Hasil untuk "Private international law. Conflict of laws"

Ahyousha Khan

Building on my previously published work examining the destabilizing effects of India’s development and deployment of Strategic Non-Nuclear Weapons (SNNWs), this paper explores how these advanced technologies are reshaping India’s doctrinal thinking, thereby increasing the risk of escalation in South Asia. Academic discourse on SNNWs reflects that SNNWs are a complex and contested concept. However, they broadly encompass a mix of kinetic and non-kinetic technologies, such as precision-guided conventional missiles, autonomous drones, hypersonic weapons, and offensive cyber capabilities. These technologies are regarded as strategic because they increase the vulnerability of an adversary’s nuclear forces, alter escalation dynamics, and introduce new variables into the deterrence calculus. In the case of the Pakistan-India deterrence equation, India’s growing investment in such capabilities, coupled with its evolving nuclear posture and its tendency to accept risks, presents a dangerous shift in regional stability. This trend became evident during the May 2025 crisis, when India conducted conventional missile strikes, conducted cyber intrusions, launched massive misinformation campaigns, and employed unmanned platforms against Pakistan. Such actions indicate a potential normalization of the integration of preemptive force multipliers within the conventional domain. Therefore, this paper argues that India’s acquisition of SNNWs, when viewed in conjunction with its doctrinal assertiveness, undermines the deterrence based on survivability of forces and heightens the risks of misperception, inadvertent escalation, and crisis instability. Using qualitative analysis grounded in open-source reporting and doctrinal reviews, the paper highlights the need to reassess the evolving role of SNNWs in the South Asian strategic environment, given the advent of advanced technologies. Moreover, it analyzes their implications and focuses on regional risk-reduction mechanisms to maintain strategic stability.

Ulrike Schultz, Maria Rita Bartolomei, Sara Araújo

This special issue marks the first publication of a long-term international project on gender in customary and indigenous law and proceedings. Emerging from observations of the silence around customary law and differing perceptions of gender inequality in sub-Sahara African legal academia, the project brings together comparative socio-legal research from Africa, Europe and beyond. The contributions examine how colonial legacies, legal pluralism and globalisation shape gendered experiences in areas such as inheritance, land rights, marriage, judicial training, and access to justice. Highlighting women’s agency within plural legal systems, the issue provides new theoretical and empirical insights into the intersections of gender, customary law, and state law.

L. Thomas van Binsbergen, Marten C. Steketee, Milen G. Kebede et al.

Compliance with the GDPR privacy regulation places a significant burden on organisations regarding the handling of personal data. The perceived efforts and risks of complying with the GDPR further increase when data processing activities span across organisational boundaries, as is the case in both small-scale data sharing settings and in large-scale international data spaces. This paper addresses these concerns by proposing a case-generic method for automated normative reasoning that establishes legal arguments for the lawfulness of data processing activities. The arguments are established on the basis of case-specific legal qualifications made by privacy experts, bringing the human in the loop. The obtained expert system promotes transparency and accountability, remains adaptable to extended or altered interpretations of the GDPR, and integrates into novel or existing distributed data processing systems. This result is achieved by defining a formal ontology and semantics for automated normative reasoning based on an analysis of the purpose-limitation principle of the GDPR. The ontology and semantics are implemented in eFLINT, a domain-specific language for specifying and reasoning with norms. The XACML architecture standard, applicable to both access and usage control, is extended, demonstrating how GDPR-based normative reasoning can integrate into (existing, distributed) systems for data processing. The resulting system is designed and critically assessed in reference to requirements extracted from the GPDR.

Vidya Venkatesan, Aomawa L. Shields, Russell Deitrick et al.

Eccentric planets may spend a significant portion of their orbits at large distances from their host stars, where low temperatures can cause atmospheric CO2 to condense out onto the surface, similar to the polar ice caps on Mars. The radiative effects on the climates of these planets throughout their orbits would depend on the wavelength-dependent albedo of surface CO2 ice that may accumulate at or near apoastron and vary according to the spectral energy distribution of the host star. To explore these possible effects, we incorporated a CO2 ice-albedo parameterization into a one-dimensional energy balance climate model. With the inclusion of this parameterization, our simulations demonstrated that F-dwarf planets require 29% more orbit-averaged flux to thaw out of global water ice cover compared with simulations that solely use a traditional pure water ice-albedo parameterization. When no eccentricity is assumed, and host stars are varied, F-dwarf planets with higher bond albedos relative to their M-dwarf planet counterparts require 30% more orbit-averaged flux to exit a water snowball state. Additionally, the intense heat experienced at periastron aids eccentric planets in exiting a snowball state with a smaller increase in instellation compared with planets on circular orbits; this enables eccentric planets to exhibit warmer conditions along a broad range of instellation. This study emphasizes the significance of incorporating an albedo parameterization for the formation of CO2 ice into climate models to accurately assess the habitability of eccentric planets, as we show that, even at moderate eccentricities, planets with Earth-like atmospheres can reach surface temperatures cold enough for the condensation of CO2 onto their surfaces, as can planets receiving low amounts of instellation on circular orbits.

