Social Sciences

Abstract: Romania’s mountain areas constitute a territory with distinct geographical, economic, social, and environmental characteristics that have, over time, led to the development of specific policies and regulations. The evolution of the legislative framework has sought to compensate for natural constraints and support communities, economic activities, and the services required to sustain life in mountain areas. In this context, Mountain Law No. 197/2018 occupies a central position because of the breadth of the policy fields it brings together and the way in which it defines the mountain area as a territory of national interest. This paper examines the evolution of legislation and the institutional framework, the legal delineations used for mountain areas, the relationship between mountain policy and funding instruments, and the governance mechanisms applicable to this territory. Relevant European experiences are also considered, selected according to the ways in which different states organize coordination, programming, and support for mountain areas. The analysis therefore focuses on the relationship between legislation, institutions, and sectoral policies that influence the sustainable development and resilience of Romania’s mountain communities, while exploring the possibility of developing an integrated framework for articulating these dimensions at the territorial level.

Abstract: Modern jurisprudence faces a foundational crisis where the rejection of transcendent standards reduces justice to subjective preference. While Leo Strauss attempts to rescue modernity from this relativism by recovering classical natural right—relying on a teleological framework and a salutary myth to sustain political order—this paper argues that such a theoretical compromise harbors latent authoritarian potential. By applying Strauss’s framework to Albert Camus’s The Outsider, this analysis demonstrates how the courtroom actualizes the vulnerabilities of natural right. The prosecutor inverts teleology, transforming the salutary myth into a retroactive mechanism for social exclusion and spiritual subjugation, convicting the protagonist not merely for murder, but for refusing to perform conventional moral rituals. To resolve the ensuing normative vacuum without retreating into nihilism, this paper constructs an existentialist jurisprudence grounded in Camus’s concept of rebellion. By transitioning from the isolated absurd to shared human vulnerability (I rebel—therefore we exist), it establishes a horizontal contract. This framework delineates a restrained legal geometry: it provides an immanent justification for punishing physical murder while strictly prohibiting the judicial coercion of an individual’s internal consciousness, condemning the act on the beach without demanding the tear at the funeral.

Abstract: This paper examines pedagogical approaches to teaching trademark law with a specific focus on the consumer confusion doctrine as a vehicle for developing legal reasoning skills in law students. The consumer confusion standard, particularly the likelihood of confusion test, represents one of the most complex and multifaceted doctrines in intellectual property law, requiring students to synthesize factual analysis, legal standards, and policy considerations. This paper explores how case-based and experiential learning methodologies can effectively teach the consumer confusion doctrine while simultaneously developing critical legal reasoning skills. Drawing on scholarship in trademark law pedagogy, cognitive theories of legal reasoning, and experiential education, this paper proposes an integrated framework for teaching consumer confusion through landmark cases such as Polaroid Corp. v. Polarad Electronics and AMF Inc. v. Sleekcraft Boats, supplemented by simulations, moot courts, and client counseling exercises. The paper argues that the multifactor tests for likelihood of confusion provide an ideal pedagogical platform for teaching students how to weigh competing factors, apply legal standards to complex facts, and develop sophisticated analytical frameworks. Assessment strategies including formative evaluation, reflective journals, and peer review are discussed as mechanisms for reinforcing learning outcomes. The paper concludes with implications for intellectual property curriculum design and recommendations for integrating consumer confusion doctrine throughout the law school experience.

Abstract: Copyleft licences use copyright to keep derivative works open by conditioning permission to adapt and distribute on share-alike terms. This paper addresses a single question: when a downstream licensee in India distributes a derivative work without complying with a share-alike condition, is the conduct copyright infringement, breach of contract, or both? The Copyright Act, 1957 does not mention copyleft, and no Indian decision directly addressing it has been identified. The paper argues that the answer lies in the legal function of the term breached, not in the label “copyleft.” Section 51(a)(i) of the Act deems copyright infringed where an exclusive right is exercised in contravention of the conditions of a licence, which supports treating the breach of a term that defines the scope of the grant as infringement, while an independent promise sounds in contract. Drawing on comparative reasoning in United States decisions and on the structure of the GNU General Public License, version 3, and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0, the paper proposes a five-step test: establish the licence, identify the exclusive right exercised, classify the term as condition or covenant, characterise the breach in light of statutory exceptions, and select proportionate remedies. The paper concludes that Indian law can accommodate copyleft without new legislation if licences separate conditions from covenants and courts classify breach by substance rather than label.

