This paper examines the admissibility of AI-generated forensic evidence in criminal trials. The growing adoption of AI presents promising results for investigative efficiency. Despite advancements, significant research gaps persist in practically understanding the legal limits of AI evidence in judicial processes. Existing literature lacks focused assessment of the evidentiary value of AI outputs. The objective of this study is to evaluate whether AI-generated evidence satisfies established legal standards of reliability. The methodology involves a comparative doctrinal legal analysis of evidentiary standards across common law jurisdictions. Preliminary results indicate that AI forensic tools can enhance scale of evidence analysis. However, challenges arise from reproducibility deficits. Courts exhibit variability in acceptance of AI evidence due to limited technical literacy and lack of standardized validation protocols. Liability implications reveal that developers and investigators may bear accountability for flawed outputs. This raises critical concerns related to wrongful conviction. The paper emphasizes the necessity of independent validation and, development of AI-specific admissibility criteria. Findings inform policy development for the responsible AI integration within criminal justice systems. The research advances the objectives of Sustainable Development Goal 16 by reinforcing equitable access to justice. Preliminary results contribute for a foundation for future empirical research in AI deployed criminal forensics.
Jonghyeon Choi, Yeonjun Choi, Hyun-chul Kim
et al.
This paper systematically examines nation-level biases exhibited by Large Language Models (LLMs) within the domain of International Relations (IR). Leveraging historical records from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), we developed a bias evaluation framework comprising three distinct tests to explore nation-level bias in various LLMs, with a particular focus on the five permanent members of the UNSC. Experimental results show that, even with the general bias patterns across models (e.g., favorable biases toward the western nations, and unfavorable biases toward Russia), these still vary based on the LLM. Notably, even within the same LLM, the direction and magnitude of bias for a nation change depending on the evaluation context. This observation suggests that LLM biases are fundamentally multidimensional, varying across models and tasks. We also observe that models with stronger reasoning abilities show reduced bias and better performance. Building on this finding, we introduce a debiasing framework that improves LLMs' factual reasoning combining Retrieval-Augmented Generation with Reflexion-based self-reflection techniques. Experiments show it effectively reduces nation-level bias, and improves performance, particularly in GPT-4o-mini and LLama-3.3-70B. Our findings emphasize the need to assess nation-level bias alongside performance when applying LLMs in the IR domain.
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Welcome to the winter 2024–2025 issue of JAFSCD! On our cover, we share a photo from the article Hāloa: The long breath of Hawaiian sovereignty, water rights, and Indigenous law, by Puanani Apoliona-Brown. The historical photo depicts a Protect Kaho‘olawe ‘Ohana (aka PKO or ‘Ohana) press conference at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, on January 31, 1977. PKO was a small group of Native Hawaiian activists who organized to stop the bombing of a sacred island that the U.S. Navy had used for target practice since World War II. Featured in the foreground are Leimomi Apoliona (at the left) and Dr. Emmett Aluli (at the right). The article’s author, Ms. Apoliona-Brown, is the daughter of Leimomi Apoliona and one of the research fellows whose work is shared in this issue.
We are pleased to feature a special section of articles produced by the Tribal Food Systems Research Fellows of the First Nations Development Institute. These emerging Indigenous scholars include Danya Carroll, Lynn Mad Plume, Nicole Redvers, Puanani Apoliona-Brown, Daniel Hayden, Amber Hayden, Stafford Rotehrakwas Maracle, Jennifer Tewathahá:kwa Maracle, Stephen Lougheed, and Jasmine Jimerson.
A thematic analysis of this special collection of papers is provided in our first Indigenous Food Sovereignty column, authored by Mapuana Antonio, Joseph Brewer, Richard Elm-Hill, Michael Kotutwa Johnson, Tabitha Robin, A-Dae Romero-Briones, Lois Stevens, and Keith Williams. We see this column and the first special collection of papers as the beginning of an ongoing effort to solicit and publish the work of Indigenous food system researchers, and we are grateful for the support of First Nations Development Institute to make this happen. A special debt of gratitude goes to Keith Williams for his Herculean work serving as associate editor for this special section, including mentoring authors and editing their manuscripts. Keith is very generous with his time and values helping young and emerging Indigenous researchers. We are privileged to have him engaged with JAFSCD! . . .
