Latest blog articles

Seventy years to the day have passed since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. International human rights have since gained ground in theory, discourse, and practice. In this short post, I argue that for human rights to regain some of their traction, we should take care not to use...

What does sovereignty mean in today’s world, given trends of globalisation, Europeanisation and also polarisation?

Over the years, I have heard various colleagues say they thought empirical legal research (ELR) has been on the rise. Some see this as a positive development, making law and legal research more evidence-based and diverse.

2018 is the first year in history when more than half of the world’s population is online. Since its dawn, the Internet has changed many aspects of daily life. The first wave of the Internet saw a change in communication: the use of e-mails and the rise of Internet browsers facilitated online...

Geographical Indications (also known as GIs) are signs used to safeguard the link between a product and its place of origin. In order for a product to be protected as a GI, the exact production methods and environmental factors need to be documented. It is easy to imagine that traditional products...

This post will focus on the Article 34(1) ICJ Statute requirement that ‘[o]nly states may be parties in cases before the Court’.

Protected geographical indications (PGI) cannot be granted for names deemed generic in the language of a territory. The recent example of Danbo cheese shows that if a name is deemed to be generic under a certain legal framework (Codex), it may not necessarily be so under another legal framework (PGI...

The World Report on Disability estimates that approximately one in five people in the world have some form of ‘disability’ – a characteristic which is strongly associated with socio-economic disadvantage. 

Technological innovation and law have always made a good pair - as society evolves, so do (some of) our legal needs. Pockets of research expertise on law and technology have been around for decades, and so have law journals on the subject.

Dowsing is the ability to detect the source of things. Dowsing for a source of legal ideas must start at an early stage in academic life, when students write their first legal papers. This ability is mastered if students and tutors interact in the process of developing academic legal research skills...