Abstract: Copyleft presents a practical question for copyright law: can an owner authorise broad reuse while ensuring that recipients preserve comparable freedoms when sharing adaptations? This paper examines that question in relation to the Indian Copyright Act 1957, the public domain and academic knowledge sharing. It adopts a doctrinal and comparative method, drawing on scholarship concerning collaborative production and private ordering, statutory provisions, public licence texts and the American decision in Jacobsen v Katzer. The argument is that copyleft can support a continuing pool of reusable expression, but its legal operation depends on copyright ownership, the scope of permission and the precise conditions of the chosen licence. It does not place a work in the public domain, and it cannot replace statutory educational exceptions. Indian licensing provisions offer a basis for analysing public licences, although their formal requirements and the relationship between contractual promises and copyright conditions require careful treatment. The paper proposes institutional procedures for ownership verification, attribution, licence compatibility and proportionate enforcement, alongside legislative clarification of nonexclusive public licensing. Copyleft should be understood as a voluntary means of organising knowledge sharing within copyright, supported by public law and institutional resources.

Abstract: Cross-border commuting by women in low and middle-income countries remains severely under-researched, legally unrecognised, and wrongly merged into international migration data. This paper applies a four-step distributive analysis of the law to examine the legal frictions of stop and delay experienced by women cross-border commuters at the South Africa–Zimbabwe border. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted in March 2025 in Musina and Johannesburg, including interviews with women commuters and civil society professionals, a focus group, border observation, and systematic legal mapping, the analysis identifies the primary norms generating frictions of stop and delay; the second-level norms from other bodies of law that compound their effects; the actors and interests the legal architecture structures; and the resulting distribution of costs and benefits. The paper makes three contributions. Methodologically, it demonstrates that the distributive analysis of the law offers mobilities scholarship a framework capable of tracing how formally neutral legal norms generate unequal outcomes across diverse groups of actors. Empirically and from a feminist mobilities perspective, it disaggregates women cross-border commuters into two analytically distinct sub-groups: documented women traders and undocumented women without capital, showing that legal costs, physical danger, and exposure to violence accumulate heterogeneously even within this category, while the benefits of crossing, including trade income, healthcare access, and relief from domestic violence, are real and survival-level for both. Theoretically, it advances a constitutive account of law within the politics of mobility, arguing that informal crossings, extortion networks, and survival trade are not produced outside the law but within a field of constraints and opportunities that law itself organises. Zimbabwe’s Statutory Instrument 59 of 2026 is identified as a recent legal development that materially worsens the distributional position of documented women traders, ignoring the underlying conditions that make cross-border trade necessary.

Abstract: This study examines how community conflict, restorative principles, and community planning can be integrated into a framework for conflict-sensitive and resilient urban governance. It connects two Hungarian urban cases situated in different temporal contexts: the completed community planning process in Cseri Park, Kaposvár (2017–2019), and an ongoing developer–resident conflict in Balokány-liget, Pécs, that emerged in 2026. Using qualitative document analysis of municipal minutes and resolutions, development documents, a planning-team project description, and press sources, the study applies an asymmetric lesson-transfer approach rather than a symmetrical comparison. The findings identify six transferable process mechanisms from Cseri Park: institutional authorization combined with early engagement, multi-stage participation, dedicated mediation or facilitation support, integration of local and professional knowledge, community-building across stakeholder groups, and feedback-based refinement and priority-setting. The study develops a three-level analytical framework linking community conflict, the restorative city, and community planning, with local identity treated as part of conflict diagnosis and socio-cultural urban resilience as a potential longer-term outcome. The results suggest that adapted participatory mechanisms can support more transparent, collaborative, and resilient responses to urban conflicts.

