This article explores the intersection of dark patterns — deceptive design practices that manipulate user behavior—with children’s digital experiences, examining how universal cognitive vulnerabilities intersect with context-specific susceptibilities. After reviewing scholarship on dark patterns and synthesizing fragmented empirical research on children’s encounters with manipulative design, the article applies Mathur, Mayer, and Kshirsagar’s (2021) normative framework to assess harms across individual welfare, collective welfare, regulatory objectives, and autonomy in children’s contexts. Drawing on vulnerability theory, children’s rights instruments, and childhood studies, it situates children within this taxonomy to clarify how developmental characteristics and relational dependencies shape exposure to manipulation in digital environments. Children constitute a particularly revealing analytical lens for understanding digital vulnerability: while developmental characteristics heighten their exposure to manipulation, dark patterns exploit cognitive features universally shared. By engaging both particularist and universalist accounts, the article argues that protective measures developed with children in mind may establish baseline standards addressing digital vulnerability more broadly.
تأتي هذه الدراسة في ظل تصاعد دعوات كثيرة من أجل إصدار قانون جديد لتنظيم الإدارة المحلية في مصر، نظرًا لأن القانون الحالي ( قانون رقم 43 لسنة 1979) لم يعد مواكباً لما جاء بالدستور الجديد ( دستور 2014 ) من صلاحيات جديدة ودعم صريح للامركزية و ترسيخ لديمقراطيتها و تعزيز لصلاحياتها .و تستعرض هذه الدراسة تاريخ الإدارة المحلية في مصر، مع التركيز على انتخابات المجالس المحلية خلال فترة حكم الرئيس الأسبق حسني مبارك ، وهي فترة غنية بالتفاعلات السياسية وشهدت عدة استحقاقات انتخابية محلية وقرارات بشأنها لم تتناولها دراسات سابقة بشكل كافٍ ، وقد استخدمت الدراسة المدخل التاريخي وذلك سعياً لحصر السلبيات والإستفادة منها وكذا الوقوف على مواضع القوة فى تجربة " إدارة المحليات " فى مصر بشكلها الحديث ومفهومها المعاصر عبر قرابة قرن كامل من الزمان ، سعيا للوصول إلى نتائج علمية يمكن أن نستقرأ منها توصيات فاعلة فى حالات مماثلة للدول النامية أو حديثة العهد بالتعددية السياسية والحريات والديمقراطية فى إدارة الأقاليم ..
The prospect of artificial superintelligence -- AI agents that can generally outperform humans in cognitive tasks and economically valuable activities -- will transform the legal order as we know it. Operating autonomously or under only limited human oversight, AI agents will assume a growing range of roles in the legal system. First, in making consequential decisions and taking real-world actions, AI agents will become de facto subjects of law. Second, to cooperate and compete with other actors (human or non-human), AI agents will harness conventional legal instruments and institutions such as contracts and courts, becoming consumers of law. Third, to the extent AI agents perform the functions of writing, interpreting, and administering law, they will become producers and enforcers of law. These developments, whenever they ultimately occur, will call into question fundamental assumptions in legal theory and doctrine, especially to the extent they ground the legitimacy of legal institutions in their human origins. Attempts to align AI agents with extant human law will also face new challenges as AI agents will not only be a primary target of law, but a core user of law and contributor to law. To contend with the advent of superintelligence, lawmakers -- new and old -- will need to be clear-eyed, recognizing both the opportunity to shape legal institutions as society braces for superintelligence and the reality that, in the longer run, this may be a joint human-AI endeavor.
Dalal Alrajeh, Vesna Nowack, Patrick Benjamin
et al.
Investigating serious crimes is inherently complex and resource-constrained. Law enforcement agencies (LEAs) grapple with overwhelming volumes of offender and incident data, making effective suspect identification difficult. Although machine learning (ML)-enabled systems have been explored to support LEAs, several have failed in practice. This highlights the need to align system behavior with stakeholder goals early in development, motivating the use of Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE). This paper reports our experience applying the GORE framework KAOS to designing an ML-enabled system for identifying suspects in online child sexual abuse. We describe how KAOS supported early requirements elaboration, including goal refinement, object modeling, agent assignment, and operationalization. A key finding is the central role of data elicitation: data requirements constrain refinement choices and candidate agents while influencing how goals are linked, operationalized, and satisfied. Conversely, goal elaboration and agent assignment shape data quality expectations and collection needs. Our experience highlights the iterative, bidirectional dependencies between goals, data, and ML performance. We contribute a reference model for integrating GORE with data-driven system development, and identify gaps in KAOS, particularly the need for explicit support for data elicitation and quality management. These insights inform future extensions of KAOS and, more broadly, the application of formal GORE methods to ML-enabled systems for high-stakes societal contexts.
