The months since my investiture have been remarkable in a number of ways. First and foremost, the continuing pandemic has changed the way my office engages with the public, replacing the in-person contact of what is traditionally a highly social role with virtual gatherings. At the same time, I find myself in a unique position to see and celebrate the innovation and strength with which individuals and organizations are responding to the challenges of the day. My goal, as we move through the pandemic and beyond, is to bring all of my fellow citizens along with me on the journey. I hope to shine a light on the heroes and community leaders who are finding meaningful ways to make life better for others, while honouring the traditions of service and the protection of democratic principles that stand at the heart of the viceregal role in Canada.   *   Premier Kenney; Chief Justice Fraser; Mr Speaker; Honourable Ministerial Colleagues; Honourable Daniel Vandal, Minister of Northern Affairs; Members of the Legislative Assembly; British Consul General Carolyn Saunders; Elder Cecil Crier and Indigenous Leaders; Members of the Judiciary; Mr Alain Laurencelle, Chancellor of the Order of St John; distinguished guests; my fellow Albertans; friends and my dear family:   I regret that most of my close family members are unable to be here today, but hopefully they are able to watch online.   I wish to begin by respectfully acknowledging that we are meeting on Treaty 6 territory and a traditional meeting ground and home for many Indigenous people. We pay our respect to the First nation and Metis ancestors of this place and reaffirm our relationship with them. I thank Elder Cecil Crier for Blessings as I begin this extraordinary journey and I also thank Rocky Morin for the Honour Song he will be so generously offering later today.   C’est un grand honneur pour moi de m’addresser à vous audjourd’hui en tant que representante de l’Alberta de sa Majesté La Reine Elizabeth II.   I am both honoured and humbled to be addressing all of you today. I would like to begin by telling you a little about myself and by sharing how so much of my life has been shaped by a sense of hope.   I grew up in a house full of family in Kampala, Uganda, a beautiful place on the other side of the world. Indeed, there was a time when there were 15 of us living together under the same roof. Extended family and nuclear family were blended together. We didn’t know the difference. We lived, we played, and we prayed together. We were simply family, and family was always close, in every sense of the word.

The will to transparency, the scopic drive to see through, to scrutinise naked truth, encounters a significant impediment in the dead letters, the literae mortuae , of law. The puppet show of juridical interpretation, the marionettes that are pulled as heavy signifiers, gothic black-letter dogmas from the pickle jar of precedent, perform a spectacle that is always a trope and costume, a stage and screen away from the viewing subject. As the pop philosopher and ‘narcotheorist’ Laurent de Sutter observes of a prime example of this paradox—the new Palais de Justice, the judicial city and island of law designed by Renzo Piano on the outskirts of Paris entirely in glass façade—it is the opposite of transparent.[1] The intimidating size, the insular location, the monumental aura, and the nomothetic lines of the rectangular structure suggest, at best, a juggernaut of justice. It appears open to the lines of sight but closed and excluding of any miniature mortal who might wish, in some unauthorised fashion, to enter and somehow animate the dead letters or lost epistles of what is to all appearances an instance of vox Dei suprema lex esto . Neither missive nor monumental building was authored in any recognisable manner by the populace.   The megalith that replaces the classical architecture, highly symbolic designs, and artwork of the old Palais on Île de la Cité suggests, in more quotidian terms, a vast office building, an indistinct corporate structure not so dissimilar to a rectangular and stacked version of the World Trade Center. There is nothing legal, no symbol of jurist or justice, in the plain glass façade. The use of windows reverses the traditional windowless spaces of judgement, the subtly in camera character of the courthouse, and suggests the appearance of an interior, a window into the beating heart of legality,  figura fenestris  appearing in law. The glass, however, is more panopticon   and occlusion than it is, in any sensible concept of appearance, likely to be entered by the viewing eye. The passing subject will have their eye deflected to the building as a structure, a scalar manifestation of forensis as a faceless leviathan, a supraterrestrial but blankly uniform   front. The other irony is that if the gaze is focussed beyond the reflections in the panes to pierce the wall of glass, what is visible is primarily a corporate space of passages, corridors, stairs and benches for waiting.[2] The juridical interior is not open to view, and so the eye that penetrates the windows will see only a labyrinth of nondescript open spaces leading inexorably to the closed doors and opaque walls of the inner sancta, the temples of judgement, the hotwired, multiply screened, media-saturated courts. Where earlier legal architecture, replete with columns, classical statuary, and monumental inscriptions in archaic languages, invited attention to the façade, to the appreciation of an illocutionary presence and civic message, a symbolic spectacle of justice and law, the glass façade acts more as a mirror deflecting sight to the presence and size of this particular space station.