Stefan Baral, Adeeba Kamarulzaman, Lucy Stackpool-moore
et al.
Objectives To seek consensus among global experts on concepts, measures and approaches to guide national and global action to address HIV-related stigma and formulate a call to action. This outlines priorities to unite actors in more effectively responding to and resourcing efforts to address HIV-related stigma.Design An adapted Delphi consensus-building process using two rounds of online questionnaires.Setting Online questionnaires sent to a global expert panel.Participants 50 global experts on HIV-related stigma and discrimination representing sectors including civil society, people living with HIV and key populations, research and academia, clinical practice, law, non-profit organisations, the United Nations, and policy and donor organisations.Results The panel reached consensus on 55 points relating to the 12 broad themes extracted from the evidence base. These comprised the importance of addressing HIV-related stigma at scale; HIV-related stigma terms and definitions; Frameworks; Programming and approaches; Community leadership in HIV-related stigma-reduction implementation; Intersectional stigma and discrimination; Stigma and discrimination measures and assessment scales; Monitoring and evaluation; Stakeholder and community participation in monitoring and evaluation; Knowledge gaps and research needs; Funding and Commitment calls. From these, a consensus statement and call to action were formulated on priorities for strong political and financial commitments by all countries to reduce and mitigate HIV-related stigma and achieve global HIV targets adopted in 2021.Conclusions This study illustrated that global experts across sectors consider that action is needed to support the three critical enablers of the HIV response—society, systems and services—to ensure that HIV services are non-discriminatory and person-centred. The importance of attention and action to reduce stigma is critical in the current geopolitical and funding crisis affecting HIV and global health.
Mateusz Grzyb, Mateusz Krzyziński, Bartłomiej Sobieski
et al.
This project explores the application of Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to analyse United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) speeches. Using NLP allows for the efficient processing and analysis of large volumes of textual data, enabling the extraction of semantic patterns, sentiment analysis, and topic modelling. Our goal is to deliver a comprehensive dataset and a tool (interface with descriptive statistics and automatically extracted topics) from which political scientists can derive insights into international relations and have the opportunity to have a nuanced understanding of global diplomatic discourse.
Yuxiang Gao, Shiming Lei, Eleanor M. Clements
et al.
The intrinsic anomalous Hall effect (AHE) has been reported in numerous ferromagnetic (FM) Weyl semimetals. However, AHE in the antiferromagnetic (AFM) or paramagnetic (PM) state of Weyl semimetals has been rarely observed experimentally, and only in centrosymmetric materials. Different mechanisms have been proposed to establish the connection between the AHE and the type of magnetic order. In this paper, we report AHE in both the AFM and PM states of non-centrosymmetric compound SmAlSi. To account for the AHE in non-centrosymmetric Weyl semimetals without FM, we introduce a new mechanism based on magnetic field-induced Weyl nodes evolution. Angle-dependent quantum oscillations in SmAlSi provide evidence for the Weyl points and large AHE in both the PM and the AFM states. The proposed mechanism qualitatively explains the temperature dependence of the anomalous Hall conductivity (AHC), which displays unconventional power law behavior of the AHC in both AFM and PM states of SmAlSi.