Wild animals need special attention because of their significance from the environmental,ecological, genetic, scientific, recreational, cultural, educational, social and economic points ofview. There are numerous international instruments and documents in the field of internationalwildlife law (IWL). Among them, there are three well-known instruments namely the Ramsar,Bonn, and CITES Conventions. In the present piece, these Conventions are studied comparativelyin order to find out their approaches toward the protection of wildlife. In doing so, the author,first and foremost, provides a brief overview of these Conventions. Thereafter, their approachestoward wildlife protection would be analyzed. The methodological approach of this researchincludes analysis of wildlife protection through descriptive and normative explanation of theRamsar, Bonn, and CITES Conventions. According to the findings of this study, reasonable andwise use of wetlands (the approach of the Ramsar Convention), special attention to migratorybirds (the approach of the Bonn Convention), and the regulation of international wildlifetrade (the approach of CITES) are three main and prevalent approaches in these instruments.Furthermore, it appears that CITES has played a more important and effective role in IWL andprotection of wildlife. It is due to the fact that this Convention has more operative tools and itsState Parties have undertaken more extensive and practical obligations.
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into telecommunications infrastructure introduces novel risks, such as algorithmic bias and unpredictable system behavior, that fall outside the scope of traditional cybersecurity and data protection frameworks. This paper introduces a precise definition and a detailed typology of telecommunications AI incidents, establishing them as a distinct category of risk that extends beyond conventional cybersecurity and data protection breaches. It argues for their recognition as a distinct regulatory concern. Using India as a case study for jurisdictions that lack a horizontal AI law, the paper analyzes the country's key digital regulations. The analysis reveals that India's existing legal instruments, including the Telecommunications Act, 2023, the CERT-In Rules, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, focus on cybersecurity and data breaches, creating a significant regulatory gap for AI-specific operational incidents, such as performance degradation and algorithmic bias. The paper also examines structural barriers to disclosure and the limitations of existing AI incident repositories. Based on these findings, the paper proposes targeted policy recommendations centered on integrating AI incident reporting into India's existing telecom governance. Key proposals include mandating reporting for high-risk AI failures, designating an existing government body as a nodal agency to manage incident data, and developing standardized reporting frameworks. These recommendations aim to enhance regulatory clarity and strengthen long-term resilience, offering a pragmatic and replicable blueprint for other nations seeking to govern AI risks within their existing sectoral frameworks.
Algorithmic decision-making and similar types of artificial intelligence (AI) may lead to improvements in all sectors of society, but can also have discriminatory effects. While current non-discrimination law offers people some protection, algorithmic decision-making presents the law with several challenges. For instance, algorithms can generate new categories of people based on seemingly innocuous characteristics, such as web browser preference or apartment number, or more complicated categories combining many data points. Such new types of differentiation could evade non-discrimination law, as browser type and house number are not protected characteristics, but such differentiation could still be unfair, for instance if it reinforces social inequality. This paper explores which system of non-discrimination law can best be applied to algorithmic decision-making, considering that algorithms can differentiate on the basis of characteristics that do not correlate with protected grounds of discrimination such as ethnicity or gender. The paper analyses the current loopholes in the protection offered by non-discrimination law and explores the best way for lawmakers to approach algorithmic differentiation. While we focus on Europe, the conceptual and theoretical focus of the paper can make it useful for scholars and policymakers from other regions too, as they encounter similar problems with algorithmic decision-making.