[3]   The visible leviathan perhaps makes its optical case too vehemently, a hyperbole that often signals decay and demise—but such proleptic prognostications are for other occasions. The paradox to be pursued here is rather the tension between the purported transparency of the exterior, the sense of remediation from stone to glass, and the visually desipient opacity of the interior. An installation of the juridical in the remediated form of a monumental, quadripartite glass structure creates an impermeable visibility, a faceless mausoleum of legal acts that effectuates the trompe-l’œil of being a window into invisible proceedings. The trick and trope of the design is to create the appearance of transparency, the illusion of exposure of the physical presence and public accessibility of the juridical, to make it ordinary, popular, recognisably corporate, while creating a site on the periphery of the city that discourages both viewing and visiting. The apparent is never simply appearance, and to look into is also always a matter of looking away, of noticing and of overlooking, as the expression goes. Law is no different in its scopic choices, its rules of seeing, as also in its blindspots and scotomising aspects.   Scopic desires   Juridical optical desire, by which I mean no more than the institutional regulation of appearance and disappearance, and most specifically, the rules that control looking and being viewed, is strictly regulated. When cameras were allowed for the first time into a terrorist trial in the new Palais, they were prohibited from filming anyone other than the speakers.[4] The lens was blinkered, the images were to be restricted to the orators and the dialogue. Discourse governed sight. Filming in the UK Supreme Court has similar rules, and static cameras that relay bench and advocates. At common law, the regimen of lines of sight, spaces of audition, and optical scrutiny is surprisingly limited, as also are the means of looking, the lenses, ocular and artificial, that are permitted and those that are forbidden. This dates back to section 41 of the Criminal Evidence Act 1925, which makes it an offence to ‘take or attempt to take in any court any photograph, or with a view to publication make or attempt to make in any court any portrait or sketch, of any person’ participating in the proceedings. This statute against visual representation of parties was pitched against the social media of the era, the so-called ‘yellow press’, the legislation responding most directly to popular criticism of a death penalty decision and the wide circulation of a photograph of the judge, a black cloth over his bewigged head.[5] Thenceforth, the tableau vivant  of judicial determinations could only be seen in the minimalist sense of attending the trial, and the viewing cannot be shown to the public in any other form of direct visual reportage. A variety of later criminal laws of procedure further restrain the modes of viewing and relaying proceedings.

Camilla Perera-de Wit is the Secretary-General and Director-General of the Netherlands Arbitration Institute (NAI). Her previous experience in dispute resolution includes her work at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) and at P.R.I.M.E. Finance. She is a board member of the Court for Arbitration of Art (CAfA) in Rotterdam.   Bert Demarsin is a law professor at KU Leuven, who has conducted extensive work on art disputes. His work particularly focuses on provenance and authenticity disputes. He is also a board member of CAfA.   Elliot Wright spoke in December 2020 with two of CAfA’s board members, Camilla Perera-de Wit and Bert Demarsin. We spoke about the nature and current state of art law, including difficulties in recent years, and the role CAfA can play in this field, as well as arbitration more generally.   Art law   Demarsin started by explaining that ‘there are actually four big fields within art and cultural heritage law’. First, art has to be created—so there can be issues with attribution and copyright. Second, art has to be preserved—this is not so true for contemporary art perhaps, but for cultural heritage there are a whole host of regulations, for instance on whether it can be exported or on how it should be restored or preserved. Third, circulation, which Demarsin describes as being the basis of the art business. This field covers auctions, authenticity, theft, and smuggling and other issues relating to the movement of art. Fourth, and finally, is the field Demarsin calls valorisation—which is how one can take advantage of one’s ownership of art, and realise its value through exhibitions or merchandising, and the conflicts that might arise from this.   Whilst conflicts can, and do, arise in all these areas, most arise in respect of circulation, as this is where the business of art trading is carried out. The vast capital in this market means disputes are more likely to arise from any disagreement, and the number of transactions means disagreements are not uncommon. There are also circulation issues in respect of restitution of art, and questions of looted art and cultural heritage. Even now there are cases arising from asserting ownership of art which was unlawfully confiscated in the Second World War, as well as ongoing disputes in relation to cultural heritage such as that surrounding the Elgin Marbles, and more recent debates on the restitution of colonial heritage. Here, Demarsin refers to his native Belgium’s colony in the Congo, but of course other European states, such as the UK, similarly seized art in that period. These are the disputes which feature more prominently in the public press, and therefore also the public conscience more generally, but for art dealers authentication is a more common and important problem.   Perera-de Wit then spoke about some of the features of art law which present unique challenges in dispute resolution. Speaking from her experience in dispute resolution, including at the Permanent Court for Arbitration (PCA) and at P.R.I.M.E. Finance, she pointed to the increasing complexity and globalisation of disputes, including in the art world. In the art world, parties are increasingly likely to be based in different jurisdictions, and traceable agreements documenting the transactions are not always in place. Where disputes arise, they can be technical in nature. They benefit from specialist legal knowledge as well as expert factual analysis. That expertise is not always readily available in the local courts, which makes alternative dispute resolution an attractive option in the art world. This also led to the founding of CAfA, to prevent such disputes being resolved by what could be ‘a roll of the dice’, as Perera-de Wit put it, as to whether the dispute was resolved in a time-efficient manner with an outcome that the markets can rely upon.

