With the increasing environmental degradation in spaces most affected by climate change such as the Arctic, and the extension of anthropogenic environmental problems even into the Earth's orbit, international law is confronted with some unprecedented challenges. Much of the legal dialogue surrounding this question is taking place in the abstract, such that there are no exact proposals for methodological and practical applications in lawmaking. In this Article, I argue that current governance relevant to the Arctic and outer space precedes an understanding of these spaces. Critical posthumanism, and other approaches, point out the continuation of strict boundaries that have been set up between the human body and the environment. International law's formalist doctrinal deductions exacerbate these boundaries. I propose an approach to lawmaking under a broad term: the cosmolegal. The cosmolegal proposal challenges distinctions between human-made and non-human "laws"-scientific and social laws-and questions the foundational determination of both. The framework I suggest in this Article, therefore, requires a new approximation to accuracy in lawmaking, which could be achieved by greater interdisciplinarity and acceptance of ontological pluralism. This Article is divided into two broader sections. The first section focuses on two environmental problems: A) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the Arctic and B) orbital debris. The second section argues for a different ontology of law and human self-understanding in the context of the unknown. It proposes "cosmolegality" in an attempt to approximate the inclusion and representation of 'everything considered to be non-human.

The obligation to consider the best interests of the child in all cases concerning children has a central status in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989. This article provides a systematic comparison of how the best interests concept is understood and used in child protection and immigration jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. The article compares all child protection and immigration judgments where the court has referred to the best interests of the child until the end of 2017. It shows that the court assesses the best interests of the child differently in the two case groups. First, in child protection cases, the court assumes that it is in the child’s best interests to live with her parents, whereas in immigration cases, family unity is not the starting point of the court. Secondly, in immigration cases, the child’s young age is understood as adaptability, whereas in child protection cases, young age is associated with care needs. Thirdly, the court has considered children’s views in several child protection cases but rarely in immigration cases. This article argues that, from the perspective of children’s rights, the court’s approach in immigration cases is problematic.

The views of human rights treaty bodies are essential in understanding key treaty provisions. However, the interpretations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the monitoring body of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, are mostly scattered in concluding observations that the Committee issues in response to states' periodic reports. Through systematic analysis, this article shows how the Committee conceptualises the best interests of the child, an important yet indeterminate concept for the children's rights framework and human rights law in general, in the concluding observations. The article argues that the Committee connects best interests to various recurring contexts. Most importantly, the Committee focuses on active measures through which states are supposed to implement the best interests of the child. These six cross-cutting themes—legislative measures, integration in practices, cooperation, awareness-raising and training, resources, and monitoring—correspond to the general measures of implementation that the Committee has previously identified, and they are used as a framework to analyse the concluding observations. The results demonstrate the importance of domestic structures in implementing human rights. They can also be interpreted as reflecting the Committee's understanding of best interests as a positive obligation.

The views of human rights treaty bodies are essential in understanding key treaty provisions. However, the interpretations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the monitoring body of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, are mostly scattered in concluding observations that the Committee issues in response to states' periodic reports. Through systematic analysis, this article shows how the Committee conceptualises the best interests of the child, an important yet indeterminate concept for the children's rights framework and human rights law in general, in the concluding observations. The article argues that the Committee connects best interests to various recurring contexts. Most importantly, the Committee focuses on active measures through which states are supposed to implement the best interests of the child. These six cross-cutting themes—legislative measures, integration in practices, cooperation, awareness-raising and training, resources, and monitoring—correspond to the general measures of implementation that the Committee has previously identified, and they are used as a framework to analyse the concluding observations. The results demonstrate the importance of domestic structures in implementing human rights. They can also be interpreted as reflecting the Committee's understanding of best interests as a positive obligation.

The implementation of COVID-19 stay-at-home policies was associated with a considerable drop in urban crime in 27 cities across 23 countries. More stringent restrictions over movement in public space were predictive of larger declines in crime. The stay-at-home restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19 led to unparalleled sudden change in daily life, but it is unclear how they affected urban crime globally. We collected data on daily counts of crime in 27 cities across 23 countries in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. We conducted interrupted time series analyses to assess the impact of stay-at-home restrictions on different types of crime in each city. Our findings show that the stay-at-home policies were associated with a considerable drop in urban crime, but with substantial variation across cities and types of crime. Meta-regression results showed that more stringent restrictions over movement in public space were predictive of larger declines in crime.

European Union (EU) law is known for its strong emphasis on effectivity and more generally for its instrumental character. This is not foreign even to European criminal law, a feature which creates some tension between the EU criminal law and criminal law in the national setting. EU Framework Decisions and Directives often require the Member States to criminalize certain forms of conduct with sanctions that are ‘Effective, Dissuasive and Proportionate’. In this article, I try to show that it would be timely to look at EU criminal law from an alternative point of view, as a more mature law. I call this a legitimacy-based approach. Such a reading would ease some of these tensions. It would also be helpful in developing a criminal policy for the EU, a policy which would be realistic and pragmatic. And it would be easier to look at EU criminal law from the point of view of justice. In order to get there, we need to see where the (current) narrow deterrence argument gets is wrong or one-sided. Some social theory is needed in order to make the point.

This chapter explores the origins of the disciplines of international and comparative law in nineteenth-century Europe. It charts in broad terms the emergence of comparative studies of law in France, Germany, Britain, and elsewhere among jurists and scholars who sought to deploy the language of law in the service of both universal and domestic 'civilization'. In an age of rapid societal, economic, constitutional, and technological change, a progressive spirit of development of the law in all its dimensions thrived in a constant intercourse between the national, colonial, and international legal spheres of thought. Later in the century, various specialized branches of cosmopolitan legal studies including international law and comparative law branched off to their own academic and institutional fields. These nonetheless continued to share many ideas about universal justice, the liberal ideals, the role of Europe in the world, and other matters.