Amicus Curiae

Full issue

2025-11-03T10:37:36+00:00

Transplants from Different Legal Families in Comparative Law

2025-10-24T11:18:48+00:00

This article aims to provide a detailed account of receptions and transplants from the United States (US) into Cuban domestic law within the period of military occupation (1898-1902). The underlying assumption points to the particular history of the rough exposition of Cuban continental-style law to the overwhelming influence of US common law at the beginning of the twentieth century. There is scant evidence of this phenomenon in the Hispanic-American area. However, the particularities of Cuban law provide almost laboratory conditions for the insightful study and analysis of dynamic complex interactions between legal families through transplants and receptions.

Keywords: comparative law; legal transplants; legal families; Cuban law; US common law.

Naming, Blaming but Not Claiming

2025-10-24T11:30:01+00:00

In the context of #MeToo, addressing workplace sexual harassment is a critical issue. This article discusses aspects of the author’s empirical work on the role of intersectional identities in influencing Black women’s perceptions of their workplace sexual harassment and pursuit of access to justice in England and Wales and elaborates further on its findings in light of recent legal developments. It draws on Felstiner, Abel and Sarat’s “Naming, Blaming, Claiming” framework (1980-1981) to examine the extent to which Black women in England and Wales seek redress for their harms. It argues that aspects of Black women’s intersecting identities, including their race, gender, and physical characteristics interact with workplace power dynamics to negatively inform their decisions to blame and claim and shape their assumptions about being stereotyped by their employers and lawyers/the legal system. It concludes that, while the Black women tend to name and blame, there was a hesitancy to claim.

Keywords: intersectionality; naming; blaming; claiming; power; access to justice; #MeToo.

Pericles and the Plumber

2025-10-24T11:32:41+00:00

Much is now being said in the wake of artificial intelligence (AI) about marking and assessments. This year represents the first year in which generative AI usage is considered by the scholarly community to be widespread. The article responds to the recent policy outlined by UCL Laws to introduce a return to traditional assessments, which preserve the integrity of a law degree. We place this debate within the wider context of law schools and what legal education ought to provide for society, more generally. Universities and law schools have different public mandates and should respond in accordance with their aims, community and identity.

Keywords: AI; legal education; assessments; law degree; legal profession; law in context.

Good Custom in China

2025-10-24T11:58:45+00:00

This article undertakes a comparative law analysis of “custom” and “good custom” in the Chinese legal systems of the People’s Republic of China (Mainland China) and the Republic of China (Taiwan), and situates them within the wider civil and common law contexts. Through an analysis of the language and jurisprudence of each Chinese legal system, the article explores the challenges of comparing their respective definitions and applications. In scoping the application of custom, this article notably proposes an alternative perspective on Socialist Core Values articulated from the perspective of “good custom”.

Keywords: custom; public order; good custom; Socialist Core Values; customary implied terms.

Introduction

2025-10-27T15:40:33+00:00

This Special Section presents a conceptual walking tour of law’s places and spaces in Central London, created by members of the Law and the Humanities Hub (LHub) at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. By mapping diverse sites—from bookshops and cab shelters to courthouses and administrative offices—this map explores how law and place are mutually constitutive, shaping and reshaping one another. Combining legal geography with historical and cultural analysis, it invites readers to see law beyond formal institutions, tracing its often-hidden spatial inscriptions across the city. The result is both a guide and a provocation to rethink law’s spatial—and temporal—dimensions.

Keywords: law; space; place; legal geography; Central London; lawscapes.

Traces of Gender Transgression in the West End

2025-10-27T16:21:00+00:00

What Should You Do with a Dead Body?

2025-10-27T16:22:26+00:00

Birth to Death

2025-10-27T16:23:58+00:00

Outside the Senate House

2025-10-27T16:25:38+00:00

Shelter from the Storm

2025-10-27T16:31:33+00:00

Fighting for London’s Green Spaces

2025-10-27T16:34:26+00:00

A Transformative Square

2025-10-27T16:36:56+00:00

What is the Difference between Medicine and Quackery? How Law Performs Boundary Work

2025-10-27T16:38:52+00:00

The Rise and Fall of the Congress House and the Trade Union Movement

2025-10-27T16:41:37+00:00

The Shadow of the Tiger

2025-10-27T16:55:47+00:00

Writing against Empire

2025-10-27T16:58:28+00:00

Editorial

2025-10-24T15:35:09+00:00

Story

2025-10-24T15:46:35+00:00

The poem is about a young person’s vision and their recollections of their life in activism. They yearn to include children, so that they can start defending their rights and join the field, but they debate about whether it’s too early for them or rather whether there is no actual right age for activism. The poem tries to explore the various forms of oppression in which young people have lately been embroiled in Kenya and their activism against it. It also dives into the various ways in which young people can be a part of a movement in order to get their stories written and voiced, based on the strong assertion that he who controls the stories controls history and how people come to know it.