Count Sperello di Serego Alighieri is an astronomer descended from Dante Alighieri, author of the  Divine Comedy .   Antoine de Gabrielli is a prominent French businessman descended from Cante dei Gabrielli, the judge who condemned Dante to exile.   Dante Alighieri lived from 1265 to 1321. During his lifetime, he was a pharmacist, a poet, and a politician. His study of medicines nourished an already scientific mind and allowed him to stock pharmacy shelves with his works. (Books were sold in pharmacies at the time). Dante’s work as a poet led to the  Divine Comedy , among other masterpieces. The  Comedy is regarded as one of the greatest works of Western literature and the most significant in the Italian language. Dante’s time as a politician, however, led to his undoing. He became embroiled in the fractious Guelph–Ghibelline rifts of fourteenth-century Florence. Whilst he was being held by the Pope in Rome on false pretences, Dante’s native Florence was taken by a hostile element within his own faction, the Guelphs. There he was tried in absentia on two politically motivated charges of corruption. Cante dei Gabrielli, the mercenary captain, a master of political manoeuvres and ad hoc judge, found Dante guilty on both charges, sentencing him to exile for life. If Dante were ever to return to Florence, he would be executed. Dante never returned. He died in Ravenna, where his body remains—much to the dismay of successive generations of politicians in Florence. This year is the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death. To mark this anniversary, a leading Italian lawyer, Alessandro Traversi, is holding a retrial, revisiting the events of 1302 to reassess the validity of these convictions, both as a matter of law and principle. The most direct descendants of the affronted Dante Alighieri and the judge who condemned him, Cante dei Gabrielli, are Count Sperello Alighieri and Antoine de Gabrielli. They will both be present at this trial. Count Alighieri is today one of Italy’s most celebrated astronomers. de Gabrielli is a prominent French businessman—in an amusing irony, the dei Gabrielli family, generations after exiling Dante to another Italian state, themselves fled Italy altogether and moved to France, modifying their name accordingly.   This retrial raises important points of law and justice and marks a poignant moment in the seven-centuries-long lifetime of a perceived wrong. Count Alighieri and de Gabrielli have more to say.   *   CJLPA : What exactly are the nature and purpose of this ‘retrial’? Has it been portrayed accurately by journalists around the world?   Count Sperello Alighieri : This ‘retrial’ is, for me, an amusement. It is not a formal legal process nor an officially sanctioned public inquiry. I do not see it as anything serious, simply an interesting event that will help preserve the memory of Dante. The original trial occurred long ago. Whilst it is true that very few descendants of Dante ever returned to Florence (in fact, I only went there for the first time a few years ago), this is not part of a deliberate attempt to avoid the place—there was simply no occasion for us to visit! The Alighieri family have long stopped feeling the injustice of the 1302 trial.   Traversi, the lawyer who proposed the 2021 retrial, falsely claimed to the international press that I had initiated these proceedings. It was Traversi who initiated them and who invited me to have a role. His untrue claim to the contrary almost led me to resign from my role in the trial. Alarmingly, the British press—in particular, the Times  and Guardian —did not question the Traversi press release   or the scant accounts of the retrial in Italian media. They did not check with me. This has significantly damaged my impression of the British press, as well as the impression held by intellectual circles within Italy of the British press. The Spanish press had the nous to check—the Spanish!

William Christie is an American-born French conductor and harpsichordist. He read History of Art at Harvard and then Music at Yale, where he specialised in the baroque repertoire. Opposed to the Vietnam war, he moved to France in 1970 and pioneered the renewal of French baroque music by creating his musical ensemble Les Arts Florissants in 1979. Since 1985, he has lived in his seventeenth-century manor in Thiré (Vendée) which hosts a yearly festival of baroque music, Les Jardins de William Christie. A gifted pedagogue, in 2002 he founded the Jardin des Voix, a biennially-run academy for young singers, and he regularly teaches at the Juilliard School and the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Paris.   Claire Roserot de Melin is General Manager of the Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse in France. She previously worked as an artistic coordination director, at the Opera of Rouen and for various companies and ensembles. She used to be an oboist.   CJLPA : What is the current situation for the music industry? What sorts of scheme exist to protect musicians in these troubled times?   Claire Roserot de Melin : There are two dimensions to the issue of musicians’ social protections in this crisis. Even though some gaps in social protection remain, musicians have been better protected in France than anywhere else. Firstly, the existing system of intermittents du spectacle  has enabled artists to get social benefits as any other employees. Paid for by employers and workers’ contributions, it allows performing artists to claim benefits for the fallow periods between intermittent contracts, as long as they have worked for at least 507 hours in ten and a half months. The second aspect is the introduction of an année blanche  which consists of the extension of the intermittents entitlement to social benefits in line with the 2019 fiscal year. This system is relatively effective but it nonetheless excludes intermittent  new entrants and non-national artists. Trade unions and employers are asking for the prolongation of the année blanche  after 31 August, when they are supposed to come to an end, and for more financial support for entities responsible for artists’ day-to-day lives, such as artists’ health support groups, which have been strongly impacted by the loss in revenue. But our main priority remains to reopen concert halls, and we have been in talks with the Ministry of Culture and the Prime Minister for months. Major public cultural institutions such as the Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse have a leading role to play in protecting the artistic ecosystem. We have fulfilled every work contract regardless of nationality, and permanent artists have pursued rehearsals and recordings as usual. In contrast, privately funded institutions have been terribly hit, economically, by the closures of concert halls, and some might unfortunately never reopen.   William Christie : I do not think there are such things as schemes but, rather, less ambitious protocols focussing too much on sanitary issues and leaving musicians aside with no prospects. Concert halls, musical venues, and theatres have been closed since March 2020, with the exception of Spain and Monaco in Europe, and musicians have no other option than to play concerts without a public. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have had more than 100 concerts and six opera productions cancelled, and the future is still very unclear. France has nonetheless been good to us with the system of ‘ chômage partiel ’, but there is a difference between having a normal professional life and one with no prospects. France takes great pride in its culture, l’exception culturelle française , which is used as a political weapon, and its showcase abroad, yet its political significance has eroded domestically since the 2000s, and the time France had visionary culture ministries seems gone.   CJLPA : How would you see the longer-term effects of COVID on the music industry, if any?