In this work, we consider technologies, innovations and intellectual property rights. In the context of modern development of all spheres of human life, the concepts of «technology», «innovation» and «innovative technologies» are an integral aspect of the present. They play an important and key role in the competitiveness of not only individual enterprises and organizations, but also in law and economics in general, since innovative technologies are the basis for the positive development of society and the legal relations that arise in this regard, including legal relations in the field of intellectual property rights. Intellectual property is the result of intellectual and creative activity, which is formalized and grants the author or a person who is granted the right of ownership of the result by law, which is acquired, exercised and protected in accordance with the established procedure, rules and legally defined norms. It is the objects of intellectual property rights that are in clear interaction with technology and innovation. Detailed attention is paid to the essence and content of innovations and technologies in the field of intellectual activity, in particular in the production and change of characteristics of the relevant objects of intellectual property rights. The author focuses on the conceptual apparatus of such concepts as «innovation», «technology», «intellectual property», «intellectual property rights», and technology transfer. The modern national and foreign literature is analyzed with a view to defining the basic concepts of the study and their legislative consolidation. The author analyzes the features of technology transfer, in particular, it is established that innovative technologies are endowed with novelty, revolutionary nature, irreplaceability, uniqueness, and inevitability. The author establishes the interconnectedness of the content of «innovations» and «technologies» in relation to intellectual property rights, namely, directly to intellectual property objects, which are manifested by applying know-how or an invention to a specific result of intellectual activity in the production process.
The 21st century is the “era of international organizations”. the SCO is facing a realistic dilemma of “insufficient rule orientation”, “imperfect international law system” and “uneven level of rule of law among its members”. International law has its own structural dilemma of uncertainty, which lies in structure, language and doctrine, and overturns the existing international law system. Within the framework of the SCO, the traditional normal way can’t quickly and effectively establish legislation. The argumentative paradigm is rooted in the “intersubjectivity” of the international community, reshaping the effectiveness and source scope of international law, and using this paradigm can quickly and effectively build a set of international law system for SCO. This paradigm needs value guidance in line with universal rationality. The “community with a shared future for mankind” proposed by the Chairman Xi Jinping is expected to achieve the multi-dimensional goals of common prosperity, universal security, openness and win-win results, equality and inclusiveness, and joint construction, which can provide a value orientation for the development of SCO international law. This paper focuses on the SCO, tries to elaborate the problems faced by the SCO from the perspective of international law, and puts forward the research paradigm of improving the construction of SCO international law and the value orientation of “community with a shared future for mankind” on the basis of its system, in order to further clarify the direction of efforts to build the SCO legal system. Under the guidance of the theory of community with a shared future for mankind, the SCO’s practice of argumentative international law can improve the legal system construction within the organization on the basis of maintaining regional peace, and then contribute to the SCO’s participation in world governance and the promotion of the rise of Asia.
Keywords: norms, indeterminacy, argumentalism, community with a shared future, SCO
International relations, Comparative law. International uniform law
Glacier and ice-sheet motion is fundamental to glaciology. However, we still lack a consensus for the optimal way to relate basal velocity to basal traction for large-scale glacier and ice-sheet models (the 'sliding relationship'). Typically, a single tunable coefficient loosely connected to one or a limited number of physical processes is varied spatially to reconcile model output with observations. Yet, process-agnostic studies indicate that the suitability of a given sliding relationship depends on the setting. Here, we suggest that this arises from myriad overlapping setting- and scale-dependent sliding sub-processes, including complicated near-basal stress states not captured by large-scale models, reviewed here as comprising a basal 'sliding layer'. A corresponding 'bulk layer' then accounts for ice deformation only minimally influenced by bed properties. We provide a framework for incorporating arbitrarily many sub-processes within a given region -- separated into normal ('form drag') and tangential ('slip') resistance at the ice-bed interface, stressing that the maximum scale of cavitation is an important contributor to the division between the two. Under reasonable assumptions, our framework implies that sliding relationships should fall within a sum of regularised-Coulomb and power-law components, with a rough-smooth distinction proving more consequential in dictating sliding behaviour than a traditional hard-soft transition.
La atención a la literatura como instrumento de educación del jurista, como lenguaje que permite transmitir lo que está en el núcleo del derecho es uno de los rasgos característicos de la obra del profesor Javier de Lucas. En este trabajo se identifican cuatro novelas evocadas en sus clases y en sus escritos para iluminar problemas tales como la desobediencia al derecho, la movilidad humana, la ciudadanía y el reconocimiento del otro. A modo de cláusula de cierre la referencia a un poema condensa el compromiso del profesor De Lucas en la lucha contra la exclusión social.