Abstract: Across Europe, climate policy increasingly treats road transport decarbonization as urgent, with governments deploying phase-out deadlines, low-emission zones, and electric vehicle subsidies, raising the question of whether citizens can claim a constitutional right to drive. Using dogmatic and comparative constitutional analysis alongside environmental, economic, and litigation data, this study examines that question across five European jurisdictions, including Hungary. Road transport generates roughly 29% of EU greenhouse gas emissions, a figure whose constitutional weight is easily overstated. Low-emission zones grew from 228 in 2019 to over 320 by 2022, and climate litigation worldwide reached nearly 3,000 cases by end-2024. Yet no system examined recognizes driving as a standalone fundamental right; freedom of movement protects mobility, not a specific vehicle. Still, mobility restrictions affect property rights and economic freedom, making their legality contingent on proportionality analysis rather than binary assessment. Where restrictions include transition periods, compensation, and phased thresholds, high compliance proves achievable without disproportionate economic or electoral cost, an interpretation reinforced by recent European case law acknowledging states’ climate obligations. The central thesis: no independent constitutional right to drive exists, yet constitutional systems are converging toward a narrower derivative right to reasonable mobility, constraining how far the state may deny access to personal transportation.

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In the Anthropocene, the escalating intensity of extreme weather phenomena is precipitating a structural crisis in traditional models of criminal negligence. This paper examines the erosion of irresistible natural fatality through a comparative, historical‑dogmatic analysis of the Italian caso fortuito and the Anglo‑American Act of God defense. It argues that anthropogenic climate change, combined with the rise of AI‑driven predictive technologies, transforms natural uncertainty into a governable factor, fundamentally reshaping the metric of criminal foreseeability. Using the Italian Supreme Court’s Rigopiano ruling as a global case study, the article explores the epistemological cleavage between immanent “danger” and organizational “risk”. It contends that public administrators’ liability is shifting from synchronous emergency management to the anticipatory breach of multi‑level planning and precautionary duties. Ultimately, the paper outlines a renewed paradigm of normative fault capable of addressing systemic macro‑environmental risks and bridging the gap toward restorative environmental justice.

Abstract: Gender equality has become an established principle of international human rights law and an increasingly explicit objective of sports governance. Yet formal recognition has not removed the structural inequalities that continue to shape women's participation in sport. Access to professional opportunities, economic resources, media visibility and decision-making positions remains uneven. Career progression is also affected by institutional practices that may appear neutral while operating within historically unequal structures. This article examines the relationship between gender equality and sports law from a perspective that moves beyond the mere existence of non-discrimination rules. Its central argument is that the principal weakness of the current framework lies in the distance between normative commitment and institutional implementation. International human rights standards, European policy instruments and sports-governance strategies have developed considerably. What remains less developed is the machinery through which these commitments can be tested against actual institutional outcomes.The analysis considers five connected dimensions of gender equality in sport: participation, economic opportunity, media representation, professional development and governance. Particular attention is given to the position of women within decision-making structures, because representation is not simply an indicator of equality. It also affects who determines sporting priorities, allocates resources and defines institutional responses to inequality. The article proposes an accountability-based model founded on institutional responsibility, measurable standards, transparency, independent scrutiny and proportionate response. The objective is not to impose identical outcomes across different sporting disciplines. It is to ensure that persistent and unjustified disparities become visible, explainable and subject to proportionate institutional response.The literature has developed substantive equality and accountability largely as related but distinct fields. This article connects them through an institutional test of persistent gender disparity, termed explainable disparity, to examine when a disparity should trigger explanation, scrutiny and proportionate institutional response.