Bridging Participation

2025-10-24T15:49:08+00:00

The transition from childhood to adulthood is a critical stage in child-led advocacy initiatives, offering opportunities to reflect on how young people can continue to engage meaningfully in addressing the world’s most pressing challenges. This article draws on insights from Dialogue Works,1 a global campaign that supports working children in shaping policy dialogues, to explore the actions children, young people, and adults—particularly in the so-called Global South—are taking in the face of overlapping global crises. It examines the experiences of Children’s Advisory Committee members as they navigate the shift from child advocates to mentors and resource people, reflecting on what makes intergenerational partnerships “successful” amidst intersecting forms of marginalization and discrimination. The article also addresses the challenges of sustaining intergenerational advocacy, including strategies to overcome barriers, such as pervasive adult-centrism, and the critical role of those who have “aged out” of childhood in nurturing advocacy efforts. By anchoring participation in sustainable and inclusive platforms, the article envisions a future where intergenerational collaboration amplifies children and young people’s voices and strengthens the collective resilience needed to promote children’s rights in an era of polycrisis.

Keywords: children’s participation; child-led advocacy; aging out; adult-centrism; transition; childhood youth; adulthood; mentor; intergenerational partnership.

Weaving Wisdom and Will

2025-10-24T15:58:55+00:00

This is a transcript of a conversation between Susan Sapkota and Amrit Rijal. An audio recording is also available.

Foreword (in video format)

2025-10-24T14:21:42+00:00

Before reading the ‘Editorial’ and the articles that follow in this Special Section, please watch the “Foreword” recorded by Graeme Reid, the United Nations Independent Expert on Protection Against Violence and Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.

Editorial: Queer Judgments

2025-10-24T14:35:26+00:00

Queer Source of Law

2025-10-24T14:38:00+00:00

The Yogyakarta Principles (YPs) were produced by transnational civil society actors involved in sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) human rights activism. The document has had a significant impact on debates surrounding gender and sexual diversity in international human rights law. As such, it provided a new source, a queer source, of law for friendly actors who were already inclined to decide favourably on issues regarding SOGI rights. This article analyses the extent of the YPs’ political efficacy in the context of global governance and international law institutional mechanisms. More concretely, the main research question asks: what is the nature, or quality, of the application of the YPs by international human rights monitoring bodies? What does it tell us about their level of political influence? In responding to these questions, the article employs the analytical framework of expectation of compliance as an indicator to measure the YPs’ political efficacy.

Keywords: Yogyakarta Principles; sexual orientation and gender identity; international human rights law; queer; law-making.

Gender Identity, Asylum and the ECHR

2025-10-24T14:55:46+00:00

This article explores the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in relation to gender identity and asylum. It argues that the right to privacy and moral autonomy under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights must be interpreted to include public expressions of sexual and gender identity. As such, presentation, recognition and social expression are intrinsic to one’s identity, preference and desire, particularly for trans and gender non-conforming individuals. The first part of the article examines post-Goodwin ECtHR case law on gender identity to clarify the scope of protection offered under the Convention. The second part analyses the extraterritorial application of Article 8 in asylum cases, focusing on sexuality-based claims and the absence of trans-specific case law. The article concludes by highlighting that the performance and recognition of gender identity in public spaces is inseparable from the exercise of Convention rights and must be legally protected in asylum contexts. The blurring of the public/private divide is particularly critical where validation by state and society affects one’s gender expression and risk of persecution.

Keywords: gender identity; asylum; ECHR; privacy; Article 8; trans rights; public/private divide; moral integrity; persecution; legal recognition.

Tackling Anti-LGBTIQA+ Councillor Misconduct

2025-10-24T15:05:06+00:00

In Australia, there have been increasing culture wars on the topic of LGBTIQA+ inclusion in local government. Hely & Lew concerned comments from a male councillor (Lew) accusing a female councillor (Hely) of inappropriately prioritizing LGBTIQA+ issues that were alleged to be serious misconduct. In its determination, the Councillor Conduct Panel that hears allegations of serious misconduct found that this was simply “an example of vigorous political discourse” and “although being conduct which is to be discouraged, in the context of a ‘hot button’ political issue it was not behaviour which was unreasonable”. Whilst the Panel found that the behaviour of Lew towards Hely was “hostile”, ”disrespectful”, “unreasonable”, “inappropriate”, “aggressive” and “appalling”, it found that the behaviour did not constitute serious misconduct. This article reflects on this decision and how it undermines efforts to improve local government culture and to increase the number of women and LGBTIQA+ people elected to councils, as research shows that prejudice of this kind is a major barrier to lesbian, bi+ and queer women standing for local government—and no doubt affects heterosexual women too. In this spirit, the article rewrites the Panel’s determination in ways that are more sensitive and sensitized to issues of prejudice and exclusion.

