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What were this decade’s most significant advances in law?

The past decade has seen a number of advances in the field of law. As part of our exclusive Oxford law event, Unlock Oxford Law, we have asked some of our expert authors to identify what developments they thought were most significant. With constant changes and developments occurring across all the different areas of law, this is a subject that is very much up for debate. Read on to see what our authors said, and to see if you agree.

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“The coming of the Criminal Procedure Rules and now the Criminal Practice Direction has effected a huge change in the practice of criminal law.  Previously there was little assistance in knowing what requirements had to be met.  The Rules introduced the overriding objective to the Criminal Justice System, the need to see all cases tried justly, with a series of defined criteria to achieve that objective.

This now underlies all applications to the courts.  With the rules come a series of prescribed forms that ensure that the correct information is provided.  The Criminal Practice Direction is indexed in the same way as the rules, so that by reading the two together all the required guidance is available.

Whilst this means a great deal of reading is often required, it ensures that a full understanding of the courts’ requirements is available.  Most recently, in relation to expert evidence, where the Law Commission recommended changes to the law that the government was not willing to introduce by statute, the Criminal Procedure Rules Committee has introduced new rule 33 to address the issues identified. Linked to the Practice Direction 33, this has enabled all the issues raised by the Law Commission to be dealt with. The Leveson Report on efficiency in the Criminal Justice System has recommended further changes to the Criminal Procedure Rules to bring the recommendations of that report into effect.”

— Anthony Edwards is a Senior Partner of TV Edwards and a duty solicitor. He is the author of Blackstone’s Magistrates’ Court Handbook 2015.

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“The most important advance is probably the much greater availability of tools to understand that firstly, IP alone is not an innovation policy, and secondly, IP rules and standards must be customized to the needs of each region or country, a process I have called calibration.  Taking into account available resources, the strengths and weaknesses of the local industrial base, higher education options, and several other factors, including what one might call cultural aspects, each government must tailor IP rules as part of a broader picture to achieve better domestic innovation and access outcomes.

“The most important advance is probably the much greater availability of tools to understand that firstly, IP alone is not an innovation policy”

The aim is not just to comply with international obligations such as those contained in the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. This led many countries to re-implement TRIPS in a variety of ways, using the so-called flexibilities contained in the Agreement. Multinational enterprises prefer a more harmonized environment, partly because it facilitates and reduces the costs of expanding business to new markets. They have not been happy about the increasing diversity in IP rules resulting from the ongoing calibration process and have tried to limit the use of flexibilities, particularly through trade agreements such as Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Here, again, a proper balance must be found.”

— Daniel Gervais is Professor of Law, Director of the Intellectual Property Program, Vanderbilt University Law School and author of Intellectual Property, Trade and Development.

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“Two cases, loosely related to religion and decided in different jurisdictions, present interpretations that fail to grasp crucial societal developments. In Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the contraceptive mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because it substantially burdens the religious beliefs of the three closely held corporations. Beyond the fantastic—in a literal sense—interpretation that for-profit corporations can exercise religion, the judgment has important implications for employees’ reproductive, health, and privacy rights. In SAS v. France, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) held that French legislation that imposes a blanket ban on full-faced veils did not amount to a violation of religious freedom or privacy rights.

“One hopes that in the future courts will grasp that the ‘tyranny of the majority’ has reconstructed itself in the ‘tyranny of the powerful.’”

Although the ban may result in curtailing women’s movements and confining them to their homes to avoid criminal sanctions, the ECtHR recognised France’s interference as a legitimate and proportionate one aimed at safeguarding the conditions of ‘living together’. On initial consideration, the two judgments result in opposing outcomes: SCOTUS sided with the (corporate) minority against the government of the United States, whereas the ECtHR sided with the majority represented by the French state against a (intersectional) minority. In a forthcoming article written with Stacy Cammarano, we are suggesting that the two cases are similar insofar as they prioritize the interests of the societally powerful and exacerbate the vulnerability of the vulnerable. One hopes that, in the future, courts will grasp that the ‘tyranny of the majority’ has reconstructed itself in the ‘tyranny of the powerful’ (be that a majority or a minority) and that such acknowledgment will inform their jurisprudential outcomes.

— Ioana Cismas, Lecturer in Law at University of Stirling and author of Religious Actors and International Law.

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“The most important development in recent years is, perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, the ‘return to normality.’ What do I mean by that? A decade ago, and particularly one-and-a-half decades ago, an observer of international investment law could be struck by its seemingly unique aspects.

For instance, the open offer of arbitration without privity to non-State actors; decentralised nature of arbitration and its impact on inconsistency of arbitral pronouncements; vagueness of substantive obligations and its impact on predictability of their interpretation and application; breadth and depth of substantive obligations and sensitivity of issues that their application may touch upon; the nearly exclusive focus on development of law by international Tribunals, with correspondingly limited role for States; and finally the sense that, despite the formal reciprocity of engagements, it was not quite the ‘done thing’ in systemic terms to have claims against developed States or interpret rules as imposing responsibility beyond liability under domestic law of developed States.

“The most important development in recent years is, perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, the ‘return to normality.’”

Of course, I exaggerate and caricature often very thoughtful positions to make my point and few people would have held all of these views simultaneously–but it is still fair to say that there was a shared sense among practitioners, commentators, and critics that international investment law was in some way quite peculiar, even unique.”

— Martins Paparinskis is a lecturer at University College London and author of The International Minimum Standard and Fair and Equitable Treatment.

