Should we regulate artificial intelligence? Can we? From self-driving cars and high-speed trading to algorithmic decision-making, the way we live, work, and play is increasingly dependent on AI systems that operate with diminishing human intervention. These fast, autonomous, and opaque machines offer great benefits - and pose significant risks. This book examines how our laws are dealing with AI, as well as what additional rules and institutions are needed - including the role that AI might play in regulating itself. Drawing on diverse technologies and examples from around the world, the book offers lessons on how to manage risk, draw red lines, and preserve the legitimacy of public authority. Though the prospect of AI pushing beyond the limits of the law may seem remote, these measures are useful now - and will be essential if it ever does.

Do you want to do well in Law from day one? Law is a challenging and competitive subject to study at university. You need to become familiar with its peculiar language and complicated practices as quickly as possible if you want to do well. Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of students, Studying Law at University demystifies your law course. With reliable tips and practical suggestions, it shows you how to: understand key legal concepts; read cases; take useful notes; become an active learner; manage your time; write law essays; sit law exams. Updated to take into account the increasing use of the internet, this second edition of Studying Law at University tells you everything you need to know to get good marks and enjoy your studies.

What limits, if any, should be placed on a government's efforts to spy on its citizens in the name of national security? Spying on foreigners has long been regarded as an unseemly but necessary enterprise. Spying on one's own citizens in a democracy, by contrast, has historically been subject to various forms of legal and political restraint. For most of the twentieth century these regimes were kept distinct. That position is no longer tenable. Modern threats do not respect national borders. Changes in technology make it impractical to distinguish between 'foreign' and 'local' communications. And our culture is progressively reducing the sphere of activity that citizens can reasonably expect to be kept from government eyes. The main casualty of this transformed environment will be privacy. Recent battles over privacy have been dominated by fights over warrantless electronic surveillance and CCTV; the coming years will see debates over DNA databases, data mining, and biometric identification. There will be protests and lawsuits, editorials and elections resisting these attacks on privacy. Those battles are worthy. But the war will be lost. Modern threats increasingly require that governments collect such information, governments are increasingly able to collect it, and citizens increasingly accept that they will collect it. This book proposes a move away from questions of whether governments should collect information and onto more problematic and relevant questions concerning its use. By reframing the relationship between privacy and security in the language of a social contract, mediated by a citizenry who are active participants rather than passive targets, the book offers a framework to defend freedom without sacrificing liberty.

Do you want to do well in Law from day one? Law is a challenging and competitive subject to study at university. You need to become familiar with its peculiar language and complicated practices as quickly as possible if you want to do well. Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of students, Studying Law at University demystifies your law course. With reliable tips and practical suggestions, it shows you how to: understand key legal concepts; read cases; take useful notes; become an active learner; manage your time; write law essays; sit law exams. Updated to take into account the increasing use of the internet, this second edition of Studying Law at University tells you everything you need to know to get good marks and enjoy your studies.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations is a unique figure in world politics. At once civil servant, the world's diplomat, lackey of the UN Security Council, and commander-in-chief of up to a hundred thousand peacekeepers, he or she depends on states for both the legitimacy and resources that enable the United Nations to function. The tension between these roles - of being secretary or general - has challenged every incumbent. This book brings together the insights of senior UN staff, diplomats and scholars to examine the normative and political factors that shape this unique office with particular emphasis on how it has evolved in response to changing circumstances such as globalization and the onset of the 'war on terror'. The difficulties experienced by each Secretary-General reflect the profound ambivalence of states towards entrusting their security, interests or resources to an intergovernmental body.

Private actors are increasingly taking on roles traditionally arrogated to the state. Both in the industrialized North and the developing South, functions essential to external and internal security and to the satisfaction of basic human needs are routinely contracted out to non-state agents. In the area of privatization of security functions, attention by academics and policy makers tends to focus on the activities of private military and security companies, especially in the context of armed conflicts, and their impact on human rights and post-conflict stability and reconstruction. The first edited volume emerging from New York University School of Law's Institute for International Justice project on private military and security companies, From Mercenaries to Market: The Rise and Regulation of Private Military Companies broadened this debate to situate the private military phenomenon in the context of moves towards the regulation of activities through market and non-market mechanisms.
Where that first volume looked at the emerging market for use of force, this second volume looks at the transformations in the nature of state authority. Drawing on insights from work on privatization, regulation, and accountability in the emerging field of global administrative law, the book examines private military and security companies through the wider lens of private actors performing public functions. In the past two decades, the responsibilities delegated to such actors - especially but not only in the United States - have grown exponentially. The central question of this volume is whether there should be any limits on government capacity to outsource traditionally "public" functions. Can and should a government put out to private tender the fulfilment of military, intelligence, and prison services? Can and should it transfer control of utilities essential to life, such as the supply of water? This discussion incorporates numerous perspectives on regulatory and governance issues in the private provision of public functions, but focuses primarily on private actors offering services that impact the fundamental rights of the affected population.