Introduction   Artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled prediction algorithms create multiple challenges to existing ideas about human agency and how the results of this agency may be governed. Weak or absent transparency in the operation of computational systems is changing the meaning of individual autonomy as AI enables vast numbers of new capabilities previously designed and implemented by humans.[1] The prevailing wisdom is that AI innovation is best driven by commercial market incentives. Investment in refining AI-inspired commercial strategies and techniques that are less and less susceptible to external (and even internal) control or oversight is central to futuristic visions of data-enabled societies. Among the many sectors entangled with AI innovation is the art world.   Hodge SCJ defines AIs as ‘computer systems able to perform tasks which traditionally have required human intelligence or tasks whose completion is beyond human intelligence’.[2] Computational technologies having this ability include machine learning, neural networks and predictive algorithms. When employed to create artefacts perceived as art, the resulting AI-assisted and AI-generated artworks are viewed either as a destabilising threat to the traditional art world or as an opening up of opportunities for new forms of expression. At present, AI art is principally the domain of computer science expertise and its AI component is mainly being driven by incentives in the commercial marketplace.   The agency to produce AI art has been harnessed to a commercial yoke. Is this an inevitable or desirable state of affairs? This paper examines the scope for ensuring that the expansion of AI in the art world does not lead to the enclosure of all these new forms of artworks in the commercial realm. It explores whether and how digitisation and computational advance can help to democratise art, opening rather than enclosing the artistic commons.[3]   The (short) commercial history of AI art   Google used its DeepDream neural network to classify artworks in 2015 and observed the potential for this AI system to be used to remix visual images. When the system was shared feely with artists, experimentation began. This led to a gallery showing of DeepDream-inspired artworks in 2016 at Gray Area, a San Francisco gallery and arts foundation. Artbreeder followed soon after as an open collaborative platform, with users making some 127 million AI-generated works at this writing.   Although computerisation in the artworld was not new, it has been attracting increasing attention. AI art entered the market with a Christie’s sale in 2018 of an AI-assisted portrait of a fictional character, Edmond de Belamy. Obvious, a Paris-based art collective, trained an algorithm to generate the AI artwork, but the algorithm itself had been created by Robbie Barret and downloaded from an open source platform. Initially valued at USD 10k, the artwork was auctioned for USD 432k, a premium achieved by being the first time such an artwork had entered the commercial market. It was created using a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)—an AI system that uses neural networks to produce a generator and a discerner image, the former developing new output images and the latter testing these against training data to see if they comply with patterns found in that data. In the de Belamy case, the algorithms were trained on WikiArt repositories of paintings. Obvious made the decisions to select, print and market the image and the company received the proceeds with no payment being made to the developer of the AI system.[4]

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to more than 176 million confirmed cases and over 3.8 million confirmed deaths. These numbers are likely dwarfed by the true rates of infection and death, which will remain unknown well into the future and will likely never be fully elucidated.[1] During this time, several countries have vied for the unhappy honour of being the worst affected by the pandemic, including Italy in early 2020, the United States through 2020 and early 2021, and most recently India in April and May of 2021.   The emergence of highly effective vaccines in late 2020 and early 2021 suggested some relief might be on the horizon. The optimism proved to be somewhat short-lived, as questions of vaccination and vaccine availability (not unanticipated, but now real) arose. India provides perhaps the most dramatic example: despite the initiation of vaccination programmes, India suffered a devastating second wave of infection and death in 2021 that eclipsed the relatively mild first wave of 2020.   With this second wave appearing to recede, and other parts of the world cautiously reopening, one of the most pressing questions related to the pandemic is surely whether we can exploit this respite and vaccinate as many individuals as possible, to delay or dampen future waves of SARS-CoV-2 infection. With this in mind, we can consider the total human population as either vaccinated or unvaccinated. Every individual whose status changes from unvaccinated to vaccinated represents a further step in controlling the pandemic. The unvaccinated group can in turn be divided into subpopulations of individuals who are involuntarily unvaccinated (for instance, because of being immunocompromised or lacking access to vaccines) and individuals who remain unvaccinated by choice. The latter group—comprising those unvaccinated by choice—may shortly become the main barrier to achieving the long-awaited herd immunity. The herd immunity threshold for any infectious disease is usually substantially lower than 100% population immunity. If vaccine- hesitant individuals can be persuaded to seek vaccination, it may be possible to acquire some form of herd immunity without needing to engage in the vastly more daunting task of persuading vaccine refusers to seek vaccination.