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“In pension law, the most significant case in the last year is IBM Holdings Ltd v Dalgleish. The liability judgment is [2014] EWHC 980 (Ch) and the remedies judgment is [2015] EWHC 389(Ch).  This is monster litigation generating two large judgments from Mr. Justice Warren in the last year.  The case involved IBM using its powers, under an occupational pension scheme, to close the scheme to future defined benefit accrual, which is a common step taken by employers over the past few years.  But in IBM’s case, this followed two other relatively recent changes to the pension scheme.  Having heard a lot of evidence, Mr. Justice Warren ruled in April 2014 that the changes were contrary to the implied duty of trust and confidence. In February, Mr. Justice Warren gave a further judgment on the consequences of that breach.

The Imperial Duty has long been known–the original case, applying the underlying employment law term, was in 1991.  But cases on the duty have been rare–and there seemed to be a growing trend to find it a ‘severe’ test, with recent case law holding against a breach, so the decision in this case has come as a bit of a jolt.

Warren confirmed much of the previous case law but still held against IBM.  The breach is very fact-specific and depended quite a bit on the finding that IBM had (in its previous communications and recent changes to benefits) engendered “reasonable expectations” in the affected employees that their benefits would not be changed for a period without a very good reason.  Further argument may still ensue in IBM and the employer looks likely to seek leave to appeal. This may be an extreme case that ultimately proves the rule.”

— David Pollard is a Partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP and author of The Law of Pension Trusts.

 Image Credit: “Once They Opened So Many Doors” by Viewminder. CC by 2.0 via Flickr.

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10 facts on China’s economy

China’s model of economic development has brought huge success to the country in the last few decades. Alongside its achievements, however, are various implications to uneven growth. For example, China’s nutrition transition displays changing diets that lean more toward unhealthy, less diversified diets. The economic inequalities and rural-urban disparities are also alarming, and environmental pollution together with food safety are raising concerns among Chinese consumers.

The following 10 facts paint a picture of China’s economic development, the opportunities for change, and efforts to address the country’s existing challenges. Currently the largest economy in the world, China must face its challenges with a new outlook that focuses on sustainable, inclusive, and durable growth to reach high-income status and avoid the middle income trap.

China is experiencing the triple burden of malnutrition—coexistence of hunger, undernutrition and overnutrition: Despite remarkable progress in reducing hunger, almost one fifth of the world’s hungry live in China (about 145 million), over 9 percent of children under 5 are stunted (about 89 million) and obesity is growing—over 27 percent of men and women were overweight and obese in 2013. The triple burden of malnutrition is costly. For example, overweight and obesity costs China US$7.4 billion a year, or 8 percent of its GDP in 2013.


China has a growing appetite for meat: Higher incomes, more urbanized, sedentary lifestyles have changed dietary habits in China. The nutrition transition shows a growing prominence of meat in Chinese diets—meat consumption increased more than ten fold from 1975 to 2012, from 7.3 to 71 metric tons of beef, chicken and pork. In 2012, China overtook the US as the largest global meat consumers, where more than a quarter of meat produced worldwide were consumed in China. China is the top global buyer of soybean meal (used for animal feed), and is estimated to have bought 54 million tons of soymeal in 2014.


Guomao by Xiaozhuli. CC BY-NC 2.0 via flickr


The Chinese food value chain is growing longer, with less participants: The rice value chain is an example of the China’s modernizing value chains that are becoming geographically longer but involves less participants—farm equipment holdings doubled between 2004 and 2009, and rice mills are consolidating and modernizing. Mechanization is transforming the agriculture sector with the emergence of private mechanized service providers, such as Combine Service Enterprises (CSEs). These farmer companies are replacing expensive labor with machinery, assisting farmers with land preparation and harvesting services at competitive prices. For example, a cluster of CSEs has developed in the Jiangsu Province that travel inter-regionally to harvest and thresh rice.


China is the world’s largest producer, and importer of rice: While China is expected to produce 141 million tons of rice in 2014, making it the top global rice producer, it is also the biggest importer of rice—in 2013, rice imports were estimated to increase to 3 million metric tons, almost 30 percent higher than the previous year. High labor costs (that causes domestic rice price to increase) and concern for safety of domestically produced rice are among several factors that drive demand for imported rice.


China is Africa’s largest trading partner: China has had long-standing relations in Africa. In 2009, China surpassed the US as Africa’s largest trading partner. Agricultural trade has been growing between China and Africa. For example, China’s share of all Africa’s food exports increased from 1.4 (US$32 billion) to 3.2 percent (US$159 billion) from 2005 to 2012. China could further contribute to Africa’s development transformation through a south-south cooperation based on China’s successes in agriculture-led growth, evidence-based policy-making, and strong institutions. China’s agricultural technologies, for example, are highly transferable to Africa, suited to geo-economic and political landscape of a fellow developing country.


China is experiencing widening inequalities: China’s successes have been met with emerging challenges in inclusive and durable growth. Inequalities manifest in income, education, and healthcare. China’s Gini coefficient rose from 29 in 1981 up to 0.47 in 2012, displaying wide income inequality across the country. Rural-urban disparities exhibit these inequalities: Children under five and pregnant women in rural areas are more likely to be anemic than those in urban areas. Unfavorable farm prices and development strategies that privileged coastal or more developed provinces over inland or less developed provinces have exacerbated rural-urban disparities. Urban inequality has also risen due to massive retrenchment of workers of state-owned enterprises in the 1990s and a shift in government policy in favor of the state sector over private enterprises.