Simon P. von der Maase

Forecasting violent conflict at high spatial and temporal resolution remains a central challenge for both researchers and policymakers. This study presents a novel neural network architecture for forecasting three distinct types of violence -- state-based, non-state, and one-sided -- at the subnational (priogrid-month) level, up to 36 months in advance. The model jointly performs classification and regression tasks, producing both probabilistic estimates and expected magnitudes of future events. It achieves state-of-the-art performance across all tasks and generates approximate predictive posterior distributions to quantify forecast uncertainty. The architecture is built on a Monte Carlo Dropout Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) U-Net, integrating convolutional layers to capture spatial dependencies with recurrent structures to model temporal dynamics. Unlike many existing approaches, it requires no manual feature engineering and relies solely on historical conflict data. This design enables the model to autonomously learn complex spatiotemporal patterns underlying violent conflict. Beyond achieving state-of-the-art predictive performance, the model is also highly extensible: it can readily integrate additional data sources and jointly forecast auxiliary variables. These capabilities make it a promising tool for early warning systems, humanitarian response planning, and evidence-based peacebuilding initiatives.

Achraf Azize, Marc Jourdan, Aymen Al Marjani et al.

Best Arm Identification (BAI) problems are progressively used for data-sensitive applications, such as designing adaptive clinical trials, tuning hyper-parameters, and conducting user studies. Motivated by the data privacy concerns invoked by these applications, we study the problem of BAI with fixed confidence in both the local and central models, i.e. $ε$-local and $ε$-global Differential Privacy (DP). First, to quantify the cost of privacy, we derive lower bounds on the sample complexity of any $δ$-correct BAI algorithm satisfying $ε$-global DP or $ε$-local DP. Our lower bounds suggest the existence of two privacy regimes. In the high-privacy regime, the hardness depends on a coupled effect of privacy and novel information-theoretic quantities involving the Total Variation. In the low-privacy regime, the lower bounds reduce to the non-private lower bounds. We propose $ε$-local DP and $ε$-global DP variants of a Top Two algorithm, namely CTB-TT and AdaP-TT*, respectively. For $ε$-local DP, CTB-TT is asymptotically optimal by plugging in a private estimator of the means based on Randomised Response. For $ε$-global DP, our private estimator of the mean runs in arm-dependent adaptive episodes and adds Laplace noise to ensure a good privacy-utility trade-off. By adapting the transportation costs, the expected sample complexity of AdaP-TT* reaches the asymptotic lower bound up to multiplicative constants.

C-Y Law, Jonathan C. Tan, Raphael Skalidis et al.

Magnetic fields may play a crucial role in setting the initial conditions of massive star and star cluster formation. To investigate this, we report SOFIA-HAWC+ $214\:μ$m observations of polarized thermal dust emission and high-resolution GBT-Argus C$^{18}$O(1-0) observations toward the massive Infrared Dark Cloud (IRDC) G28.37+0.07. Considering the local dispersion of $B$-field orientations, we produce a map of $B$-field strength of the IRDC, which exhibits values between $\sim0.03 - 1\:$mG based on a refined Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi (r-DCF) method proposed by Skalidis \& Tassis. Comparing to a map of inferred density, the IRDC exhibits a $B-n$ relation with a power law index of $0.51\pm0.02$, which is consistent with a scenario of magnetically-regulated anisotropic collapse. Consideration of the mass-to-flux ratio map indicates that magnetic fields are dynamically important in most regions of the IRDC. A virial analysis of a sample of massive, dense cores in the IRDC, including evaluation of magnetic and kinetic internal and surface terms, indicates consistency with virial equilibrium, sub-Alfvénic conditions and a dominant role for $B-$fields in regulating collapse. A clear alignment of magnetic field morphology with direction of steepest column density gradient is also detected. However, there is no preferred orientation of protostellar outflow directions with the $B-$field. Overall, these results indicate that magnetic fields play a crucial role in regulating massive star and star cluster formation and so need to be accounted for in theoretical models of these processes.

