Digital evidence as a means of proof before the International Court of Justice

This article discusses the use of digital evidence as a means of proof before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The absence of specific Court rules and procedures for digital evidence (with the exception of Practice Direction IX bis) is not necessarily an obstacle to its production and evaluation before the ICJ, as the general evidentiary rules can also be applied to digital evidence. The article first looks at the rules on the production of documentary evidence and then examines the specific issues related to audiovisual evidence. Finally, it examines the admissibility of digital evidence unlawfully obtained by a litigant through unilateral transborder access to data. The article concludes that, even if specific regulation may be needed as to the specific way in which authenticity and accuracy of digital evidence are to be established, the particular facts of the case and the grounds of challenge can vary widely, and it is doubtful that any regulation could be sufficiently flexible to deal with this in advance.

To what extent has research conducted by the GaWC Research Network aided our understanding of large EU law firm geography?

This thesis explores whether a specific group of large EU law firms exhibited multiple common behaviours regarding their EU geographies between 1998 and 2009. These potentially common behaviours included their preferences for trading in certain EU locations, their usage of law firm alliances, and the specific reasons why they opened or closed EU branch offices. If my hypothesis is confirmed, this may indicate that certain aspects of large law firm geography are predictable – a finding potentially of interest to various stakeholders globally, including legal regulators, academics and law firms. In testing my hypothesis, I have drawn on research conducted by the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Research Network to assist me. Between 1999 and 2010, the GaWC published seven research papers exploring the geographies of large US and UK law firms. Several of the GaWC’s observations arising from these studies were evidence-based; others were speculative – including a novel approach for explaining legal practice branch office change, not adopted in research conducted previously or subsequently. By distilling the GaWC’s key observations these papers into a series of “sub-hypotheses”, I been able to test whether the geographical behaviours of my novel cohort of large EU law firms reflect those suggested by the GaWC. The more the GaWC’s suggested behaviours are observed among my cohort, the more my hypothesis will be supported. In conducting this exercise, I will additionally evaluate the extent to which the GaWC’s research has aided our understanding of large EU law firm geography. Ultimately, my findings broadly support most of the GaWC’s observations, notwithstanding our cohort differences and the speculative nature of several of the GaWC’s propositions. My investigation has also allowed me to refine several of the GaWC’s observations regarding commonly-observable large law firm geographical behaviours, while also addressing a key omission from the group’s research output.

Islamic Infrastructure Finance and Sustainable Development Goals

This was a very interesting discussion with the pioneers of Islamic finance regarding infrastructure finance and the sustainable development goals.