[2]   In this essay I would like to examine some of the sources of vaccine hesitation I have observed amongst friends, family, and acquaintances in India. It would be preposterous to claim to speak ‘for Indians’ or provide a view on ‘the Indian experience’. Rather, I relate some instances—largely from my own experience of the pandemic in India— to illustrate the types of vaccine hesitancy that might be operating in India and elsewhere in the world. My hope is to frame my observations in such a way that they may be amenable to more rigorous survey studies that could elucidate the distribution of these attitudes. My general point is that there are numerous types of vaccine hesitation, and many of these differ quite dramatically (in kind and not just degree) from the beliefs characterising the anti-vaccine movement.   Distinctions between vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccine beliefs   Earlier, the phrase ‘vaccine hesitancy’ brought to my mind the image of an angry, ill-informed, unreasonable individual whose refusal to receive a vaccine put others at risk, delayed herd immunity at best, and at worst allowed new and more virulent SARS-CoV-2 variants to evolve. I have since found that such a stereotype is probably fairly common amongst pro-vaccine individuals. Whilst vaccine hesitancy may indeed increase the probability of these outcomes, there is significantly more nuance to the matter of vaccine hesitation than such a narrow stereotype can accommodate. Consequently, my own views on vaccine hesitancy have been broadened by its (at first alarming) frequency amongst friends and family.

Is a judge more like an artist or a scientist? This seems to be a trick question, and yet extreme versions of both perspectives have, at one time or another, been advocated. For instance, James Boyd White, often regarded as the founder of the ‘Law and Literature’ movement, considered lawyers to be artists, and the solving of complex legal problems to be akin to high art.[1] Conversely, Christopher Columbus Langdell, once Dean of Harvard Law School, believed that ‘law is a science, and that all the available materials of that science are contained in printed books’,[2] such that timeless and unchangeable legal principles could be inductively reasoned from the corpus of case law, thereafter providing definitive answers to any legal dispute.   Neither of these viewpoints has garnered widespread support. Nevertheless, the question is of more than purely academic interest: in light of the increasing presence of computation within the professional landscape of law it has a practical application.[3] If judicial decision-making is purely, or even predominantly, a science then it is highly susceptible to automation; on the other hand, if judicial decision-making is closer to an art-form, then it fails to be seen how artificial intelligence can effectively replicate it.   Instead, this article explores the alternative viewpoint that a judge is more appropriately regarded as a craftsperson, with legal judgments being craft-objects rather than ‘high art’ or scientific expositions. The first half of this article defends this view, whilst the second half applies it to the contemporary issue of AI (artificial intelligence) judges.   I. How is a judge like a carpenter?   In perhaps the most sustained comparison of law and craft,[4] Brett G Scharffs identifies four ways in which the law overlaps with distinctive aspects of craftsmanship.[5] First, the products of craft are not mass-produced, but are instead ‘hand-crafted’ to particular briefs—similarly, legal judgments and advocacy are tailored towards specific cases.[6] Second, craft is medium-specific: just as carpenters are those who work with wood, legal practitioners are those who work with rhetoric and law.[7] Third, craft-objects have use-value which supersedes their aesthetic value; although legal judgments may be persuasive, and even artful in their concision and style,[8] their ultimate value is in resolving legal disputes by applying the relevant law to given fact scenarios.[9] Fourth, craft, as a practice, is defined by its strong relationship with tradition (as opposed to pursuing novelty), a characteristic that can be observed in common law jurisdictions, where the legal principle of stare decisis (‘to stand by things decided’) compels courts to abide by legal precedent.[10]   Collectively, these factors undermine the view that law is an art-form. Art is not medium-specific, as it can be sculptural, dramatic, visual, literary, and so on; in contrast, only a legal judgment or statute can be considered law. Similarly, art is not function-focussed as, although certain works of art may perform certain functions (such as social commentary or entertainment), there is no specific or predetermined function which art, as a diverse human activity, must fulfil. Finally, whilst there are certainly artistic traditionalists, art is not solely a backwards-facing phenomenon, since, unlike law, it has no preconceived ties to liberal values like certainty and regularity, and so can permit (and celebrate) iconoclasm and radical experimentation.[11] As such, even though law-making can be seen as a creative act, the nature of its creativity is often counterposed to that of art-making: ‘Law tells. Art shows. Law rationalizes. Art feels. Law renders definitude. Art explores infinity’.[12]