Linda Mulcahy, Anna Tsalapatanis

Debate about the ways in  empirical accounts of socio-legal phenomena may be compromised by close engagement with policy audiences has long dogged discussions of the possibility of progressive agendas in the field. This paper re-examines these critiques by reference to a case study in which the authors worked closely with UK judges and the court service. It argues that accounts of the relationship between the policy audience and researchers frequently rely on overly simplistic conceptualisations of elite state actors and the ways in which empirical researchers engage with the powerful. We suggest that a range of forms of interaction are possible in which researchers can be characterised as  handmaidens, partners or go-betweens. While acknowledging the importance of interrogating how the policy audience can compromise the independence of academic researchers, we argue that debate has tended to rest on oversimplified understandings of the dynamics of interactions with powerful state actors. El debate sobre las formas en que la credibilidad del trabajo empírico socio-jurídico puede verse comprometida por un estrecho compromiso con el público político ha perseguido durante mucho tiempo las discusiones sobre la posibilidad de una agenda socio-jurídica progresista. Este artículo reexamina estas críticas haciendo referencia a un estudio de caso en el que los autores trabajaron estrechamente con jueces y el servicio judicial del Reino Unido. Sostiene que muchos de los relatos existentes sobre la relación entre el público político y los investigadores se basan con frecuencia en conceptualizaciones demasiado simplistas de los actores estatales de élite y de las formas en que los investigadores empíricos se relacionan con los poderosos. Sugerimos que son posibles distintos tipos de relaciones de investigación, que caracterizamos como de sirvientes, socios o intermediarios. Aunque reconocemos la importancia de cuestionar el modo en que las audiencias políticas pueden comprometer la independencia de los investigadores académicos, sostenemos que el debate ha tendido a basarse en interpretaciones unidimensionales de la dinámica de las interacciones con los poderosos actores estatales.

Edefe Ojomo

In nearly all regions, politico-legal projects for regional organization and integration often prioritize infrastructure construction and maintenance. In West Africa, the development of a regional organization by the post-colonial independent states, in particular the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) formed in 1975, has enabled states to allocate certain powers to formal and informal regional political institutions with the aim of building state effectiveness and capacity and hence increasing public support and popular legitimacy. In this Essay, I argue that regional organizations serve as governance structures whose infrastructural and institutional mechanisms contextually address the needs of states and their citizens. This account particularly applies to West African electricity arrangements overseen through an unusual ECOWAS-linked regional infrastructural organization, the West African Power Pool (WAPP). The case of WAPP demonstrates how the energy infrastructure shapes and modifies regional institutional rules and practices.

Cheng Wang, Yi Wang, Changjun Jiang

Metcalfe's Law captures the relationship between the value of a network and its scale, asserting that a network's value is directly proportional to the square of its size. Over the past four decades, various researchers have proposed different scaling laws on this subject. Remarkably, these seemingly conflicting conclusions have all been substantiated by robust data validation, raising the question of which law holds greater representativeness. Consequently, there remains a need for inherent mechanism to underpin these laws. This study aims to bridge this disparity by offering a theoretical interpretation of Metcalfe's Law and its variations. Based on a certain degree of consensus that "traffic is value", network effects are gauged using network traffic load. A general analytical boundary for network traffic load is deduced by balancing practicality and analytical feasibility through the establishment of a comprehensive network model. From this foundation, the mechanism behind Metcalfe's Law and its variants is elucidated, aligning the theoretical derivations with the previously validated empirical evidence for Metcalfe's Law.

Claire Barale

Our project aims at helping and supporting stakeholders in refugee status adjudications, such as lawyers, judges, governing bodies, and claimants, in order to make better decisions through data-driven intelligence and increase the understanding and transparency of the refugee application process for all involved parties. This PhD project has two primary objectives: (1) to retrieve past cases, and (2) to analyze legal decision-making processes on a dataset of Canadian cases. In this paper, we present the current state of our work, which includes a completed experiment on part (1) and ongoing efforts related to part (2). We believe that NLP-based solutions are well-suited to address these challenges, and we investigate the feasibility of automating all steps involved. In addition, we introduce a novel benchmark for future NLP research in refugee law. Our methodology aims to be inclusive to all end-users and stakeholders, with expected benefits including reduced time-to-decision, fairer and more transparent outcomes, and improved decision quality.