7 Seas – White Rice by Calgary Reviews. CC BY 2.0 via flickr


China plans to establish universal social security by 2020: China’s 12th Five Year Plan (2011-2015) is projected to increase public social expenditure, which is expected to rise faster than the country’s GDP in the coming years. China has many challenges to overcome—social protection in rural areas is low compared to urban settlements; percentage of unemployed receiving benefits is less than 10 percent, especially for migrants (lower than Brazil and Russia); and the pension system is segmented. Establishing a universal social security system that covers rural and urban residents are expected to include a combination of social insurance and social protection schemes.


Environmental problems and food safety are now among the top concerns of urban residents: Air pollution is an increasing concern—Beijing’s pollution index exceeded the safety threshold 19 out of 31 days in January of 2013. Water pollution equally alarming, as the Ministry of Environmental protection reported that less than half of water in China can be treated for safe drinking. In addition, the contamination of milk, the use of tainted meat and gutter oil in food production, and poisonous materials in fertilizers are increasing consumer concerns about food safety and driving the need for better food safety regulation.


Renewable energy is sparking interest among Chinese investors: As one of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, China aims to shift to a more sustainable development model that focuses on energy efficiency and environmental protection. It intends to create a “green, circular, low-carbon economy”. Currently, China is the largest global investor in renewable energy, with investments reaching US$ 67 billion in 2012. The nation’s first electric aircraft, the RX1E, is set to be mass produced for domestic markets, with promising prospects for European and US markets.


Climate change mitigation is in the works: China has agreed to cap emissions by 2025 in a carbon deal with the US. The 12th Five Year Plan includes climate change mitigation at various levels, including city level—in light with urbanization trends, low-carbon pilot cities will be built. 5 provinces and 8 cities will be built in the first stage, and 1 province and 28 cities will be built in the second stage.

Headline Image: Red Lantern by michmutters. CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Flickr

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Why does entomology matter?

What makes entomology the most interesting profession in the world? If you ask an entomologist what makes their profession–the study of insects and related arthropods–interesting and important, you will get an answer. A surprisingly relatable, impassioned, and compelling answer.

We sat down with delegates at Entomology 2014, the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America, to get to know the “bug crowd” a little better. The results have just about convinced us that entomology is the most interesting profession in the world, touching our lives in ways we had never guessed. Entomologists can be found working to improve our world in the realm of economics, environment, food supply, disease control, sociology, and education.

Image Credit: “Just two of us” by Donald Jusa. CC by 2.0 via Flickr.

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Winter, weather, and witchcraft

As I look out my office window in Salem, Massachusetts at the massive piles of snow left by blizzard after unrelenting blizzard during the worst winter in memory, I could not help but consider the thoughts a local would have had in 1692: “What have we done to incur God’s wrath?”

For New England Puritans living before the age of science, everything was a sign of God’s pleasure or displeasure, including extremes of weather. Harsh winters, summer droughts, early frosts that destroyed crops—all could be harbingers of God’s displeasure. Such phenomena could also be seen as evidence of witchcraft. After all, God had created Satan to test man’s faith and the evil one often acted through witches.

Take, for example, the case of poor Katherine Grady. In 1654 she was aboard a ship traveling to Virginia. As the vessel reached the coast, a tremendous tempest nearly caused the ship to sink. For some reason her fellow travelers were convinced Katherine was a witch who had created the storm to harm them. The captain agreed and hanged her for witchcraft. Presumably, had she been successful in sinking the ship, she would have used her broom to fly off to safety. Similarly, when Mary Bradbury was accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch hunt, a sailor blamed her for an incident eleven years earlier when his ship was “met with such a violent storm that we lost our main mast and rigging and lost fifteen horses” being transported as cargo.

The link between storms and witchcraft were so strong that observers of Salem and other cases often used the analogy. Reverend Cotton Mather described the Salem outbreak as an “inextricable storm” as well as “inexplicable storms from the Invisible world.” Cotton’s father, Reverend Increase Mather, had earlier noted in his Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences “that thunder storms are often caused by Satan, and sometimes by good angels. He also noted that Satan was reputed to be “the prince of the power of the air.”

Wolfgang Behringer and Emily Oster have both explored the links between witchcraft and weather in Europe. In Witches and Witch-Hunts, Behringer observed that witches were believed to use their powers to cause thunder and lightning as well as rain, hail, snow, and frost. Outbreaks of witchcraft in Europe tended to coincide with what we now know were the periods of the most extreme weather of the Little Ice Age, conditions that led to crop failure, which all too often resulted in famine and economic distress. Simply put, the more miserable people are, the more likely they are to look for a scapegoat to blame for their problems.

The Witch House, the home of witch trials Judge Jonathan Corwin, endures another severe Salem winter. Photo by Emerson W. Baker.

When I looked to see if these patterns held for America, my reward was learning that the Salem witch trials occurred during the absolute worst weather of the entire Little Ice Age. The 1680s and 1690s are now known as the Maunder Minimum, a time of strikingly cold winters and dry summers. The result was not just personal discomfort but increasing crop failures. Starting in the 1680s, many Massachusetts towns that once produced an agricultural surplus no longer did so. Once Massachusetts had exported foodstuffs, but by the 1690s it was a net importer of corn, wheat, and other cereal crops.

