Journal of Law and Society最新文献

It is rare for children to be included in law reform, even regarding laws that concern them. At a time when surrogacy law is being debated both domestically and globally, this article presents data from the Children's Voices in Surrogacy Law project, offering unique insights into children's lived experiences of surrogacy through artwork. It is argued that the artwork's themes support recent recommendations made by the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission and rebut some concerns raised by their critics. Drawing on legal consciousness studies, the article argues that engaging with children through artwork is an effective way to understand how law shapes children's everyday lives. It presents an innovative participatory method for exploring children's perceptions and experiences of law, drawing on visual methodologies, and reflects on the value and limitations of such a method.

Under-explored in socio-legal discussions of the legal and regulatory structures focused on harm reduction in gambling, alcohol consumption, and other liberalized consumer activities are the specific ways in which these are interpreted and deployed by front-line staff in the context of their existing forms of labour and employment pressures. Based on interviews with current and former employees of betting shops in the United Kingdom, and analysis of the legal and regulatory structures that shape the post-Gambling Act betting shop, we propose a new reading of the concept of ‘regulatory labour’ to understand these tensions. Our analysis shows the urgent need to look beyond current depictions of neoliberal deregulation; regulatory frameworks focused on harm reduction themselves generate new forms of harm, undermining existing forms of relational labour and enabling operators to offload the risks of gambling harm onto their lowest-paid employees while also expanding their powers of surveillance over both staff and customers.

Personal insolvency law offers a vital safety net for individuals in financial difficulty. Nonetheless, disparities arise in access to the benefits of debt relief offered by insolvency law. In a context of geographical inequality and local gaps in access to justice, our original empirical study explores the substantial variation in personal insolvency rates across English local authority districts (LADs) – both in terms of total personal insolvencies, and of the proportion of insolvencies composed of longer-term, expensive repayment plans (individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs)) compared to rapid debt discharge procedures (bankruptcy and debt relief orders). Our model explains much of the local variation in total insolvencies and finds higher insolvency rates in LADs with lower median income levels. Crucially, however, economic variables do not explain local variation in the proportion of insolvencies composed of IVAs. Despite IVAs being designed for higher-income ‘can pay’ debtors, the IVA proportion is higher in LADs with lower median income levels. These findings imply that IVAs are not ‘rationally sorted’ based on economic conditions and add important evidence to the case for reforming personal insolvency law to address apparent inefficiencies and unfairness.

This study explores why social movement actors employ legal tactics, focusing on 11 years of opposition to a mining project in Kallak/Gállok in northern Sweden. Previous research has highlighted contextual opportunities and constraints, resources, and traditions as explanations for the use of legal tactics. Using frame analysis, the study examines how movement actors interpret the factors that shape their tactical choices. The findings suggest that several explanations often interrelated in influencing specific choices, underscoring the importance of exploring movement actors’ motivations holistically. The movement's internal multi-organizational field emerged as a novel explanatory factor. Actors adapted to the tactics and roles of others in the movement, resulting in a division of labour where some specialized in public protest and others in legal mobilization. Future research should attend to movement actors’ situational interpretations and internal movement dynamics when seeking to understand the use of legal mobilization in social movements.

This article examines how the interests of farm animals were constructed as being part of the public interest in the drafting of Finland's new Animal Welfare Act (693/2023). While the public interest typically refers to the well-being of the entire political community, traditionally centred around human concerns, animal welfare legislation suggests that animal interests may also be included in some way. In this study, we analysed stakeholder statements submitted during the legislative consultation process, using the framework of epistemic governance. Four distinctive discourses were identified: economy and competitiveness, oppression, legality, and research-based decision making. Each discourse presents a different conception of the social world and the place of animals within the political community. These discourses reveal how farm animal interests are represented within legislative debates and how they align with differing notions of the public interest.

This article critically examines how brand names, slogans, and logos registered as United Kingdom (UK) trade marks for weight management solutions, health-boosting supplements, and cosmetics are used in marketing communications to influence consumer behaviour. The analysis addresses concerns that these trade signs potentially mislead consumers or negatively impact their body image perception through a comprehensive examination of consumer protection legislation, advertising rules, and the trade mark law provisions dealing with marketing communications in the UK. The article argues that there are compelling reasons why trade mark law should align with advertising regulations when evaluating the registrability of potentially deceptive, offensive, or illegal trade marks for health and beauty products. Otherwise, by preserving the status quo, which allows the registration of promotional content that exploits body image insecurities, trade mark law risks becoming part of the problem rather than a potential remedy against harmful body image rhetoric.

Accountability mechanisms are often perceived as the Achilles’ heel of human rights practice. As classic human rights institutions rarely provide adequate guarantees of accountability, justice actors are increasingly turning to alternative spaces to advance accountability. This is, for example, the case in the Syrian context, where various justice actors are engaging in judicial and non-judicial initiatives. These include extraterritorial jurisdiction cases, often before ordinary courts at the sub-national level, as well as informal initiatives. An empirical analysis of two cases, the al-Khatib and Dabbagh trials, shows that these spaces cannot replace the accountability provided by domestic or international proceedings. However, the analysis also underlines these spaces’ contribution to the struggle for thick accountability – that is, an accountability outcome that is perceived as meaningful by those involved. We propose the notion of an accountability web as a lens for the theorization of often overlooked spaces and processes for seeking accountability.

This article advances an explanatory model of the academic and policy debate on artificial intelligence (AI) systems as legal persons over time. It argues that the scientific and regulatory debate on such systems as legal persons undergoes periods of relative stability, interrupted by rapid paradigm shifts. Three interrelated factors primarily influence these oscillations: (1) competing theories of legal personhood (clustered versus singularist); (2) the capability, embodiment, and commercial reach of AI technology; and (3) AI's integration within socio-digital institutions. Two additional forces modulate the depth and durability of any shift: (4) the overlap and internal consistency of cross‑domain legal regimes (data protection, agency, liability, and cybersecurity); and (5) the body of judicial precedents (or their scarcity) on extending personhood. Specific convergences of these factors create pressure for status reconsideration; absent them, equilibrium returns. The article concludes by assessing the short-, mid-, and long‑term prospects, highlighting conditional pathways rather than deterministic trajectories.