Frequently characterized as either mercenaries in modern guise or the market's response to a security vacuum, private military companies are commercial firms offering military services ranging from combat and military training and advice to logistical support, and which play an increasingly important role in armed conflicts, UN peace operations, and providing security in unstable states. Executive Outcomes turned around an orphaned conflict in Sierra Leone in the mid-1990s; Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI) was instrumental in shifting the balance of power in the Balkans, enabling the Croatian military to defeat Serb forces and clear the way for the Dayton negotiations; in Iraq, estimates of the number of private contractors on the ground are in the tens of thousands. As they assume more responsibilities in conflict and post-conflict settings, their growing significance raises fundamental questions about their nature, their role in different regions and contexts, and their regulation. This volume examines these issues with a focus on governance, in particular the interaction between regulation and market forces. It analyzes the current legal framework and the needs and possibilities for regulation in the years ahead. The book as a whole is organized around four sets of questions, which are reflected in the four parts of the book. First, why and how is regulation of PMCs now a challenging issue? Secondly, how have problems leading to a call for regulation manifested in different regions and contexts? Third, what regulatory norms and institutions currently exist and how effective are they? And, fourth, what role has the market to play in regulation?

The governance of post-conflict territories embodies a central contradiction: how does one help a population prepare for democratic governance and the rule of law by imposing a form of benevolent autocracy?
Transitional administrations represent the most complex operations attempted by the United Nations. The operations in East Timor and Kosovo are commonly seen as unique in the history of the UN--perhaps never to be repeated. But they may also be seen as the latest in a series of operations that have involved the United Nations in 'state-building' activities, where it has attempted to develop the institutions of government by assuming some or all of those sovereign powers on a temporary basis. The circumstances that have demanded such interventions certainly will be repeated.
Seen in the context of earlier UN operations, such as those in Namibia, Cambodia, and Eastern Slavonia, the view that these exceptional circumstances may not recur is somewhat disingenuous. Moreover, the need for such policy research has been brought into sharp focus by the weighty but ambiguous role assigned to the UN in Afghanistan and the possibility of a comparable role in Iraq.
This book fills that gap. Aimed at policy-makers, diplomats, and a wide academic audience (including international relations, political science, international law, and war studies), the book provides a concise history of UN state-building operations and a treatment of the five key issues confronting such an operation on the ground: peace and security, the role of the UN as government, judicial reconstruction, economic reconstruction, and exit strategies.

This book, winner of an ASIL Certificate of Merit 2002, critically examines the right of humanitarian intervention, asserted most spectacularly by NATO during its 1999 air strikes over Kosovo. The UN Charter prohibits the unilateral use of force, but there have long been arguments that such a right might exist as an exception to this rule, or linked to the changing role of the Security Council. Through an analysis of these questions, the book puts NATO's action in Kosovo in its proper legal and historical perspective.

Magna Carta: The most famous legal text in history. The foundation of the rule of law. Stolen. When Huckleberry Jones is packed off by his parents from New York to a camp for "exceptional teenagers" at Oxford University, his first question is: Why? But meeting the beautiful, enigmatic Kat might just make his time there worthwhile. Together with new friends Mei and Tshombe, he discovers that teenagers from four continents can have more in common than their differences. Then Huck finds himself trapped in a mystery linked to an 800-year-old parchment-and solving it could cost him his life.

What limits, if any, should be placed on a government's efforts to spy on its citizens in the interests of national security? Spying on foreigners has long been regarded as an unseemly but necessary enterprise. Spying on one's own citizens in a democracy, by contrast, has historically been subject to various forms of legal and political restraint. For most of the twentieth century these regimes were kept distinct. That position is no longer tenable. Modern threats do not respect national borders. Changes in technology make it impractical to distinguish between 'foreign' and 'local' communications. And our culture is progressively reducing the sphere of activity that citizens can reasonably expect to be kept from government eyes. The main casualty of this transformed environment will be privacy. Recent battles over privacy have been dominated by fights over warrantless electronic surveillance or CCTV; the coming years will see debates over data-mining and biometric identification. There will be protests and lawsuits, editorials and elections resisting these attacks on privacy. Those battles are worthy. But they will all be lost. Modern threats increasingly require that governments collect such information, governments are increasingly able to collect it, and citizens increasingly accept that they will collect it. The point of this book is to shift focus away from questions of whether governments should collect information and onto more problematic and relevant questions concerning its use. By reframing the relationship between privacy and security in the language of a social contract, mediated by a citizenry who are active participants rather than passive targets, the book offers a framework to defend freedom without sacrificing liberty.

Law and Practice of the United Nations: Documents and Commentary combines primary materials with expert commentary demonstrating the interaction between law and practice in the UN organization, as well as the possibilities and limitations of multilateral institutions in general. Each chapter begins with a short introductory essay describing how the documents that ensue illustrate a set of legal, institutional, and political issues relevant to the practice of diplomacy and the development of public international law through the United Nations. Each chapter also includes questions to guide discussion of the primary materials, and a brief bibliography to facilitate further research on the subject. This second edition addresses the most challenging issues confronting the United Nations and the global community today, from terrorism to climate change, from poverty to nuclear proliferation. New features include hypothetical fact scenarios to test the understanding of concepts in each chapter. This edition contains expanded author commentary, while maintaining the focus on primary materials. Such materials enable a realistic presentation of the work of international diplomacy: the negotiation, interpretation and application of such texts are an important part of what actually takes place at the United Nations and other international organizations. This work is ideal for courses on the United Nations or International Organizations, taught in both law and international relations programs.