Artykuł niniejszy jest poświęcony aksjologicznym podstawom ładu gospodarczego w kontekście kluczowych wartości. Nie ulega wątpliwości, że kształtowanie się gospodarki rynkowej oraz realizacja wolności gospodarczej są istotnymi punktami odniesienia w procesie jego budowania. Pamiętać jednak należy, że klasyczna koncepcja ładu w tym zakresie stanowi nadmierne uproszczenie. Stąd też zasadne jest ujmowanie go w perspektywie idei trójpłaszczyznowego jego urzeczywistniania i identyfikacji podstawowych wartości leżących u jego podstaw. Jako cel podstawowy stawiam sobie uzasadnienie tezy, że problem kształtowania aksjologicznych podstaw ładu gospodarczego postrzegać należy przez pryzmat wartości, które nie biorą swojego uzasadnienia li tylko z pozytywno-prawnej legitymacji (dobro wspólne, godność człowieka), ale również tych, których moc kształtują wartości fundamentalne wyartykułowane w Konstytucji RP oraz zasady z nich wyprowadzone. W tym ostatnim przypadku rzecz dotyczy m.in. innych niż wolność gospodarcza praw i wolności oraz wartości i zasad (pewność prawa, ochrona praw nabytych, ochrona konkurencji, prawość woli prawodawcy i organów stosujących prawo, autorytet państwa i prawa itd.). Rodzi to szereg wyzwań i aksjologicznych dylematów nie tylko natury ekonomicznej, lecz także prawnej i etycznej. Zasadne w związku z tym staje się dokonanie właściwej identyfikacji podstawowych normatywnych filarów i wartości ujmowanych w kontekście obowiązującego prawa oraz potencjalnych zagrożeń dla aksjologicznych fundamentów publicznego prawa gospodarczego. Istotne jest również zwrócenie uwagi na problem inflacji prawa, pewność rozwiązań normatywnych, ochronę praw nabytych i maksymalnie ukształtowanych ekspektatyw, jak i bezpieczeństwo prawne oraz nadmierną relatywizację podstawowych wartości stanowiących o istocie porządku prawnego. W zakresie aksjologicznych aspektów ładu gospodarczego ważną rolę odgrywa budowanie autorytetu państwa i prawa oraz rozwijanie etosu służby publicznej. W artykule wykorzystano metodę dogmatyczną i posiłkowo także inne metody.
Law in general. Comparative and uniform law. Jurisprudence
ملخص الدراسة : Abstract يهدف هذا البحث إلى تسعير تأمين التوقف عن العمل بسبب الحريق وذلک باستخدام نظرية المصداقية Credibility Theory بالتطبيق على شرکة مصر للتأمين ، ويعتمد الباحث فى سبيل الوصول إلى السعر العادل والکافى لتأمين التوقف عن العمل بسبب الحريق على استخدام نظرية المصداقية وذلک من خلال تحديد التوزيع الاحتمالى المناسب لعدد الحوادث (التوزيعات المنفصلة) ، وکذلک تحديد التوزيع الاحتمالى المناسب لقيم الخسائر(التوزيعات المتصلة) ، ثم تطبيق معادلة المصداقية فى تسعير تأمين التوقف عن العمل بسبب الحريق وذلک بتقدير معامل المصداقية Credibility Factor للوصول للقسط الصافى والسعر العادل ، وقد توصلت الدراسة إلى أن التوزيع الاحتمالى المناسب لعدد الحوادث هو التوزيع البواسونى Poisson Distribution ، والتوزيع الاحتمالى المناسب لحجم الخسارة هو توزيع باريتو pareto Distribution ، کما توصلت الدراسة إلى السعر العادل والکافى لتأمين التوقف عن العمل بسبب الحريق باستخدام نظرية المصداقية بالتطبيق على شرکة مصر للتأمين وهو 0.006 ، وبمقارنة السعر العادل الذى توصلت إليه الدراسة لتأمين التوقف عن العمل بسبب الحريق بالسعر السائد والمطبق فى شرکة مصر للتأمين نجد أن الشرکة محل الدراسة تحصل على أسعار أقل من السعر العادل التى توصلت إليه الدراسة وبالتالى فقد أوصت الدراسة شرکة مصر للتأمين بضرورة تعديل أسعار تأمين التوقف عن العمل بسبب الحريق لديها وذلک بزيادة ورفع هذه الأسعار؛ حتى لا تحقق خسائر فى هذا النوع من التأمين فى المستقبل وحتى تتناسب الأسعار مع درجة الخطورة ولکى تتمکن هذه الشرکة من تکوين محفظة اکتتاب متوازنة تمکنها من تخفيض معدلات الخسائر لديها.