INTRODUCTION. Based on the study of the international law, doctrine and practice of states, the article analyzes the content of the institution of the historical rights of the state to the sea areas, its correlation with the provisions of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, as well as the legal status of the Sea of Okhotsk and the possibility of its adjustment in in the context of a possible statement by Russia that it has historical rights to its water area. MATERIALS AND METHODS. The issues raised in the article are structurally divided into three main groups. The first one is related to the study of the reasons for the emergence of the institution of historical rights of states to maritime areas in the international law of the sea, as well as its correlation with the legal mechanisms for the delimitation and use of maritime spaces defined by the 1982 UN Convention. The second is devoted to studying the structure of this institution and definition of the concept and content within its framework of such key notions and categories as “historical bays”, “historical waters”, “historical legal foundations”, “historical title of the state” and some others. The third group is directly connected with the definition of the fundamental possibility and potential scope of the extension of the Russian Federation historical rights to the waters of the Sea of Okhotsk. RESEARCH RESULTS. When writing the work, the authors proceeded from the fact that despite the limited potential of Russia's possible actions to defend its historical title to the Sea of Okhotsk, they can not be considered unpromising in the foreseeable historical perspective. At the same time it should be borne in mind that the way to achieve success in solving this problem should not lie in declaring its water area an inland sea or historical waters of Russia, but in legitimizing by our state a number of its exclusive historical rights in this maritime area based on Russia's vital interests. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. The content of the institution of the historical rights of states to maritime spaces, as well as the new political reality, give the Government and the State Duma of the Russian Federation all the necessary grounds for raising the question of a partial change in Russia's position on the legal status of the Sea of Okhotsk and the development of a new strategy for upholding Russia's historical rights to its water area, as through the adoption of unilateral internal legal acts, and through the implementation of a consistent policy to disseminate and uphold this point of view in international relations within the framework of negotiations with foreign states and the activities of relevant international bodies and organizations.
Law of nations, Comparative law. International uniform law
El siguiente artículo analiza la desprotección del Derecho Internacional Humanitario (DIH) frente a las personas LGBTIQ+ que no participan de las hostilidades a partir del abordaje de la protección de este sistema jurídico a las mujeres en el marco de la guerra. Con base en ello, el texto muestra cómo este cuerpo reglamentario de la guerra no se sumerge en protecciones específicas de categorías como orientaciones sexuales e identidades de género diversas, lo cual imposibilita el entendimiento de las violencia por perjuicio perpetrada en Colombia en contra de personas LGBTIQ+ en el marco de la guerra. Este artículo también sumerge al lector en las dificultades del DIH en la materia y analiza que existen otros instrumentos jurídicos que permiten la judicialización de los responsables por actos constitutivos de violencia por prejuicio, tales como el Derecho Penal Internacional (DPI) el cual puede ser aplicado en Colombia de manera directa por la Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz (JEP), como el órgano judicial que conoce de las conductas perpetradas en el conflicto y que puede llegar a sancionar estas conductas como un crimen de lesa humanidad.
Though not high profile, collaborations and partnerships between law enforcement agencies (LEAs) and public health organizations do exist across Africa. Law enforcement and public health (LEPH) partnerships have been common, but not necessarily optimum, in responses to epidemics such as sexually transmissible infections, tuberculosis, and malaria, and pandemics such as HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. There are some such collaborations in responses to gender-based violence (GBV), particular socio-economic problems and challenges, counter-insurgency and terrorism (when it happens within civilian spaces), to address issues of rape, disease and death. Leadership in development of such approaches comes from a wide range: local and national governments, law enforcement agents, CSOs, regional economic bodies and United Nations agencies. They have also a wide range of success and sustainability. There are examples of excellent collaboration in partnerships with long histories and experience of working together, especially among those that have established common goals aimed at local, national and global health outcomes. However, antagonisms also exist between civil society organizations (CSOs) and LEAs, with CSOs placing blame on law enforcement agents for harms caused, and with LEAs perceiving CSOs as enemies of the state because of their work with and advocacy for the rights of culturally or politically taboo or sensitive matters, such as sex work or homosexuality. Not uncommonly, partnerships have not been formed; or where they have formed but have failed to achieve consensus and joint results, have collapsed. Much more needs to be done at all levels to achieve effective, humane and sustained joined-up responses to difficult public health issues in the African context.
Human settlements. Communities, Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) is a disputed territory according to the United Nations (UN) resolutions unless the people exercise their right to self-determination and decide their own fate. India has maintained its special status through specific arrangements in its constitution. On August 5, 2019, the BJP-led Indian government removed the special guarantees given to the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) through the abolition of articles 35-A and 370 of the Constitution of India in an act of clear violation of international law. Since then, it has undertaken numerous actions in legislative and administrative realms to bring about a demographic change in the occupied territory and marginalize the indigenous population, threatening its identity, and culture.
Martuwarra RiverOflife, Anne Poelina, Donna Bagnall
et al.