Hashem Farhadi, Ahma Shams

Achieving a fair trial and ensuring justice in the trial is initially subject to identifying the principles governing the trial and adapting it to the principles and rules of the national and transnational legal system and adapting it to the circumstances prevailing in each judicial authority. As a quasi-judicial authority with a conciliatory approach and compromise, on the one hand, the deliberations of the council in accordance with the laws and regulations are not subject to the procedures and principles of the trial, and on the other hand, the deliberations of the council in terms of principles and rules are subject to the rules of civil and criminal procedure. Due to the absence of the judge in the council meeting, this issue causes inconsistencies and conflicts in the issuance of the verdict. Sub-vote is the result of the review process and in practice the council judge does not play a key role in it. Therefore, in order to comply with the rules and principles of procedure, it is necessary to separate the issues raised in the council in terms of compromise and compensation from the beginning. Compromise issues without observing the court proceedings by the members of the council and dispute issues with the presence of the council judge in the hearing in accordance with the principles of the court and the governing procedures to be considered in order to achieve a fair trial in practice in this judicial authority.Keywords: Judicial Authority, Dispute Resolution Council, Fair Trial

Shehzad Ali

Geography, culture and history play a central role in shaping a nation's perceptions, biases and images of adversaries. The combination of these factors constitutes strategic culture. Strategic communities tend to adopt diverse approaches to interpreting, analysing and reacting to a given situation. They may incline to pick peculiar strategic choices, such as using force or relying on external alliances, while not opting for a range of others. Decisions and choices are affected by patterns of thinking that evolved over the years. Strategic culture has evolved and generated significant discussion on theoretical frameworks and potential applications in a regional and international security context. Pakistan-India strategic equation is a complex phenomenon, fraught with hostility and mistrust, impregnated with conventional and non-conventional hazards. India views Pakistan as a stumbling block in realising her power ambition, while Pakistan considers India an existential threat. The article analyses the effect of strategic culture on inter-state relations with emphasis on Pakistan-India relations. Unique historical events, geography, the influence of dominant strategic strata and perception biases shape respective strategic cultures. It further analyses strategic culture based on Hofstede's Model, besides pondering upon symbols and philosophical influences.   Bibliography Entry Ali, Shehzad. 2022. "Strategic Culture and Inter-State Relations: A Case of Pakistan and India." Margalla Papers 26 (1): 121-131.

Lanny Ramli

In recent years, violence against women has continued. Culture, beliefs, and the role of community and religious leaders are the reasons for the practice of female circumcision in East Java Province. To the perpetrators, this activity is reasonable. This article is a policy study with a gender perspective approach and uses qualitative methods and quantitative data. The results of this study reveal the insights of circumcision practitioners in women who are less aware of the effects of female circumcision, low education levels, and trust and pressure from the family (internal) and the environment (external). Moreover, the main rules are legalised as the 1945 Constitution explicitly outlines government interference in community control, including social and cultural. The gender mainstreaming strategy (PUG) has been implemented to eliminate activities that violate women's rights to health and other constitutional rights.

Sabin Roman, Francesco Bertolotti

We propose a new mechanism for generating power laws. Starting from a random walk, we first outline a simple derivation of the Fokker-Planck equation. By analogy, starting from a certain Markov chain, we derive a master equation for power laws that describes how the number of cascades changes over time (cascades are consecutive transitions that end when the initial state is reached). The partial differential equation has a closed form solution which gives an explicit dependence of the number of cascades on their size and on time. Furthermore, the power law solution has a natural cut-off, a feature often seen in empirical data. This is due to the finite size a cascade can have in a finite time horizon. The derivation of the equation provides a justification for an exponent equal to 2, which agrees well with several empirical distributions, including Richardson's law on the size and frequency of deadly conflicts. Nevertheless, the equation can be solved for any exponent value. In addition, we propose an urn model where the number of consecutive ball extractions follows a power law. In all cases, the power law is manifest over the entire range of cascade sizes, as shown through log-log plots in the frequency and rank distributions.

Beatriz Oliveira da Silva, Clarissa Ferreira Mendes, Renã Margalho

Como motivo de preocupação relevante da sociedade mundial, os níveis de poluição marinha ocasionados pela atividade desenfreada da humanidade impulsionaram a Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU) e a Organização Marítima Internacional (IMO) a elaborarem diversas Convenções, Regulamentos e Tratados para controlar a utilização dos recursos marinhos e preservar o ecossistema, tendo em vista a grande importância da água para a sobrevivência dos seres humanos. O presente artigo tem como objetivo geral demonstrar a atuação da IMO em prol dos Objetivos de Desenvolvimento Sustentável (ODS) com foco na contribuição para o ODS 14, desenvolvido pela ONU. Utilizamos, para tanto, o método de abordagem dedutivo, por meio de pesquisa aplicada exploratória, empregando análise qualitativa com levantamentos bibliográficos e documentais. O presente artigo está dividido em duas seções, além da introdução e conclusão, abordando as metas e projeções desenvolvidas pela ONU para proteger o meio ambiente e o clima, descrevendo e explicando a Agenda 2030 e sua importância, apresenta, também, os Objetivos de Desenvolvimento Sustentável, tendo como principal foco dessa seção o Objetivo 14, posteriormente, a IMO e sua relação com o ODS 14, ressaltando a princípio informações sobre a Organização e sua relação com a Marinha Mercante, respectivamente. O resultado da pesquisa, como é possível verificar nas seções deste artigo, demonstra ações da entidade responsável pelo viés marítimo a qual busca minimizar os impactos causados pela industrialização através do projeto global de sustentabilidade, nomeado Agenda 2030, por meio das suas Convenções Internacionais alinhadas às metas ambientais.