Abstract: This paper examines the patentability of artificial intelligence (AI)-related inventions under the European Patent Convention (EPC), with particular attention to the framework developed by the European Patent Office (EPO) for mathematical methods and computer-implemented inventions.AI-related inventions remain subject to the ordinary patentability requirements of novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability, but the analysis requires three distinct inquiries. Under Article 52 EPC, an AI or machine-learning model claimed merely as an abstract mathematical method may be excluded, whereas a claim involving technical means may possess technical character as a whole. Under Article 56 EPC, AI-related features can support inventive step only insofar as they contribute to a technical solution to a technical problem.Under Article 83 EPC, the application must disclose the model, training process, relevant data characteristics and other implementation details to the extent necessary for the skilled person to reproduce the claimed technical effect without undue burden.EPO decisions T 0161/18 and T 1669/21 illustrate that inadequate disclosure of a neural network or computational model may result in insufficiency under Article 83 EPC and, depending on the circumstances, may also prevent reliance on the alleged technical effect for inventive step. The paper also presents an exploratory Espacenet search and a broader EP full-text patent-landscape analysis using the EPO Technology Intelligence Platform (TIP), illustrating the growth of AI-related European patenting and the effect of prosecution lag on observed grant rates.

Abstract: In the context of digital economy, the State Council designated data as a factor of production such as joining land, labor, capital, and technology in China, which not only integrates into all aspects of production and life, but also relates to the creation of a fair competition in the digital economy market with data as the core element. In practice, China has already formulated relevant provisions on data anti-monopoly at the legislative level and regulated data monopoly at the law enforcement level. However, with the development of the digital economy represented by the platform economy, the monopolistic behaviors formed by data elements have become diversified and more hidden, how to effectively regulate data monopolies is still difficult. The main reasons for the inability to effectively regulate data monopolization are that the basic theoretical system related to data is not establish, the legal attributes are not yet clear, and the data infrastructure is not perfect. To effectively regulate data monopolies, it is indispensable to implement precise, agile and interdepartmental comprehensive regulation. At the same time, the construction of the basic theoretical system for data, data circulation and trading system, and data infrastructure should also be further strengthened, to constitute a complete data anti-monopoly regulatory system suitable for China's national conditions.

Abstract: Embodied artificial intelligence introduces distinctive privacy risks through data collection modalities such as continuous sensing and imperceptible capture in physical spaces. The static data-compliance framework anchored in notice and consent proves inadequate in addressing these risks. Drawing on the theory of contextual integrity, this article examines China's legislative, judicial, and regulatory practices in privacy protection for embodied AI, and identifies two systemic deficiencies: the lack of context-specific rules and weak contextual adaptability. It then proposes a governance paradigm shift from data compliance to contextual compliance, which entails context-specific legislation, a full-lifecycle regulatory architecture spanning ex ante, intra-process, and ex post stages, refined technical standards for context-based risk classification, and strengthened international cooperation, thereby establishing a differentiated and dynamic privacy protection mechanism. The study aims to provide an institutional framework that reconciles technological innovation with the protection of personality rights, while offering insights from Chinese practice for the global governance of embodied AI.

Abstract: This article identifies the mechanism by which a state that formally protects agricultural soil, and whose climate policy pledges to safeguard it for food production, approves photovoltaic plants on its best soil. The breach is not regulatory failure but the legal production of non-observance, for the law manufactures, stage by stage, the impossibility of soil capability counting as a reason for decision. Reading property as a socio-legal infrastructure that fuses three securities (legal certainty, juridical security and land-tenure security), I identify in the Chilean case the two operations that produce non-observance. The significance test substitutes its object and defends soil as a substrate of biodiversity, not as food-producing capability; the one-stop-shop rule quarantines the state's own agrological knowledge, and the organ that sees the soil cannot act on what it sees. Linking environmental-assessment records, fiscal cadastral microdata and the CIREN capability survey, I show that 133 approved plants sit dominantly on Classes I–III (about 5,700 ha), that elite soil is occupied at 2.35 times its availability, and that approval and rejection are indistinguishable by soil class; twenty-three declarations coded in depth show soil admitted only as a technical and compensable matter. The mechanism renders dephysicalisation operational and explains why climate commitments remain confined to the voluntary by the ghost of individual property.