Abstract Traditional custodians of the Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) derive their identity and existence from this globally significant river. The First Laws of the Martuwarra are shared by Martuwarra Nations through a common songline, which sets out community and individual rights and duties. First Law recognizes the River as the Rainbow Serpent: a living ancestral being from source to sea. On 3 November 2016, the Fitzroy River Declaration was concluded between Martuwarra Nations. This marked the first time in Australia when both First Law and the rights of nature were recognized explicitly in a negotiated instrument. This article argues for legal recognition within colonial state laws of the Martuwarra as a living ancestral being by close analogy with the case concerning the Whanganui River. We seek to advance the scope of native title water rights in Australia and contend that implementation of First Law is fundamental for the protection of the right to life of the Martuwarra.
This paper explores the efficacy of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Convention, UN General Assembly, 1989) through the lens of the over-representation of First Nations children placed in out-of-home care in Canada and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in Australia. A general overview of Indigenous worldviews frames a discussion on the coherence of international human rights law and instruments, including the Convention, account for Indigenous Peoples' ontologies. The authors argue that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN General Assembly, 2007) and a new theoretical framework published by the Pan American Health Organization (2019) on health equity and inequity are useful tools to augment the Convention's coherence with Indigenous ontologies. The paper discusses how the Convention can be applied to structural and systemic risks driving the over-representation of First Nations and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out of home care in Canada and Australia. These two countries are included as First Nations and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in these countries have both had significant impact in advocating for their children despite experiencing similar barriers including contemporary colonialism. The advocacy work of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society in Canada and the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency in Victoria, Australia are discussed. The paper ends by outlining some of the challenges ahead that include the need to meaningfully recognize Indigenous self-determination and equitable funding and resources to enable the actualization of self-determination. Further research contrasting international human rights instruments with Indigenous ontologies could help inform possible amendments to international human rights treaties and general comments.
The Great Divide in metaphysical debates about laws of nature is between Humeans, who think that laws merely describe the distribution of matter, and non-Humeans, who think that laws govern it. The metaphysics can place demands on the proper formulations of physical theories. It is sometimes assumed that the governing view requires a fundamental / intrinsic direction of time: to govern, laws must be dynamical, producing later states of the world from earlier ones, in accord with the fundamental direction of time in the universe. In this paper, we propose a minimal primitivism about laws of nature (MinP) according to which there is no such requirement. On our view, laws govern by constraining the physical possibilities. Our view captures the essence of the governing view without taking on extraneous commitments about the direction of time or dynamic production. Moreover, as a version of primitivism, our view requires no reduction / analysis of laws in terms of universals, powers, or dispositions. Our view accommodates several potential candidates for fundamental laws, including the principle of least action, the Past Hypothesis, the Einstein equation of general relativity, and even controversial examples found in the Wheeler-Feynman theory of electrodynamics and retrocausal theories of quantum mechanics. By understanding governing as constraining, non-Humeans who accept MinP have the same freedom to contemplate a wide variety of candidate fundamental laws as Humeans do.
The extension of many-body quantum dynamics to the non-unitary domain has led to a series of exciting developments, including new out-of-equilibrium entanglement phases and phase transitions. We show how a duality transformation between space and time on one hand, and unitarity and non-unitarity on the other, can be used to realize steady state phases of non-unitary dynamics that exhibit a rich variety of behavior in their entanglement scaling with subsystem size -- from logarithmic to extensive to \emph{fractal}. We show how these outcomes in non-unitary circuits (that are "spacetime-dual" to unitary circuits) relate to the growth of entanglement in time in the corresponding unitary circuits, and how they differ, through an exact mapping to a problem of unitary evolution with boundary decoherence, in which information gets "radiated away" from one edge of the system. In spacetime-duals of chaotic unitary circuits, this mapping allows us to uncover a non-thermal volume-law entangled phase with a logarithmic correction to the entropy distinct from other known examples. Most notably, we also find novel steady state phases with \emph{fractal} entanglement scaling, $S(\ell) \sim \ell^α$ with tunable $0 < α< 1$ for subsystems of size $\ell$ in one dimension. These fractally entangled states add a qualitatively new entry to the families of many-body quantum states that have been studied as energy eigenstates or dynamical steady states, whose entropy almost always displays either area-law, volume-law or logarithmic scaling. We also present an experimental protocol for preparing these novel steady states with only a very limited amount of postselection via a type of "teleportation" between spacelike and timelike slices of quantum circuits.