Cybersecurity threats affect all aspects of society; critical infrastructures (such as networks, corporate systems, water supply systems, and intelligent transportation systems) are especially prone to attacks and can have tangible negative consequences on society. However, these critical cyber systems are generally governed by multiple jurisdictions, for instance the Metro in the Washington, D.C. area is managed by the states of Virginia and Maryland, as well as the District of Columbia (DC) through Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). Additionally, the water treatment infrastructure managed by DC Water consists of waste water input from Fairfax and Arlington counties, and the district (i.e. DC). Additionally, cyber attacks usually launch from unknown sources, through unknown switches and servers, and end up at the destination without much knowledge on their source or path. Certain infrastructures are shared amongst multiple countries, another idiosyncrasy that exacerbates the issue of governance. This law paper however, is not concerned with the general governance of these infrastructures, rather with the ambiguity in the relevant laws or doctrines about which authority would prevail in the context of a cyber threat or a cyber-attack, with a focus on federal vs. state issues, international law involvement, federal preemption, technical aspects that could affect lawmaking, and conflicting responsibilities in cases of cyber crime. A legal analysis of previous cases is presented, as well as an extended discussion addressing different sides of the argument.
In this article, we propose an anomalous chaotic system of the scaling-law ordinary differential equations involving the Mandelbrot scaling law. This chaotic behavior shows the "Wukong" effect. The comparison among the Lorenz and scaling-law attractors is discussed in detail. We also suggest the conjecture for the fixed point theory for the fractal SL attractor. The scaling-law chaos may be open a new door in the study of the chaos theory.
A pesquisa pretende analisar a estrutura jurídico-administrativa da Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – CAPES e sua relevância para a regulação da pós-graduação stricto sensu brasileira, buscando, assim, demonstrar que a entidade possui, de fato, a condição de agência reguladora. Para isso, é necessário abordar três pontos, utilizando, para tanto, metodologia dedutiva, com fontes bibliográficas e documentais relacionados à entidade: O primeiro ponto busca descrever e contextualizar a formação da fundação CAPES, bem como relatar as atividades administrativas que exerce sobre a pós-graduação. No segundo ponto, aborda-se sobre o processo histórico de surgimento das agências reguladoras, analisando também os objetivos e atribuições a elas incumbidas. Por fim, no terceiro ponto, expôs-se, de maneira crítica, considerações sobre a condição da CAPES como agência reguladora. Dessa maneira, compreende-se que uma fundação pública, quando atende uma função típica do Estado, não é, apesar do que formalmente a lei que a instituiu afirma, uma fundação, mas sim, ao contrário, uma autarquia, o que possibilita compará-la com uma agência reguladora. Conclui, assim, que em razão dos extensos poderes que a CAPES exerce sobre os programas de pós-graduação, a sua natureza autárquica e por regular uma atividade econômica, em sentido amplo, considera-se que ela é na realidade uma agência reguladora da pós-graduação brasileira. Além disso, dado o esvaziamento terminológico da noção de agência, a condição diferenciada dos dirigentes não é um fator relevante para a categorização de um ente da administração indireta como agência.
Law in general. Comparative and uniform law. Jurisprudence, International relations
The catalytic role played by the Indian judiciary in providing visibility to the ‘covert social prejudices’ against females has succeeded in alleviating the condition of women in our patriarchal society. This paper strives to highlight the proactive role played by the judiciary in recent years, addressing women concerns in a different light, which were hitherto unconditionally accepted with complacence. Purposive approach adopted by the judiciary in interpreting existing laws, manifests adherence to the constitutional mandate of gender equality. Further, an attempt has been made to identify the areas where judicial action has fallen short in bringing about real justice to women. The research is primarily based on the normative method presenting qualitative analysis of the constitutional and legislative provisions and their judicial exposition. The paper concludes that judicial creativity needs the backing of social acceptability to bring about real social transformation towards the constitutional mandate of gender justice.
Law in general. Comparative and uniform law. Jurisprudence
In this paper, the scaling-law vector calculus, which is related to the connection between the vector calculus and the scaling law in fractal geometry, is addressed based on the Leibniz derivative and Stieltjes integral for the first time. The Gauss-Ostrogradsky-like theorem, Stokes-like theorem, Green-like theorem, and Green-like identities are considered in the sense of the scaling-law vector calculus. The Navier-Stokes-like equations are obtained in detail. The obtained result is as a potentially mathematical tool proposed to develop an important way of approaching this challenge for the scaling-law flows.