What does it mean to defend the dead? To tend to the Black dead and dying: to tend to the Black person, to Black people, always living in the push toward our death? It means work. It is work: hard emotional, physical, and intellectual work that demands vigilant attendance to the needs of the dying, to ease their way, and also to the needs of the living. —Christina Sharpe[1]   A world divided into compartments, a motionless, Manicheistic world, a world of statues: the statue of the general who carried out the conquest, the statue of the engineer who built the bridge; a world which is sure of itself, which crushes with its stones the backs flayed by whips: this is the colonial world. —Frantz Fanon[2]   The fall   On 7 June 2020, amidst anger in the wake of the murder of George Floyd (who suffocated under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin), the statue of Bristol slave trader Edward Colston was pulled down by Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters before being unceremoniously dragged through the streets and dumped in Bristol harbour.[3] The statue was erected in 1895 to celebrate Colston’s philanthropic contributions—donations to schools and hospitals—to the city of Bristol. These were funded by his involvement in the Royal Africa Company (RAC), which was responsible for shipping up to 84,500 slaves to the United Kingdom from West Africa, and for at least 19,300 fatalities.[4] This monument to Colston was one of many late-Victorian attempts to, quite literally, cast the mythology of British exceptionalism. It should be unsurprising that the commissioning of Colston’s statue coincided with a period of violent corporate-colonial expansion. This was the ‘Scramble for Africa’, which followed the partitioning of the continent during the 1884–85 Berlin Conference by European powers.[5] Empire soldiers attacked kings and chiefs who failed or refused to comply with the attempts of the British Empire to establish commercial monopolies on raw materials. They plundered villages, raped women, and looted artefacts and regalia. In the years immediately before and after the installation of Colston’s statue, the British Empire waged several small wars and punitive expeditions across West Africa,[6] notably the Anglo-Ashanti war of 1895, which established the British Empire protectorate over Ashanti, and the Benin Expedition of 1897, which resulted in the sack of Benin City and theft of the Benin Bronzes. This corporate-colonial expansion was undertaken on ostensibly anti-slavery, humanitarian grounds. It purported to free enslaved Africans from the fetish rule of ritual sacrifice and cannibalism and to establish free trade. It therefore upheld the post-Wilberforce myth that Britain stood for the progressive emancipation of slaves the world over, whilst consolidating material dominance over Black Africans through a racialised capitalism. It was a Victorian ‘war on terror’ comparable to the liberal interventionism of the Major and Blair governments.[7] The paradoxes of post-slavery Britain were thus, literally, and figuratively, embodied in the statue of Colston from the moment it was erected. The statue projected to future generations a euchronia in which colonial exploitation was compatible with charitable goodwill. It stands as an index of the hypocrisy of the British Empire, which, after slavery, cloaked its expansion of imperial power abroad in the language of liberation whilst continuing to celebrate slave owners at home. Therefore, we can say that the end of slavery in 1833 had done nothing to halt the implementation of a state-backed ideology of White supremacy and imperialism. In 1895, three years before the Colston statue was unveiled, this ideology was given a particularly theatrical expression, to much fanfare. Incoming Secretary of State for the Colonies Joseph Chamberlain, father of future prime minister Neville Chamberlain, said the following:   My career as Secretary of State for the Colonies is given yet to be made; but I will say that no one has ever been wafted into office with more favorable gales. I will venture to claim two qualifications for the great office which I hold, and which, to my mind, without making any invidious distinctions, is one of the most important that can be held by any Englishman. These qualifications are that, I believe in the British Empire and, in the second place, I believe the British race is the greatest of governing races that the world has ever seen. I say that not merely as an idle boast, but as proved and evidenced by the success which we have had in administering the vast dominions which are connected with these small island, and I believe accordingly that there are no limits to its future.[8]   Colston’s statue is now in the Bristol Museum. However, that it ‘swam with the fishes’ is testament to a growing, populist antiracist sentiment in Britain, and to the waning of imperial hagiographies instantiated by Chamberlain and others. Such hagiographies would sustain Frantz Fanon’s manicheistic ‘world of statues’, in which Colston, Robert Milligan, and Cecil Rhodes tower over us, elevated by seven feet of Portland stone. There is something like poetic justice in the rippling of the water as Colston sinks into the harbour. It can be watched and rewatched ad infinitum on the internet, as can the (unfortunately memetic) murder of George Floyd, which sparked the protests. Colston must have thought himself master of this harbour, and his RAC ships, water foaming in their wake, would have docked there. The poetry of Colston’s dememorialisation was only enriched by the fact that, as Saima Nasar has noted in her study of Colston and memory, Colston’s statue was drowned near Pero Bridge. The bridge was named after Pero Jones, a slave transported to Bristol from the Caribbean Island of Nevis by the merchant John Pinney (1740–1818).[9] The ghosts of Jones and slaves like him have not so much been exorcised by the fall of Colston as put to work again. This work is not the kind of work to which they were accustomed hundreds of years ago. It is not kind of work that turns bodies into flesh, it is not the kind of work that makes men and women inhuman, and it is not the kind of work valued only by yield. It is the work of the Black dead, it is the work of haunting which can only be done by spirits, it is the work of the children of slaves, it is the work of undoing the Whiteness of the world.