INTRODUCTION. The individual's right to health is a set of natural and positive legal frameworks that govern a person’s life activity, individual and family wellbeing, enforcement of health guarantees by the statesparticipants of universal and regional treaties of the field under question. The formation of this right stems from biological characteristics of each person, socio-economic conditions, environment, access to health and sanitation services, national health-care system progress, existence of vulnerable groups of population. Goals of the UN Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 (UN General Assembly resolution 70/1) include such essential aspects of the right to health as ending poverty and hunger in all its forms everywhere; promote food security and healthy lifestyle; the well-being of all individuals at any age; ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all; protection and restoration of water-related ecosystems; enhancement of the States capacity to prevent and reduce national and global health risks. According to the position of the World Health Organization (WHO) the right to health imposes on the States a legal obligation to ensure timely access to adequate levels of high-quality health care, clean and safe drinking water, sanitation, adequate nutrition, shelter, health-related information and education, gender equality. As a result, the considerable amount of attention is paid to the analysis of the content of general and specific international instruments at the universal level and the international legal specificities of enshrining and maintaining an individual's right to health. The text also places the emphasis on its normative framing in the law of the Council of Europe and the European Union, reflecting the decisions and rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).MATERIALS AND METHODS. The legal framework of the study is based on universal international treaties of the UN system, regional regulations of the Council of Europe and the EU, legal position of the UN specialized agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the ECHR. The scientific works of domestic and foreign authors related to the study of the right to health are used as a theoretical foundation. The research uses general scientific and special cognitive techniques wherein legal analysis and synthesis, systemic, formal-legal, comparative-legal, historical-legal and dialectical methods are applied.RESEARCH RESULTS. The research indicates that the modern international legal concept of the right to health is being developed at the universal and regional level. Furthermore, specific international legal guarantees for the protection of this right are emerging for special groups such as women and children, refugees, stateless persons and migrant workers, protected persons, the wounded and the sick – all persons affected by international armed conflicts. There is a certain trend in Council of Europe and EU law towards an extended interpretation of the human right to health responding to new challenges to the realization that right, concerning bioethics, human genome editing, and the effects of nuclear testing and environmental pollution.DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. Following a review of the content and implementation of the right to health in the universal and regional international legal systems for the human rights and freedoms protection, the authors suggest its incorporation in a group of personal rights, social benefits provided by the state, and simultaneously in a collective right to development pertaining to the population as a whole. The universal international legal institutions establishing special rights for vulnerable groups will continue to be applied by member states in the context of a situational response to the global needs of families, women and children, international migration, armed conflicts, environmental conditions, and bioethical issues. The authors encourage the complement of the European system of human rights protection with an additional protocol to the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 1950, involving the right to health security.
Law of nations, Comparative law. International uniform law
Let $p_n(x)$ be a polynomial of degree $n$ having $n$ distinct, real roots distributed according to a nice probability distribution $u(0,x)dx$ on $\mathbb{R}$. One natural problem is to understand the density $u(t,x)$ of the roots of the $(t\cdot n)-$th derivative of $p_n$ where $0 < t < 1$ as $n \rightarrow \infty$. We derive an \textit{infinite} number of conversation laws for the evolution of $u(t,x)$. The first three are \begin{align*} \int_{\mathbb{R}}{ u(t,x) ~ dx} = 1-t, \qquad \qquad \int_{\mathbb{R}}{ u(t,x) x ~ dx} = \left(1-t\right)\int_{\mathbb{R}}{ u(0,x) x~ dx}, \qquad \int_{\mathbb{R}} \int_{\mathbb{R}} u(t,x) (x-y)^2 u(t,y) ~ dx dy = (1-t)^3 \int_{\mathbb{R}} \int_{\mathbb{R}} u(0,x) (x-y)^2 u(0,y) ~ dx dy. \end{align*} The author suggested that $u(t,x)$ might evolve according to a nonlocal evolution equation involving the Hilbert transform; this has been verified for two special closed form solutions -- these conservation laws thus point to interesting identities for the Hilbert transform. We discuss many open problems.