The parallels between Salem and the witch hunt in the Electorate of Trier, Germany from 1581-1595 seem particularly striking. Both occurred during extremes of weather that resulted in repeated crop failure. Furthermore, while witchcraft traditionally targeted the poor and women, Trier and Salem are notable for the wealthy who were accused–including prominent men. In Trier, Behringer notes that people believed the merchants, who profited by the increased profits from their grain stores, were in league with Satan. People testified the wealthy drove to their black masses in golden coaches. Former lord mayors and numerous parish priests and even higher members of the clergy were accused, including a canon of a cathedral chapter.

In Salem, the initial accusations were made against the “usual suspects” but soon spread up the social ladder to include political and spiritual leaders, including Lady Mary Phips, the wife of Governor Sir William Phips. Twenty-nine percent of those accused in Salem were ministers or their relatives, including Reverend George Burroughs, who was executed for witchcraft. In all, five ministers and four ministers’ wives were accused, including Maria Cotton, the daughter of Reverend John Cotton and wife of Increase Mather. Philip English, the wealthiest merchant in Salem. and his wife led the list of the wealthy who were accused. In both Trier and Salem, people took their anger and anxiety out on their leaders.

The 1662-1663 Hartford witch-hunt also occurred during extreme weather. The second largest outbreak in American history, resulting in four executions, began after a very snowy winter of 1661-62, followed by a “very great drought” in the early summer of 1662. Winter the next year produced deep snow cover from January through March. Then, the summer of 1663 saw the beginning of the wheat blight or blast that destroyed virtually the entire crop. Ann Cole was the key accuser in the trials, accusing her neighbor of causing her violent afflictions and claiming that there were many witches at work in the community. Interestingly, Increase Mather noted that the next year, when “Matthew Cole was killed with the lightning at Northampton, the demons which disturbed his sister, Ann Cole (forty miles distant), in Hartford, spoke of it, intimating their concurrence in that terrible accident.”

Given the record-breaking winter of 2014-2015, Americans can certainly sympathize with previous generations facing the depths of the Little Ice Age. Our severe winter has seriously harmed businesses, especially restaurants and retail establishments, and municipal budgets have been pushed into the red by blizzards of white. Recurring storms and school snow days have put people on edge, resulting in cabin fever and a notable increase in “snow rage.” And while we no longer scapegoat people with charges of witchcraft, woe be our meteorologists these days.

Image credit: Photo courtesy of Emerson “Tad” Baker.

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A Women’s History Month music playlist

In honor of the countless phenomenal women who have shaped the music industry, we’ve pulled together a playlist highlighting our favorite boldest and brightest female voices who have made a lasting impression in music.

“Piece of My Heart”, “Misery’n”, and “Ball and Chain” by Janis Joplin


“Whenever I listen to Janis Joplin, I’m always mesmerized by the gritty and unadulterated roughness that characterizes her music, allowing her to exude both toughness and vulnerability at the same time. It makes all of her music feel so raw and beautiful and authentic to me. Whereas many artists sound better on their studio-produced albums, I think Janis always excelled on her live tapings… she would feed off the audience’s energy and build slowly over the course of the song, finally reaching this growly, heartbreaking note by the end where you can’t help but think, ‘This lady just gets it.’ She was, and still is, truly timeless. It’s impossible to pick just one of her songs, so I’m picking my top three: ‘Piece of My Heart,’ ‘Misery’n,’ and ‘Ball and Chain.’


—Carrie Napolitano, Marketing Associate, Academic/Trade Marketing

“Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” by Shania Twain


“Self-explanatory.”


—Sarah Hansen, Marketing Coordinator

“Dreamlover” by Mariah Carey


“Mariah Carey is one of my favorite singers and her talent is undeniable. I picked this beautiful song because it reminds me of summertime in Long Island—where Carey and I both are from!”


—Mohamed Sesay, Marketing Assistant, Academic/Trade Marketing

“Brave” by Sara Bareilles


“Hands down, one of my all-time favorite songs by a female artist is ‘Brave’ by Sara Bareilles. I find Sara to be an incredible artist. She is true to who she is—her strength speaks clearly through all of her lyrics. And she is a New Yorker! I may or may not be listening to her most recent album as I type this.”


—Ryan Cury, Marketing Manager

“9-5″ by Dolly Parton


“I like how Dolly’s voice rises above the staccato typewriter polyrhythm, and I think the song straddles camp and sincerity in the same way Dolly herself does, anxiety giving way to honky-tonk.”


—Norman Hirschy, Editor

“I Will Always Love You” by Dolly Parton


“It’s a real shame that Whitney Houston’s 1992 cover version consistently overshadows the original 1974 recording by country legend Parton because the song has such a personal backstory for Parton. At the time, she was professionally breaking away from longtime musical partner Porter Wagoner (who had given her a start in the music business) and the song captures that sense of certainty and sadness that can come with a mutual break-up, whether it be romantic, platonic, or professional.”


—Taylor Coe, Marketing Coordinator, Oxford Dictionaries Online

“You Learn” by Alanis Morissette


“When I was growing up, my mom would always listen to Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill CD on her boom box, and now as an adult, I’m finding that our taste in music has more overlap than I ever would have imagined. Like mother, like son.”


—Brian Muir, Online Marketing Assistant

“I Am Woman” by Helen Reddy


“It might sound ‘cheesy’ by today’s standards, but I think this song was very important during the 1970s women’s movement. I like how direct it is, which is a quality that I feel more women should have!”