The application of print privilege (pre-copyright) legislation to Venetian cartography came about by chance.[1] While the Venetian Republic was not the first state in Europe to construct a system of printing privileges, it was the earliest to grant limited monopolies for cartography and artwork. Intended originally for bestowing printed book privileges, the wording of the sixteenth century legislation and printing culture of Early Modern Venice enabled the expansion of the privilegio  from texts to cartography, and, finally, to independent images. Print legislation decreed by the Venetian government did not differentiate between print categories: books, cartography and independent images. These classifications have since been projected onto the then singular medium. The laws only stipulated that compositions eligible for exclusive reproduction rights must be ‘works on paper’. The broad phrasing enabled a legal realist approach to requesting cartographical print privileges; a linguistic loophole. Rather than remain within the confines of the intended material—printed books—the government steadily began to receive an influx of applications for ‘works on paper’ of other types.   Throughout the sixteenth century, mappamondi  (world maps) were often proposed for special protection by the Venetian Republic. In mid-1555, Floriano (d 1560/75) submitted a request to privilege a circular world map.[2] The Mappamondo  (c 1556 or 1555 mv) was greatly inspired by ancient mathematical philosophy and by contemporaneous cartographical designs in an attempt to update the mapping of the globe (fig 1).[3] Although this map is far less well known than its primary source of inspiration, Gerard Mercator’s (1512-94) Orbis Imago  (c 1538, fig 2) printed in Rupelmonde near Antwerp, Floriano’s Mappamondo is significant when examined in the context of Venetian art legal history.[4] Many privileged prints are not currently considered the finest examples produced, nor even the highlights of an individual’s oeuvre . Censorial licenses were mandatory for print circulation, whereas privileges were optional, costly legal procedures. Additional resources required in applying for exclusive reproduction rights meant that printmakers and publishers were selective in their requests for privileges. Mercator did not seek a Venetian privilegio  for Orbis Imago  while Floriano did obtain a limited monopoly for his Mappamondo .[5] Applications for the legally designated privilegio were based on the privilege holder’s speculation regarding which multiples would be successful, or in an effort to prevent others from copying designs from other media that had proven worthwhile. As today, one could not predict with certainty which map styles would sell or influence the next generation of designers. For a privilege in Early Modern Venice, authorship was less imperative than timely bureaucracy. Fig 1. Mappamondo (Antonio Floriano c 1556 (1555 mv), copperplate engraving, 46 x 84cm). Osher Map Library, University of Southern Maine, Portland; 263. Courtesy of the Osher Map Library, University of Southern Maine. Fig 2. Orbis Imago (Gerard Mercator c 1538, copperplate engraving, 50.7 x 32.3cm). John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, Providence; 2111. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. In defense of his mid-1555 request for special protection, Floriano posited three main points: (1) the map would aid in the education of cosmography as the entire world had been reduced to a single, spherical plane; (2) the work was entirely new and innovative; and (3) his arduous efforts in advancing cartographical study had taken so much time and effort that he wished to ensure proper recompense in the consumer market.[6] Floriano’s justifications simultaneously employed moral rights and economic arguments to endorse his need for a privilegio . In his petition, Floriano did not name the engraver commissioned to construct the plate, nor stipulate the beneficiaries of successful fraud or counterfeit suits. His sole proviso was that others should neither print, nor publish the Mappamondo  for a period of 20 years.[7]

Introduction An international crime is ‘an act universally recognised as criminal, which is considered a grave matter of international concern and for some valid reason cannot be left within the exclusive jurisdiction of the State that would have control over it under ordinary circumstances’.[1] This essay will firstly examine whether proposed definitions of terrorism as a crime under customary international law should be accepted, and then discuss whether terrorism should fall within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). It will examine the arguments for and against, including the potential to politicise the Court, the effect on the war on terror, the benefits to defendants and the impact on the role of the Security Council. Ultimately, this essay will conclude that whilst adding terrorism to the ICC’s jurisdiction could have an overall benefit, the practical reality renders this difficult to accomplish. Terrorism in Customary International Law To determine whether terrorism should be an international crime, it is important to establish a definition of terrorism. Traditionally, terrorism has been criminalised via a series of transnational treaties, which criminalise the modus operandi used by terrorists.[2] However, these treaties do not provide a general definition of terrorism. Therefore, it is important to focus on treaties which seek to create a general definition of terrorism, as the specific definitions would criminalise that specific act, such as the hijacking of an aeroplane, rather than the broader concept of terrorist acts, which may take many different forms.[3] Therefore, the two most important definitions to consider are found in The Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, as it is the most widely ratified treaty containing a general definition of terrorism, and the Interlocutory Decision on the Applicable Law , as this decision argued that terrorism already existed as a crime under customary international law.[4] The Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism includes a close generic definition of terrorism,[5] however, it only applies in situations of armed conflict, and acts of terrorism can already be categorised as war crimes in this context.[6] It is important to note that this definition did not have widespread consensus at its creation.[7] Instead, most states ratified the Convention in response to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373, which imposed an obligation on states to ratify it following 9/11.[8] Therefore, this definition is unlikely to have strong support from states for the basis of a crime of terrorism in international criminal law. Considering that states opted against including a crime of terrorism in the Rome Statute, it seems unlikely that they would agree on including a definition that they were largely required to ratify. Furthermore, the ICC already has jurisdiction over attacks aimed at civilians during armed conflict.[9] As such, this definition should not be used to form the basis of defining terrorism as an international crime.