The growing economic and political significance of Asia has exposed a tension in the modern international order. Despite expanding power and influence, Asian states have played a minimal role in creating the norms and institutions of international law; today they are the least likely to be parties to international agreements or to be represented in international organizations. That is changing. There is widespread scholarly and practitioner interest in international law at present in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as developments in the practice of states. The change has been driven by threats as well as opportunities. Transnational issues such as climate change and occasional flashpoints like the territorial disputes of the South China and the East China Seas pose challenges while economic integration and the proliferation of specialized branches of law and dispute settlement mechanisms have also encouraged greater domestic implementation of international norms across Asia. These evolutions join the long-standing interest in parts of Asia (notably South Asia) in post-colonial theory and the history of international law. The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Asia and the Pacific brings together pre-eminent and emerging specialists to analyse the approach to and influence of key states of the region, as well as whether truly 'Asian' trends can be identified and what this might mean for international order.

Should we regulate artificial intelligence? Can we? From self-driving cars and high-speed trading to algorithmic decision-making, the way we live, work, and play is increasingly dependent on AI systems that operate with diminishing human intervention. These fast, autonomous, and opaque machines offer great benefits - and pose significant risks. This book examines how our laws are dealing with AI, as well as what additional rules and institutions are needed - including the role that AI might play in regulating itself. Drawing on diverse technologies and examples from around the world, the book offers lessons on how to manage risk, draw red lines, and preserve the legitimacy of public authority. Though the prospect of AI pushing beyond the limits of the law may seem remote, these measures are useful now - and will be essential if it ever does.

Arcadia Greentree knows she isn't exactly normal. But then she discovers she isn't Arcadia Greentree either. Arcadia sees the world like no one else. Exceptionally observant, the sixteen-year-old is aware of her surroundings in a way that sometimes gets her into trouble and out of it again. But when she seeks to unravel a mystery at school, a tragedy at home forces her to use her skills to catch a killer.

This book, which won an ASIL Certificate of Merit in 2002, critically examines the right of humanitarian intervention, asserted most spectacularly by NATO during its 1999 air strikes over Kosovo. The UN Charter prohibits the unilateral use of force, but there have long been arguments that such a right might exist as an exception to this rule, or linked to the changing role of the Security Council. Through an analysis of these questions, the book puts NATO's action in Kosovo in its proper legal and historical perspective.

In the past decade, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has transformed from a periodic meeting of ministers to setting ambitious goals of becoming a Community by 2015. ASEAN is now the most important regional organisation in the history of the continent of Asia. An important tension in this transformation is the question of whether the 'ASEAN way' - defined by consultation and consensus, rather than enforceable obligations - is consistent with the establishment of a community governed by law. This book examines the growing interest in following through on international commitments, in particular monitoring implementation and compliance. Key barriers remain, in particular the lack of resources and ongoing resistance to accepting binding obligations. It remains to be seen whether these trends herald a more measured approach to decision-making in ASEAN. Written for practitioners and researchers alike, this important book provides the first systematic survey of monitoring within ASEAN.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations is a unique figure in world politics. At once civil servant, the world's diplomat, lackey of the UN Security Council, and commander-in-chief of up to a hundred thousand peacekeepers, he or she depends on states for both the legitimacy and resources that enable the United Nations to function. The tension between these roles - of being secretary or general - has challenged every incumbent. This book brings together the insights of senior UN staff, diplomats and scholars to examine the normative and political factors that shape this unique office with particular emphasis on how it has evolved in response to changing circumstances such as globalization and the onset of the ???war on terror???. The difficulties experienced by each Secretary-General reflect the profound ambivalence of states towards entrusting their security, interests or resources to an intergovernmental body.

The governance of post-conflict territories embodies a central contradiction: how does one help a population prepare for democratic governance and the rule of law by imposing a form of benevolent autocracy? Transitional administrations represent the most complex operations attempted by the United Nations. The operations in East Timor and Kosovo are commonly seen as unique in the history of the UN - perhaps never to be repeated. But they may also be seen as the latest in a series of operations that have involved the United Nations in 'state-building' activities, where it has attempted to develop the institutions of government by assuming some or all of those sovereign powers on a temporary basis. The circumstances that have demanded such interventions certainly will be repeated. Seen in the context of earlier UN operations, such as those in Namibia, Cambodia, and Eastern Slavonia, the view that these exceptional circumstances may not recur is somewhat disingenuous. Moreover, the need for such policy research has been brought into sharp focus by the weighty but ambiguous role assigned to the UN in Afghanistan and the possibility of a comparable role in Iraq. This book fills that gap. Aimed at policy-makers, diplomats, and a wide academic audience (including international relations, political science, international law, and war studies), the book provides a concise history of UN state-building operations and a treatment of the five key issues confronting such an operation on the ground: peace and security, the role of the UN as government, judicial reconstruction, economic reconstruction, and exit strategies.