Abstract: This article examines when a gender-responsive public procurement obligation becomes institutionally verifiable. It analyzes Brazil’s federal policy reserving jobs for women experiencing domestic and family violence, established by Law No. 14,133/2021 and regulated by Decrees No. 11,430/2023 and No. 12,516/2025. The study uses the empirical legal design documented in the underlying doctoral thesis and preserves four non-interchangeable evidentiary layers: an audit of 163 records; a retained corpus of 74 documentary units; a comparative matrix of 67 cases and 335 evidence records; and aggregate official and administrative information. The expanded matrix identified 16 cases with high density across all four dimensions, five with partial intersectoral integration, and 51 that were not verifiable through the documentary proxy. These figures describe the expanded corpus and are not used as a federal compliance denominator. Official aggregate data documented localized implementation involving 20 women; a later administrative update reported 143 women hired across five federative units, without contract-level granularity. The findings indicate that contractual enforceability, intersectoral connectivity, and protected verifiability are necessary institutional conditions—although not sufficient evidence of social impact—for converting the mandate into a monitorable practice. The article distinguishes direct federal evidence, normative diffusion, documentary absence, and non-verifiability without inferring a national effectiveness rate.

Abstract: This comprehensive research paper critically examines the adequacy of India’s intellectual property rights (IPR) frameworks in safeguarding traditional crafts from appropriation by the global fashion industry. Despite possessing rich legislative instruments including the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act 1999, the Designs Act 2000, the Copyright Act 1957, and the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), India faces persistent challenges in preventing unauthorized commercial exploitation of its cultural heritage. Through systematic analysis of 30 highly relevant scholarly sources, this paper identifies critical gaps in enforcement mechanisms, limited legal literacy among artisan communities, inadequate international coordination, and fundamental mismatches between Western IPR paradigms and the collective, intergenerational nature of traditional knowledge. The findings reveal that while India has established defensive mechanisms to prevent biopiracy and document traditional knowledge, proactive protection against fashion appropriation remains weak. The paper concludes with recommendations for sui generis legal frameworks, enhanced international treaties, digital certification systems, and community-centered protection models that balance innovation with cultural preservation.

Abstract: The proliferation of digital technologies has created unprecedented challenges for mental health and well-being globally, prompting regulatory responses in developed nations. However, the feasibility of implementing digital detox laws in developing economies remains underexplored. This paper examines the viability of digital disconnection legislation in resource-constrained contexts through a comprehensive analysis of existing regulatory frameworks, infrastructure limitations, economic constraints, cultural factors, and political considerations. Drawing on international comparative evidence from 50 countries, we analyze policy mechanisms including right-to-disconnect legislation, screen time regulations, and internet addiction laws. Our findings reveal significant barriers to implementation in developing economies, including inadequate digital infrastructure, economic dependencies on digital platforms, cultural norms favoring hyperconnectivity, and weak regulatory enforcement capacity. Despite these challenges, emerging evidence from Latin American countries and select Asian nations demonstrates that adapted regulatory approaches emphasizing education, voluntary compliance, and phased implementation may offer viable pathways. We propose a context-sensitive policy framework that balances digital well-being objectives with developmental priorities, recommending multi-stakeholder collaboration, capacity building, and culturally grounded interventions. This research contributes to the nascent literature on digital regulation in developing contexts and provides evidence-based guidance for policymakers navigating the tension between technological advancement and public health protection.

Abstract: (1) Background: The mink farming industry was established in Ireland in the 1950s and despite a significant decline in farm numbers over subsequent decades, it remained economically important due to the employment it provided in disadvantaged rural areas. However, growing animal welfare concerns, supported by scientific reviews and advocacy from animal welfare groups and veterinary professionals, increased pressure for legislative reform. This article examines the development of the Irish mink farming industry, the factors leading to its prohibition, and Ireland's position within broader European trends concerning fur farming. (2) Methods: The article adopts a historical and legal approach, analyzing industry data, government policy, animal welfare advocacy, scientific reviews, and legislative developments from the 1950s to the enactment of the Animal Health and Welfare and Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2022. (3) Results: The analysis demonstrates that mink farming declined from approximately forty producers in 1960 to three farms by 2022. Concerns about the welfare of farmed mink gained prominence, particularly following Veterinary Ireland’s call for an end to fur farming and the publication of scientific reviews challenging fur production practices. These developments informed government policy and led to legislation prohibiting the breeding and keeping of animals for fur production. (4) Conclusions: Ireland’s prohibi-tion of mink farming reflects a policy shift towards prioritizing animal welfare over a declining industry. Scientific evidence, ethical concerns, and sustained advocacy were central to this legislative change, positioning Ireland ahead of broader European Union developments in the regulation of fur farming.