Keywords: local government; misconduct; LGBTIQA+

Love without Veil or Garland

2025-10-24T15:10:33+00:00

This article offers a critical reading of the 2011 Brazilian Supreme Federal Court decision recognizing same-sex civil unions as family units. While celebrated as a landmark for sexual minorities’ rights, the judgment operates through an affective grammar that disciplines as much as it includes. Drawing on critical perspectives on law and sexuality, I argue that the decision mobilizes a heteronormative framework of conjugality, in which the very term “homoaffective subject” functions to produce a domesticated and respectable figure, while silencing more radical forms of kinship, desire, and care. The article advances the notion of “affective coloniality” as a key to understanding the normative costs of recognition.

Keywords: same-sex civil union; Brazilian constitutional law; legal recognition; homoaffective; affective colonization.

Suspended Agency

2025-10-24T15:12:28+00:00

This article examines how Taiwanese courts suspend the sexual agency of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in adjudicating consent. Analyses of key rulings demonstrate how judicial ambivalence—oscillating between protection and denial—produces legal reasoning that pathologizes desire while erasing deeper contextualization. Advancing a crip/queer jurisprudential lens, the article rethinks legal personhood beyond binary thresholds of capacity. It advocates for relational forms of agency that, while seeking justice, recognize expressions and embodiments that may be ambiguous and illegible to the law. This offers critical insights into how disabled sexualities are framed in law, expanding the scope of rights-based analysis.

Keywords: cripness as queerness; disabled sexuality; intellectual disability; judicial narrative; law in context.

Rewriting Supriyo

2025-10-24T15:16:24+00:00

This article reimagines Supriyo v Union of India, a constitutional judgment rendered by the Supreme Court of India in 2023 that denied the legal recognition of same-sex marriages. The rewritten judgment uses a critical queer lens and recognizes the right to marry as a constitutional guarantee grounded in dignity, autonomy, and equality. It rejects the heteronormative exclusions of the Special Marriage Act 1954 and foregrounds the lived experiences of queer couples. It illustrates how queer relationships can subvert patriarchal norms through consent-based relational models. Simultaneously, it proposes a nomination-based approach to delink legal benefits from marital status, enabling legal protection for diverse kinships. In doing so, the rewritten judgment queers marriage both structurally and substantively, while also ensuring legal recognition for non-marital forms of intimacy and care.

Keywords: marriage equality; Indian Constitution; critical queer theory; anti-discrimination.

Muted Queerscapes

2025-10-24T15:19:29+00:00

This article interrogates the dissonance between India’s post-377 legal promises and the lived realities of queer-trans communities navigating casteist, ableist workplaces. Through 27 participatory poetry workshops (2020–2022) in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Visakhapatnam, West Bengal, and Wayanad, disabled, and able-bodied, Dalit-Bahujan, Adivasi trans participants redrafted the Transgender Persons Act 2019 and Industrial Disputes Act 1947 via erasure poetry, body-mapping, and crowdsourced protest verse. Framed by Akhil Kang’s critique of Savarna queer movements (2021), Gee Semmalar’s trans labour praxis (2020) and Sudipta Das’s Cripping the Margins (2022), this work positions poetry as “jurisdictional counterpractice”—a neurodiverse, caste-conscious challenge to legal and corporate “inclusion”. Case studies from Sayantan Datta’s workplace audits, the Centre for Law and Policy Research’s intersectionality report (Kothari & Ors 2022), and the Queer Tech Workers’ Demand Charter (2022) reveal how poetic subversion queers judgments like Navtej Johar (2018) and Dr Malabika Bhattacharjee (2020), centring disabled, Dalit-Bahujan futurities beyond pink capitalism.

Keywords: poetic resistance; caste; disability; neurodiversity; POSH Act; Navtej Johar.

Equali-T

2025-10-24T15:21:31+00:00

Equali-T is a song written in response to For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers (2025). In this accompanying text, I provide a background to the case and a reflection on the events, texts, pictures and thoughts that inspired them. You can listen to the song: Equali-T by SJ Cooper-Knock.

Keywords: trans rights; queer legal judgment; equality; justice; solidarity.

News and Events

2025-10-24T14:05:11+00:00

Rethinking Family Mediation: The Role of the Family Mediator in Contemporary Times by Rachael Blakey

2025-10-24T13:59:26+00:00

Law and Social Policy in the Global South: Brazil, China, India, South Africa edited by Ulrike Davy and Albert H Y Chen

2025-10-24T14:02:12+00:00

High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs its Economy by Angela Huyue Zhang

2025-10-24T14:03:52+00:00

Editor's introduction

2025-10-24T11:15:52+00:00

Special or Not Special Enough?

2025-10-24T13:54:03+00:00

On Law, Aesthetics and the Camera

2025-10-24T13:55:59+00:00