The EU, counter-terrorism and the protection of Muslims as European minorities

This article examines the EU’s promotion of the religious identity of Muslims within the context of European counter-terrorism measures. Counter-terrorism laws of the EU and its Member States impact on the religious identity of Muslims. They have an arguably disproportionate effect on the civil rights of individuals in the quest to combat terrorism and can be seen to increase Islamophobia in two ways: a rise in general discrimination against Muslims and a requirement on Muslims to distance their connection to Islamic practice and traditions. EU law dealing with terrorist offences speak little of this backlash that Muslims face in European countries. Although the EU has somewhat of a framework in place which concerns the protection of Islamic identity, the reluctance of the EU to take a determined stance on the issue of the protection of religious identity is illustrated through the ambiguous nature of its legislation.

Land, rights and the gift: the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 and the negotiation of citizenship

The Countryside and Rights of Way Act came into force at the end of 2000 with,as part of its content, new provisions relating to public access to the English and Welsh countryside. In this paper we review the main elements of the Act and assess its meaning in relation to citizenship, territoriality and the place of land in English law and society. We invoke Mauss’s (1954)concept of Gift to explain the process of brokerage being made over access and rights in the countryside. In conclusion we reflect on the Act as being indicative of a wider move towards Bromley’s (1998)post-feudal scenario for land and its governance.

Agricultural tenancy reform: the end of law; or a new popular culture?

This paper applies a reading of the postmodernisation of law to the incremental reform of agricultural holdings legislation over the last century. In charting the shifting legal basis of agricultural tenancies, from ‘black letter’ positivism to the cultural contextuality of sumptuary law, the paper theorises that the underlying political imperative has been allied to the changing significance of property ownership and use. Rather than reflecting the long-term official desire to maintain the let sector in British agriculture, however, the paper argues that this process has had other aims. In particular, it has been about an annexation of law to legitimise the retention of landowner power while presenting a rhetorical ‘democratisation’ of farming, away from its plutocratic associations and towards a new narrative of ‘depersonalised’ business.

Agricultural tenancies: implied surrender and regrant and the operation of the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995

Agricultural tenancies arising after 1st September 1995 are mostly governed by the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995. As such, tenants under this Act do not benefit from the degree of protection conferred on tenancies already in existence, which remain under the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986. Section 4 of the 1995 Act seeks to protect those tenancies which subsequently inadvertently undergo a surrender and regrant and which would otherwise lose the protection of the 1986 Act. This paper seeks to investigate, by relating recent case law and statute to the situation of agricultural tenancies, the occasions where surrender and regrant might occur and whether in such instances the protection of the 1986 Act will be lost.

Spatio-temporal variation in predation by urban domestic cats (Felis catus) and the acceptability of possible management actions in the UK

Urban domestic cat (Felis catus) populations can attain exceedingly high densities and are not limited by natural prey availability. This has generated concerns that they may negatively affect prey populations, leading to calls for management. We enlisted cat-owners to record prey returned home to estimate patterns of predation by free-roaming pets in different localities within the town of Reading, UK and questionnaire surveys were used to quantify attitudes to different possible management strategies. Prey return rates were highly variable: only 20% of cats returned ≥4 dead prey annually. Consequently, approximately 65% of owners received no prey in a given season, but this declined to 22% after eight seasons. The estimated mean predation rate was 18.3 prey cat−1 year−1 but this varied markedly both spatially and temporally: per capita predation rates declined with increasing cat density. Comparisons with estimates of the density of six common bird prey species indicated that cats killed numbers equivalent to adult density on c. 39% of occasions. Population modeling studies suggest that such predation rates could significantly reduce the size of local bird populations for common urban species. Conversely, most urban residents did not consider cat predation to be a significant problem. Collar-mounted anti-predation devices were the only management action acceptable to the majority of urban residents (65%), but were less acceptable to cat-owners because of perceived risks to their pets; only 24% of cats were fitted with such devices. Overall, cat predation did appear to be of sufficient magnitude to affect some prey populations, although further investigation of some key aspects of cat predation is warranted. Management of the predation behavior of urban cat populations in the UK is likely to be challenging and achieving this would require considerable engagement with cat owners.

Pushing the boundaries of the social: private agri-food standards and the governance of Fair Trade in European public procurement

The article explores how fair trade and associated private agri-food standards are incorporated into public procurement in Europe. Procurement law is underpinned by principles of equity, non-discrimination and transparency; one consequence is that legal obstacles exist to fair trade being privileged within procurement practice. These obstacles have pragmatic dimensions, concerning whether and how procurement can be used to fulfil wider social policy objectives or to incorporate private standards; they also bring to the fore underlying issues of value. Taking an agency-based approach and incorporating the concept of governability, empirical evidence demonstrates the role played by different actors in negotiating fair trade’s passage into procurement through pre-empting and managing legal risk. This process exposes contestations that arise when contrasting values come together within sustainable procurement. This examination of fair trade in public procurement helps reveal how practices and knowledge on ethical consumption enter into a new governance arena within the global agri-food system.

Social citizenship, housing wealth and the cost of social care: is the Care Act 2014 'Fair'?

