right to life that applies in both war and peace. Even if they could, mechanized killing affronts human dignity. Ban supporters have long known that “AI models are not safe and no one knows how to reliably make them safe” or morally acceptable in taking human life.

Given the increasing size and functions of United Nations (UN) peace operations (POs) and the fact that they often operate in contexts where natural resources are degraded, POs have repercussions on the environment. Yet, there is not much literature on their obligations regarding the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts. This article provides insights into the obligations of POs in relation to armed conflict. First, it highlights POs’ customary international environmental law obligations. Second, it delves into their environmental obligations under the UN's internal rules and the host State's laws. Third, it explores obligations that arise from their mandates. In each of these sections, the article highlights the relevance and application of these obligations in armed conflicts. The last section examines the obligations of POs to protect the natural environment under international humanitarian law.

Propaganda and manipulation have long been employed to influence and shape individuals’ thoughts and identities. In the advent of the digital era, these techniques have become more sophisticated and invasive, and are utilized to further various causes. This article investigates the extent to which international human rights law affords protection against manipulation techniques such as microtargeting and behavioral reading, which can negatively impact individuals’ mental health and autonomy by threatening their right to construct their own identity. The right to freedom of thought in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 18), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 18), and the European Convention on Human Rights (Article 9) offers absolute protection to individuals’ inner selves and covers the protection against manipulation on paper. However, in practice, the right has not received much attention and has not reached its full potential due to its abstract and ambiguous nature. This Article analyzes the preparatory works of these human rights law instruments, with a particular focus on the right to freedom of thought, to clarify its origins and the intention behind its creation. The Article contends that the historical origins of the right do not provide sufficient answers to the current issue and contribute to the ineffective application of the right against emerging manipulative practices. The Article also proposes potential ways to clarify and strengthen the legal framework related to the right to freedom of thought.

In international human rights law, the right to food has become a widely accepted legal and normative framework for tackling the problem of food insecurity. However, as currently formulated, the right to food is insufficient as a framework to tackle gender-specific barriers that impede women's access to food, which has contributed to the persistence of women's food insecurity globally. While the equal enjoyment of the right to food is guaranteed by the non-discrimination and equality provisions in international law, this notion of equality, associated with the formal equality approach, fails to recognise and address women's historical experience of systemic discrimination. This article argues that women's food insecurity should be approached from a broader formulation of the right to food that is informed by a substantive equality perspective, drawing from contemporary interpretations and elucidations by human rights bodies which have pushed for a more substantive notion of equality.

Taking a law-and-governance approach, this article addresses legal certainty in international human rights law as it applies to artificial intelligence (AI). After introducing key issues concerning legal certainty, a comparative analysis of AI law-and-governance initiatives at the international, regional and national levels is undertaken. The article argues that many initiatives contribute to increased legal certainty and can partially compensate for some of the shortcomings of the international human rights law framework, but that further clarification is badly needed. This is especially true for the responsibilities of private businesses which are developing AI and the corpus of human rights beyond privacy and data protection.