—Joy Mizan, Assistant Marketing Manager

“Fighter” by Christina Aguilera


“It’s an empowering song that reinforces the message that if someone hurts you or does you wrong, don’t let it bring you down, let it make you smarter and stronger.”


—Rachelle Letang, Online Marketing Coordinator

“Breathe (2 AM)” by Anna Nalick


“It’s a perfect song for when you’re feeling in a reflective mood and she has an amazing voice!”


–Alex Beaumont, Senior Marketing Executive

“The Trolley Song” by Judy Garland


“I saw Meet Me in St. Louis for the first time in eighth grade and this song still feels fun, light, and lovely to me. (There is only one Judy).”


–Estelle Hallick, Associate Publicist

“Better Things” by Sharon Jones & the Dap-King


“When I’m in need of a Girl Power anthem, I turn to this song. It’s a perfect, upbeat funk/soul song that’s all about saying one thing: I am an empowered woman and I have better things to do than cry about the past.”


—Lauren Hill, Events Coordinator, Publicity

“No Scrubs” by TLC


“This was my jam starting back in fourth grade. Now it’s a reminder of female empowerment and the understanding that I don’t need a man to know my worth.”


—Miki N. Onwudinjo, Junior Level Marketing Coordinator

Enjoy the full playlist!

Image Credit: “Dolly Parton – Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, TN (09/24/2011)” by Timothy Wildey. CC by NC 2.0 via Flickr.

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Unlock Oxford Law: The biggest challenges to law right now

What are the biggest challenges facing law right now? As part of our upcoming online event, Unlock Oxford Law, we asked some of our expert authors this very question. With constant changes and developments occurring across all the different areas of law, this is a subject that is very much up for debate. Read on to see what our authors said, and to see if you agree.

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“The biggest challenge facing data privacy law arises from the collision between the basic principles of such law and the fundamental logic of our ‘information age’. Whereas data privacy law is, to a large extent, concerned with the containment of information, the logic of the ‘information age’ fosters the production, dissemination, and (re-)utilization of unprecedented amounts of information across traditional organisational and contextual borders. Against such developments, data privacy law faces increasingly serious difficulties in gaining practical traction.

“As for governance of critical internet infrastructure (CII), the greatest regulatory challenge is to find workable mechanisms for enhancing the legitimacy of the current governance structures. This is particularly the case for the regime managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The challenge is especially pertinent in light of the Obama Administration’s recent announcement that it is prepared to give up the last legal vestiges of its oversight powers over the internet naming and numbering system, on the condition that ICANN and the rest of the ‘internet community’ can come up with appropriate replacement accountability mechanisms.”

“The biggest challenge facing data privacy law arises from the collision between the basic principles of such law and the fundamental logic of our ‘information age’.”

— Lee Bygrave is Professor in the Norwegian Research Centre for Computers and Law at the University of Oxford, and author of Internet Governance by Contract and Data Privacy Law: An International Perspective.

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“The greatest challenges at the door of international law by globalization are linked to widespread social inequality, destruction of natural resources, and displacements of population. Whether framed as resulting from the pressures of expanding markets, the side-effects of production and supply chains, or the changing forms and requirements of corporate capital, these are generally perceived as governance ‘gaps’, caused by non-legal phenomena beyond the control of the law. However, such gaps have emerged in the face of new (private) forms of sovereignty or authority, which command and structure the global economy without those corresponding channels of accountability or responsibility provided, in domestic contexts, by national regulation.

“Far from being impotent to regulate, private international law has largely participated in (or ‘co-produced’) the shifting divide between the public and the private spheres by providing emancipatory tools through which non-state actors may rise above local constraints. The field should now be expected to provide the vision and methods needed to make a meaningful assessment of the legitimacy of normative claims beyond the state, and to ensure that such claims are correlated to significant ‘extraterritorial’ duties, in relation to an array of individual rights and collective social or environmental concerns.”

“The greatest challenges at the door of international law by globalization are linked to widespread social inequality, destruction of natural resources, and displacements of population.”

—  Horatia Muir Watt is Professor at Sciences-Po Paris School of Law, and the co-editor of Private International Law and Global Governance.

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“The biggest challenge in the area of Sentencing is probably the sheer complexity of the law, which is in a constant state of flux. Part of the problem is legislation, which is a mess. Parliament enacts a criminal justice statute nearly every year, and this always affects sentencing. These provisions are rarely ‘stand-alone’. Instead, new sections are squashed into earlier statutes. Even worse, many of these changes are not brought into force until months or years later, or not at all.

“Parliament decided in 2000 to abolish the sentence of detention in a young offender institution, but this section has never been implemented, requiring every later statute to contain a ‘saving provision’ just in case that change ever happens. The recent decision of the Law Commission to press ahead with a project to codify all sentencing legislation in a single statute is very welcome.”

—  Martin Wasik is Professor of Criminal Justice at Keele University and author of A Practical Approach to Sentencing.

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“A cynical international lawyer would note that they have the luxury of choice in deciding what the greatest current challenge facing the field is: Is it ISIS and its horrendous crimes or the Assad regime and its repression? Is it the attempted secession of Crimea or the ensuing conflict in Ukraine, reportedly with Russian involvement? Is it the threat of terrorism or the US ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques, aka torture? Is it discrimination in its many intersectional forms or extreme poverty and lack of substantive equality?