This article assesses the extent to which it is ‘fair’ for the government to require owner-occupiers to draw on the equity accumulated in their home to fund their social care costs. The question is stimulated by the report of the Commission on Funding of Care and Support, Fairer Care Funding (the Dilnot Commission) and the subsequent Care Act 2014. The enquiry is located within the framework of social citizenship and the new social contract. It argues that the individualistic, contractarian approach, exemplified by the Dilnot Commission and reflected in the Act, raises questions when considered from the perspective of intergenerational fairness. We argue that our concerns with the Act could be addressed by inculcating an expectation of drawing on housing wealth to fund older age: a policy of asset-based welfare.

Search engine liability for autocomplete suggestions: personality, privacy and the power of the algorithm

This article is concerned with the liability of search engines for algorithmically produced search suggestions, such as through Google’s ‘autocomplete’ function. Liability in this context may arise when automatically generated associations have an offensive or defamatory meaning, or may even induce infringement of intellectual property rights. The increasing number of cases that have been brought before courts all over the world puts forward questions on the conflict of fundamental freedoms of speech and access to information on the one hand, and personality rights of individuals— under a broader right of informational self-determination—on the other. In the light of the recent judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) in Google Spain v AEPD, this article concludes that many requests for removal of suggestions including private individuals’ information will be successful on the basis of EU data protection law, even absent prejudice to the person concerned.

Consent and the use of force: an examination of ‘intervention by invitation’ as a basis for US drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen

Drone strikes are becoming a key feature of the United States’ global military response to nonstate actors, and it has been widely adduced that these strikes have been carried out with the consent of the host states in which such non-state actors reside. This article examines the degree to which assertions of consent (or ‘intervention by invitation’), provided as a justification for drone strikes by the United States in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, can be said to accord with international law. First the article provides a broad sketch of the presence of consent in international law. It then analyses in detail the individual elements of consent as provided by Article 20 of the International Law Commission Draft Articles of State Responsibility. These require that consent should be ‘valid’, given by the legitimate government and expressed by an official empowered to do so. These elements will be dealt with individually, and each in turn will be applied to the cases of Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Finally, the article will examine the breadth of the exculpatory power of consent, and the extent to which it can preclude the wrongfulness of acts carried out in contravention of international law other than the prohibition of the use of force under Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations.

The foundations of the rule of law

Formal conceptions of the rule of law are popular among contemporary legal philosophers. Nonetheless, the coherence of accounts of the rule of law committed to these conceptions is sometimes fractured by elements harkening back to substantive conceptions of the rule of law. I suggest that this may be because at its origins the ideal of the rule of law was substantive through and through. I also argue that those origins are older than is generally supposed. Most authors tend to trace the ideas of the rule of law and natural law back to classical Greece, but I show that they are already recognisable and intertwined as far back as Homer. Because the founding moment of the tradition of western intellectual reflection on the rule of law placed concerns about substantive justice at the centre of the rule of law ideal, it may be hard for this ideal to entirely shrug off its substantive content. It may be undesirable, too, given the rhetorical power of appeals to the rule of law. The rule of law means something quite radical in Homer; this meaning may provide a source of normative inspiration for contemporary reflections about the rule of law.

Solution behavior and surface properties of carboxymethylcellulose acetate butyrate

Solution behavior of carboxymethylcellulose acetate butyrate (CMCAB) in acetone and ethyl acetate has been investigated by small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and capillary viscometry and correlated with the characteristics of CMCAB films. Viscosity and SAXS measurements showed that ethyl acetate is a better solvent than acetone for CMCAB. Thin films of CMCAB were deposited onto silicon wafers (Si/SiO(2)) by spin coating. AFM images revealed that CMCAB spin coated films from solutions prepared in ethyl acetate were homogeneous and flat. However, films obtained from solutions in acetone were very rough. Contact angle measurements with polar and apolar test liquids characterized CMCAB surfaces as hydrophobic and allowed estimating the surface energy of CMCAB. Sum frequency generation vibrational spectroscopy was used to understand the role played by solvents and to gain insight about molecular orientation at Si/SiO(2)/CMCAB interface.

Ether-Bond-Containing Ionic Liquids and the Relevance of the Ether Bond Position to Transport Properties

The ionic liquids (ILs) 1-ethoxyethyl-2,3-dimethylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide, [EtO-(CH(2))(2)MMI][Tf(2)N], and N-(ethoxyethyl)-N-methylmorpholinium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide, [EtO(CH(2))(2)MMor][Tf(2)N] were synthesized, and relevant properties, such as thermal stability, density, viscosity, electrochemical behavior, ionic conductivity, and self-diffusion coefficients for both ionic species, were measured and compared with those of their alkyl counterparts, 1-n-butyl-2,3-dimethylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide, [BMMI][Tf(2)N], and N-n-butyl-N-methylpiperidinium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide,[BMP][Tf(2)N] and N-n-butyl-N-methylmorpholinium bis(trilfuoromethanesulfonyl)imide [BMMor][Tf(2)N][. This comparison was done to evaluate the effects caused by the presence of the ether bond in either the side chain or in the organic cation ring. The salt, LiTf(2)N, was added to the systems to estimate IL behavior with regard to lithium cation transport. Pure [EtO(CH(2))(2)MMI][Tf(2)N] and their LiTf(2)N solutions showed low viscosity and the highest conductivity among the ILs studied. The H(R) (AC conductivity/NMR calculated conductivity ratio) values showed that, after addition of LiTf(2)N, ILs containing the ether bond seemed to have a greater number of charged species. Structural reasons could explain these high observed HR values for [EtO(CH(2))(2)MMor][Tf(2)N].