Sager Ghalib Almotairi

In the endemic world, the emergence of China as a potential superpower is surfacing. It has been a long evolutionary process from the coarse period to the age of prosperity that pushes China to an upward trajectory with its reform model for domestic and worldwide growth. Its economic and strategic directions are reaping fruits in the Belt and Road Initiative. Beijing’s goodwill has been endorsed by different countries of the world who wish to learn from the ascendancy of China on the world stage. However, with the rise of China, it is feared that it would have implications for the predominant world order. This paper, therefore, highlights the country’s political, economic, military, and social reforms by its distinctive Soft Power approach. China is becoming an influential power that cannot be ignored on the global horizon.   Bibliography Entry Almotairi, Sager Ghalib. 2021. "China’s Emergence as a Potential Superpower and the World Order." Margalla Papers 25 (2): 35-46.

Daniel Berleant, Venkat Kodali, Richard Segall et al.

Technologies have often been observed to improve exponentially over time. In practice this often means identifying a constant known as the doubling time, describing the time period over which the technology roughly doubles in some measure of performance or of performance per dollar. Moore's law is, classically, the empirical observation that the number of electronic components that can be put on a chip doubles every 18 months to 2 years. Today it is frequently stated as the number of computations available per unit of cost. Generalized to the appropriate doubling time, it describes the rate of advancement in many technologies. A frequently noted competitor to Moore's law is known as Wright's law, which has aeronautical roots. Wright's law (also called power law, experience curve and Henderson's law) relates some quality of a manufactured unit (for Wright, airplanes) to the volume of units manufactured. The Wright's law equation expresses the idea that performance - price or a quality metric - improves according to a power of the number produced, or alternatively stated, improves by a constant percentage for every doubling of the total number produced. Does exploration of outer space conform to Moore's law or Wright's law-like behavior? Our results below are broadly consistent with these laws. This is true for many technologies. Although the two laws can make somewhat different predictions, Sahal found that they converge to the same predictions when manufacturing volume increases exponentially over time. When space exploration transitions into an independent commercial sector, as many people hope and expect, spacecraft technology will then likely enter an era of unambiguously exponential advancement.

Peter Hintz

We prove Price's law with an explicit leading order term for solutions $φ(t,x)$ of the scalar wave equation on a class of stationary asymptotically flat $(3+1)$-dimensional spacetimes including subextremal Kerr black holes. Our precise asymptotics in the full forward causal cone imply in particular that $φ(t,x)=c t^{-3}+\mathcal O(t^{-4+})$ for bounded $|x|$, where $c\in\mathbb C$ is an explicit constant. This decay also holds along the event horizon on Kerr spacetimes and thus renders a result by Luk-Sbierski on the linear scalar instability of the Cauchy horizon unconditional. We moreover prove inverse quadratic decay of the radiation field, with explicit leading order term. We establish analogous results for scattering by stationary potentials with inverse cubic spatial decay. On the Schwarzschild spacetime, we prove pointwise $t^{-2 l-3}$ decay for waves with angular frequency at least $l$, and $t^{-2 l-4}$ decay for waves which are in addition initially static. This definitively settles Price's law for linear scalar waves in full generality. The heart of the proof is the analysis of the resolvent at low energies. Rather than constructing its Schwartz kernel explicitly, we proceed more directly using the geometric microlocal approach to the limiting absorption principle pioneered by Melrose and recently extended to the zero energy limit by Vasy.

Caglar Tuncay

More than one billion data sampled with different frequencies from several financial instruments were investigated with the aim of testing whether they involve power law. As a result, a known power law with the power exponent around -4 was detected in the empirical distributions of the relative returns. Moreover, a number of new power law behaviors with various power exponents were explored in the same data. Further on, a model based on finite sums over numerous Maxwell-Boltzmann type distribution functions with random (pseudorandom) multipliers in the exponent were proposed to deal with the empirical distributions involving power laws. The results indicate that the proposed model may be universal.