“I would argue that while the world today is facing pressing old and new challenges, underpinning them all is the grand and ubiquitous struggle of international law to ensure accountability in an anarchic system. In the absence of an ultimate enforcer, the strength of international law rests on legitimate authority. A second overarching struggle of international law is thus that of ensuring its legitimacy in a context which is simultaneously globalized and localized, universalized and fragmented, secular and religious.

“I would argue that while the world today is facing pressing old and new challenges, underpinning them all is the grand and ubiquitous struggle of international law to ensure accountability in an anarchic system.”

“These challenges are intimately interlinked, because the extent and manner in which international law will address ISIS, the Assad regime, Crimea, Ukraine and Putin’s Russia, terrorism and the use of torture in counter-terrorism, discrimination and poverty, will ultimately affect its legitimacy. Conversely, a legitimate international law will facilitate accountability on some of these matters and others to come. hope, even for a cynical international lawyer may come from internalizing that, to paraphrase Alexander Wendt, anarchy is what state and other actors make of it.”

—  Ioana Cismas, Lecturer in Law at University of Stirling and author of Religious Actors and International Law.

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“Some of the most difficult questions arising within my field of law right now concerns whether, in the first place, the courts can take jurisdiction in the cases that come before them. In international and domestic courts alike, commentators see a push towards more and more types of case being brought before the courts: cases involving acts having taken place far away from the jurisdiction in which the claim is brought, cases involving acts having taken place a long time ago. Both in the domestic and the international courts, States find that they are being held responsible for the actions of their agents even when those state agents act beyond the borders of the State, and that the sins of the past come back to haunt them both before domestic and international courts.

“In relation to both of those types of case, however, we are increasingly finding that law (both domestic and international) possesses the toolkit to deal with these difficult questions. Article 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides that the State Members ‘shall secure to everyone within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms defined in Section I of this Convention’. A lot rides on what is understood in that connection by ‘jurisdiction’. In that regard, we are increasingly realizing that traditional concepts of jurisdiction from private international law go very far in providing us with a coherent framework within which to conceptualize extraterritorial jurisdiction.”

—  Eirik Bjorge, is the Shaw Foundation Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College, University of Oxford, and author of The Evolutionary Interpretation of Treaties.

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Keep an eye out for more exclusive insights from Oxford law’s expert authors, and go to the Unlock Oxford Law page to discover more online resources..

Featured image credit: ‘Keys’ by Patrick McFall. CC-by-2.0 via Flickr.

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X-rays: a century of discovery, diffraction, and dynamical theory

The International Year of Light aims to raise global awareness about how light-based technologies can promote sustainable development and provide solutions to global challenges in energy, education, agriculture, and health. To celebrate this special year over the course of March, three of our authors will write about light-based technologies and their importance to us. This week, André Authier discusses the discovery and development of X-rays.

The International Year of Light provides a good opportunity to revisit the early studies on the optical properties of X-rays. X-rays were discovered by W. C. Röntgen on the evening of 8 November 1895 while he was redoing some of Hertz’s experiments on cathode rays. By the end of the year, even before informing the world of his discovery, he had observed the basic properties of X-rays: like light, they propagate as straight lines and are diffused by turbid media, but are not deflected by a prism, nor refracted or reflected by matter; they pass through bodies, as shown by the radiograph of his wife’s hand. Medical applications were proposed in France and England as early as the end of January 1896.

These rays were mysterious indeed. Röntgen himself thought X-rays might be longitudinal waves, but E. Wiechert in Germany (1896) and G. G. Stokes in England (1896) suggested they were pulses of electromagnetic radiation, and J. J. Thomson, at the Cavendish in Cambridge, expressed the amplitude of these pulses when scattered by an electron (1898).

The first experimental proof of the wave nature of X-rays was given by C. G. Barkla in Liverpool, who showed that they are polarized (1905). W. H. Bragg at the University of Adelaide, Australia, however, thought differently. He was convinced that X-rays were corpuscular and were neutral pairs made of one a-particle and one b-particle (1907). In Germany, A. Sommerfeld was sure of the wave nature of X-rays and calculated their diffraction by a slit (1900; 1912), while W. Wien and J. Stark thought they were light quanta (1907); J. Stark even thought they were material bodies (1909).

“Hand X-ray” by Trace Meek. CC by 2.0 via Flickr.

The definite proof of the wave nature of X-rays was provided on 21 April 1912 by a seminal experiment conducted by W. Friedrich, Sommerfeld’s assistant, P. Knipping, a PhD student of Röntgen, and M. Laue, privatdozent in Sommerfeld’s group, all of whom observed diffraction spots due to the ‘interferences of X-rays taking place in a copper sulfate pentahydrate crystal as a result of the reticular structure of the crystal’. The experiment had been conceived by Laue after a discussion with P. P. Ewald relative to the latter’s thesis (January 1912). The subject of that thesis, proposed by Sommerfeld, was ‘to find the optical properties of an anisotropic arrangement of isotropic resonators’. It was a theory of dispersion in a periodic medium, while Planck’s and Lorentz’s theories held in amorphous media. Ewald’s treatment involved complicated mathematics implying transforming sums into integrals, which was not an easy task when Fourier transforms were not available. Ewald therefore asked for the advice of a theoretician, Laue. Instead of giving an answer, Laue asked what the distance was between resonators. When told that they were of the order of 1/1000 of the wavelength of visible light and that Ewald’s theory was also valid for very short wavelengths, Laue immediately ‘anticipated the occurrence of interference phenomena with X-rays’. His intuition was rewarded by the outstanding success of the experiment of 21 April 2012, which opened the prodigiously rich field of X-ray crystallography. The corpuscular nature of X-rays was shown by Compton (1923) when observing inelastic scattering; and the dual nature of light and X-rays was, of course, interpreted by de Broglie’s wave mechanics (1924).