In Northern Ireland, one of the most significant human rights instruments resulting from the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement in 1998 is Section 75 (s. 75) of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. It legally binds public authorities to not only have due regard to the promotion of equality of opportunity amongst nine protected categories of persons (those of differing religious belief, political opinion, racial group, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender, those with dependents and those without, those with a disability and those without) but also to have regard to the desirability of promoting good relations amongst those of differing political opinion, religious belief or racial group. As part of s. 75, public authorities are required to assess through policy screenings and equality impact assessments (EQIAs) whether their policies would have any adverse impact on the protected categories of persons.[1] Whilst s. 75 has been praised for its innovation,[2] the breadth and magnitude of what it seeks to accomplish provides a challenge in terms of its enforceability. Traditionally, s. 75 could only be enforced by its accompanying monitoring body, the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland (ECNI). However, a recent decision in the case of Re Toner, [3] where a complaint was brought by a blind woman against Lisburn City Council on a number of grounds for failing to consider the needs of blind persons in the development of a Public Realm Scheme (PRS),[4] has changed this. It very significantly opened the door for complaints of ‘substantive’ breaches of s. 75 to be brought under judicial review,[5] an idea put forward in Re Neill’s Application [6] that had previously yet to gain traction. Although not clearly defined in the dicta of Re Toner , a ‘substantive’ breach in this particular case would seem to constitute a failure on the part of public authorities greater than ‘some simple technical omission or procedural failing’ as well as a failure to take action when concerns arose earlier in the implementation of the PRS.[7] Additionally, the court specifies that the breach was longstanding in nature and must be weighed against the benefits there might have been if the proper s. 75 considerations had been made.[8] Allowing complaints of substantive breaches invites questions about the extent to which the court should get involved in determining the legality of a public authority’s decision under Wednesbury unreasonableness.[9] In Re Toner, the issue centred not on the legality of the final decision made by the public authority but rather on whether the correct process had been taken to reach that decision, as the court maintained a pre-existing principle derived from R (Hurley and Moore) v Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills [10] that it is for the public authority to make the final decision.[11] Nevertheless, by giving s. 75 complaints access to judicial review; Re Toner opens the door to the possible scrutiny of decisions under Wednesbury . I foreshadow there will be increased scrutiny of public authorities’ decisions under Wednesbury, given the complexities that arise due to Northern Ireland’s history of conflict. This is because the current principles underpinning ‘due regard’, which I will shortly discuss, largely derive from England and Wales and do not account for the difficulties in ascertaining what adverse impact looks like for the groups of ‘political opinion’ and ‘religious belief’, which require unique considerations in a context such as Northern Ireland. Additionally, it is difficult for public authorities with limited resources to extract the evidence necessary to measure the adverse impact within these groups. This can be attributed in part to a lack of funding for public authorities to carry out meaningful consultations with those from the s. 75 groups on how a policy may impact them.[12] With little evidence to draw on, public authorities are arguably more susceptible to complaints of a ‘substantive breach’ and, therefore, subject to the possibility of both an ECNI investigation and judicial review. Decisions made on ‘political opinion’ and ‘religious belief’ are therefore more likely to be questioned because public authorities will have had to make them on the basis of their own judgement and personal experience due to lack of evidence. Because such decisions would be highly politicised, the courts may need to intervene through Wednesbury to ensure impartiality. To demonstrate how the new possibility of judicial review may influence public authorities, I consider how the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI), Northern Ireland’s leading arts and cultural development agency, may be affected. Although quite a niche public authority, it serves as an interesting example of a public authority that may be more susceptible to committing a ‘substantial’ breach of s. 75, given the complex nature of obtaining evidence and measuring impact in relation to the arts.[13] Before turning to a more detailed discussion of how the issues may play out in practice, I will firstly discuss Re Toner’s facts, issues, and reasoning.