Abstract: Few figures in contemporary health and sport systems sit as awkwardly as the kinesiologist. This article examines the regulatory frameworks governing kinesiology in Italy and the United States, and its central claim is that both systems, for all their differences, betray the same structural deficit: formal acknowledgement of the profession coexists with an institutional fragmentation that erodes its practical autonomy, its public recognition, and its integration into healthcare delivery. The Italian model, anchored in Legislative Decree No. 36/2021, has moved toward legislative recognition of distinct professional profiles, the basic kinesiologist, the sports kinesiologist, and the kinesiologist of preventive and adapted physical activities, but it has done so without establishing a professional order, leaving implementation to a patchwork of infra-legislative instruments and regional variation. The American model runs the other way. It operates almost entirely through private certification bodies, ACSM, NSCA, NASM and ACE, accredited by the NCCA, with Louisiana the lone state to require statutory licensure for clinical exercise physiologists. Three shared failures emerge from the comparison: the absence of a unified title-protection mechanism, the conflation of certification with regulation, and the subordination of the profession to allied health hierarchies. What both systems lack, this article argues, is not professional awareness but a coherent regulatory architecture, one that distinguishes title protection from scope-of-practice regulation, certification from licensure, and professional recognition from professional sovereignty. The method is a qualitative socio-legal comparison: legislative texts, administrative instruments, accreditation standards and the empirical labour-market literature are read against one another rather than in isolation. The aim is not to rank one system above the other. It is to show that two divergent regulatory paths converge on a single unresolved problem, namely the gap between the existence of a profession and the institutional capacity to make that profession publicly legible, accountable and autonomous. At the centre of that gap stands the vulnerable subject, whether patient, athlete or ordinary fitness participant. Where titles go unprotected and credentials multiply, the burden of telling competence from improvisation falls on the very person least equipped to bear it. Structural reform is therefore required, not as a corrective to professional ignorance but as a translation of professional identity into enforceable, coherent, publicly legible status. The architecture of such reform must distinguish, in both systems, title protection from scope-of-practice regulation, certification from licensure, and professional recognition from professional sovereignty.

Abstract: This article presents a doctrinal analysis of the way restorative justice has entered the Italian criminal system through Legislative Decree No. 150 of 10 October 2022, the so-called Cartabia reform, as later integrated by Legislative Decree No. 216 of 27 December 2024. The central theme of the paper is the model of complementarity between restorative programs and the ordinary criminal proceeding, considered in the light of Directive 2012/29/EU and Recommendation CM/Rec(2018)8 of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. After reviewing the notion, the models and the application mechanisms of restorative justice, the article focuses, on the doctrinal plane, on three areas of friction within the new regulatory architecture. They concern the access of restorative programs to all stages of the proceeding, the question of safeguards in cases of intimate partner violence and gender-based crime, and the institutional design of the new Centres for restorative justice. For the third issue, the article keeps its claims at the level of the legislative text and treats any proposition on territorial variation, on the functioning of the Centres or on the implementation deficit as a hypothesis for future empirical research. On the whole, the Italian regulatory intervention looks relevant, albeit with some critical issues, and to be kept under observation for future application developments. In particular, it seems possible to assert that the reform has formally opened the doors to a relational paradigm of justice, but the cultural transition, from a criminal-centric system towards a model of relational justice, will depend, in fact, on the practical choices of judges, mediators and local authorities in the coming years.