Laue calculated the intensity of the X-rays diffracted by the crystal, neglecting the interaction between waves scattered by successive resonators. This is the so-called geometrical or kinematical theory, which is valid only for very small or highly imperfect crystals and is still used in crystal structure determinations. Laue, however, had made a mistake because he thought that the interferences were due to the characteristic radiation from the X-ray tube, discovered by Barkla in 1909. W. H. Bragg’s son, W. L. Bragg, corrected this, showing in November 1912 that the interferences were between waves from the continuous background of the tube, being reflected by sets of equally spaced lattice planes in the crystal at specific angles. He and his father were the pioneers of X-ray crystal structure determinations.

As for Ewald, when he heard the account of Laue’s experiment some time in June 1912, he immediately made a connection between the formation of the Laue diffraction spots and his theory, which he interpreted geometrically by means of the reciprocal lattice. Ewald then extended his theory to the X-ray case (1916-1917). Since it is based on the resolution of Maxwell’s equations in a medium with a periodic arrangement of resonators, he called it a “Dynamical Theory” in reference to Maxwell himself, who had explained that his own theory was ‘a dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field’ (1865).

The interaction of X-rays with matter is very weak and explains why its index of refraction is very close to 1 (it differs from 1 by a quantity of the order of 10-5) and why Röntgen did not observe any refraction. Ewald calculated the index of refraction and showed that, due to refraction, Bragg’s reflections are shifted by a small angle. This shift was first measured in Sweden in M. Siegbahn’s laboratory (1919-1920). The first direct measurement of the index of refraction of X-rays by matter was only made later by A. Larsson, M. Siegbahn, and I. Waller using a glass prism (1924). Despite the very small reflectivity of X-rays, it has been possible to build X-ray microscopes using grazing incidence reflective optics (Kirkpatrick and Baez 1948), Fresnel zone plates (Baez 1952), Bragg-Fresnel lenses (Aristov et al. 1986), or refractive lenses (Snigirev et al. 1996) to focus the X-rays. They are used nowadays for high resolution non-destructive imaging with synchrotron coherent radiation.

The dynamical theory of X-ray diffraction predicts that when the diffracting crystals are highly perfect, such as silicon or germanium, the diffraction lines are very narrow. This property has been made use of to produce X-ray interferometers (U. Bonse and M. Hart, 1965), and a big variety of optical devices for focusing synchrotron radiation.

Image Credit: “Teeth X-ray” by Justin Mclean. CC by NC 2.0 via Flickr.

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How much do you know about Wuthering Heights? [quiz]

Centuries after its 1847 publication, Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë’s breathtaking literary classic, remains a seminal text to scholars, students, and readers around the world. Though best known for its depiction of romance between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, it is also largely multidimensional, grappling with themes such as religious hypocrisy, the precariousness of social class, and the collision of nature and culture. But how much do you know about this famous work of English literature?

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Image Credit: “Wuthering Heights” by Robert McGinnis/Tom Simpson. CC by NC-ND 2.0 via Flickr.

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Severed heads on the Elizabethan stage

On Tower Hill, 25 February 1601, Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, was beheaded with three blows of an axe before some 150 spectators. The headsman held the head up for the spectators to see. He called out, “God save the Queen.” This beheading and others of that time color an important question for Shakespeare scholars. Severed heads populate many Elizabethan period plays. What objects represented those heads on stage? Elizabethan acting companies did, as we know from the records of theatre owner Philip Henslowe, employ realistic stage properties. But all stage performances require audience imagination. So might the heads have been pumpkins or were they in fact realistic representations of the actors themselves?

As Essex illustrates, many spectators at Elizabethan plays had seen actual severed heads. Beheadings were surprisingly frequent. They followed when a person was convicted of treason, a crime quite broadly defined back then. Like Essex, nobles and royals usually were executed by beheading. Those executions were witnessed only by courtiers and nobles. But commoners, who often patronized plays vicariously to experience the lives of their betters, surely expected to see something akin to what the spectators saw at Essex’s execution.

A more gruesome fate awaited commoners convicted of treason. They usually were hung until almost unconscious, then were removed and sliced open. While they writhed, their entrails were extracted and fed to a fire. Their private members and heads were cut off, and their bodies quartered. The heads probably were, as they were in later generations, held up for spectators to see. These executions were public spectacles. Rodrigo Lopez, the Queen’s physician accused of conspiring to poison her, was executed in this fashion in 1594 amidst a large crowd’s jeering derision. The cut-off heads were later set on pikes and placed atop the Southwark gate of London Bridge, with more than thirty reported there in 1598.

For an audience accustomed to seeing real severed heads, the acting company surely did not trot out the same tired object to represent all four heads.

Many Elizabethan plays contain correspondingly lurid episodes. The bloody mayhem in Shakespeare’s own Titus Andronicus is difficult to track. The second part of his Henry VI features no fewer than four severed heads. The Duke of Suffolk is beheaded by pirates. Jack Cade and his know-nothing rebels behead Lord Saye primarily because he has promoted literacy. For good measure, they also behead Saye’s son-in-law, Sir James Crowmer. The heads of Saye and Crowmer are mounted on poles and made to kiss each other. Ultimately, Cade’s own head is severed and taken to the King.

The multiplicity of severed heads in 2 Henry VI suggests that the heads shown on stage actually resembled those of the actors in character. For an audience accustomed to seeing real severed heads, the acting company surely did not trot out the same tired object to represent all four heads. They couldn’t in the case of Saye and Crowmer, whose heads must appear on stage at the same time. And Queen Margaret grieves over the head of her deceased lover, Suffolk, but the head isn’t orally identified. The audience must have been puzzled if she were grieving over some unrecognisable object.

Portrait of Edward Alleyn, British actor, 1626. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The same conclusion follows from many more plays. The living head of Macbeth occupies most of that character’s eponymous play. When, at the end, Macduff brings out the “usurper’s cursèd head,” did he bring out an unidentifiable object? Lady Jane Grey is beheaded at the end of Thomas Dekker’s Sir Thomas Wyatt and the headman enters “with Jane’s head.” Was it the same object used to represent male heads? In the lost play Tamar Cham, the severed heads of three rebellious lords were brought on sequentially, all three on stage at the scene’s end. Were they three indistinguishable objects?

These questions reach an apex when we consider George Peele’s 1588 play, The Battle of Alcazar. The villain-hero of Alcazar is Mahamet. The play was performed in the 1590s by the Lord Admiral’s Company. They had in storage in 1599, according to Henslowe’s records, an “old Mahamet’s head.” The head was an old one, probably, not because Mahamet was elderly, but because it had been replaced by a new one. The role of Mahamet was usually performed by the famous Lord Admiral’s actor, Edward Alleyn, but in 1599 he had temporarily retired from acting. The old head, we may deduce, resembled that of Alleyn in the character of Mahamet. Its replacement resembled that of a new actor performing the same role.

In Alcazar, Peele employs a foreshadowing device separate from the play’s main action. Four of the play’s leading characters, Mahamet among them, enter to witness a pageant. All four will be dead at the end. The figure of Death presents the pageant, which culminates when a Fury enters bearing “dead men’s heads in dishes.” A coup de théâtre indeed if the heads resembled those of the actors performing the roles of their soon-to-be-deceased characters. The actors in character were looking at their own heads.

Image Credit: “London Bridge (1616)” by Claes Van Visscher. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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The achievements of the European Court of Justice in post-war Europe

The European Union’s legal system was created, so the story goes, by two astonishing decisions of the European Court of Justice (the ‘ECJ’) in the early 1960s. In the Van Gend en Loos decision of 1963, the European Court declared the ‘direct effect’ of European law, insisting that European law created rights for private individuals that national courts must protect. In the Costa decision of 1964, the European Court followed up by declaring the ‘supremacy’ of European law, whereby all conflicts between European and national law must be resolved in favour of the application of the European law obligation. These two decisions are the universally acknowledged dual foundation stones of today’s remarkable European legal order, that brought European Community law into the national courts for the benefit of private individuals.

Indeed, in the last couple of years the fiftieth anniversaries of these two decisions have been the occasion for many celebrations and commemorations — including a huge event at the European Court of Justice itself in 2013 — in acknowledgment of the leadership displayed by a tiny group of lawyers and judges at the European Court in 1963 and 1964.

In 1965, however, when Robert Lecourt, French ECJ judge and (we now know) perhaps the main author of these decisions, wrote to explain the Court’s recent judgments in the French journal France-Forum to, he referred not to two, but instead to three of the Court’s recent decisions. The third decision took place on 13 November 1964, in the Court’s Dairy Products decision. That decision ostensibly related to barriers to trade in milk and cheeses, but, more significantly, the Court had used the occasion to declare that the European legal order completely ruled out any use by its member states of the ‘self-help’ enforcement mechanisms usually so important to the enforcement of international law. Lecourt, in fact, not only mentioned this third decision but linked it logically to the other two more famous decisions of the European Court. The European legal order, he explained, required direct effect (as in Van Gend) and supremacy (as in Costa) because the member states had renounced the power to enforce obligations through self-help retaliatory action (as the ECJ had explained in Dairy Products). The new European legal system was not just a mechanism for empowering private individuals and national courts: it was expected to act in place of inter-state retaliation.

European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg by Cédric Puisney. CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Understanding the EU’s legal system as using enforcement by national courts to break with enforcement by threats of inter-state retaliation is therefore compatible with the understanding of perhaps that system’s most important author. It has other advantages too — it allows the development of the European legal order to be linked with wider trends in European politics and society.

Take, for example, the growth of the welfare state in many European countries after the Second World War. One of the distinctive features of the new member states of the then European Economic Community was their political commitment to unemployment insurance, public housing, and many other redistributive and risk-sharing policies. At first sight, these policies might appear to have little to do with the doctrinal claims of the European Court of Justice. However, threats of inter-state retaliation often occur in international trade regimes when state policy-makers cannot accept the obligations being imposed by international tribunals such as the dispute settlement institutions of the World Trade Organization. The reason, in turn, that state policy-makers cannot easily accept these obligations is that they threaten to impose severe adjustments on groups in their domestic societies. So the acceptance of a much more automatic and intrusive system of treaty enforcement — such as that created by the European Court of Justice from the early 1960s — can be facilitated where participating member states provide their businesses and citizens with generous domestic welfare systems — such as those created by Germany, France, and the other integrating states of postwar Europe. In this way, and indeed others, the doctrines of the European legal order created by a small group of judges and lawyers in the early 1960s were highly compatible with the political commitments and economic changes experienced across European democracies after 1945.

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