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Introduction The human–animal relationship, as a concept of study, spans multiple disciplines and indeed has been an area of interest across both time and geography. At its core are historic and cultural norms which often go unchecked and unquestioned. The set of legal rules governing human–animal relationships is known as animal law.[1] This area of law is a complex web of rules that govern many relationship types and situations related to animals. At an academic level this area of law is divided across ideological lines—welfare versus rights. The two schools converge in some areas of thought but are largely at odds in relation to their respective positions. The ideological position of those in the animal welfare school of thought is that animals can be utilised by humans for their daily living needs but that it must be done in a manner that upholds certain welfare standards in terms of the animals’ experience of life.[2] Whereas, the animal rights ideological position perceives animals as sentient beings who should have certain rights to uphold their place in society as living creatures.[3] This ideological division is not the only problem evident in the animal law field. Additional critiques include: it being static;[4] selective in terms of application; lacking in legal and transnational protection regimes; and primarily contained in secondary law, which is typically not legally binding.[5] Peters has argued that the current top-down approach runs the risk of lacking cultural sensitivities and imposing cultural and imperial standards.[6] Thus, she suggests that animal law will only positively contribute to society when it grows from the bottom up.[7] Finally, little has been done to align animal law and human rights law in a complementary manner (ie exploring and accounting for human cultural variation when designing and applying the laws). Animal law, like environmental law, is central to population health, environmental sustainability, and biodiversity. Zoonotic diseases are a real risk to the world’s population; soil erosion due to overgrazing is a serious environmental risk; and deforestation is detrimental to the planet’s biodiversity. As such, animal law has global reach and impact and thus its fractured nature needs urgent attention. The COVID-19 crisis has focused experts’ and indeed citizens’ minds on the area and yet discussions remain largely restricted to discipline-specific debates and traditional approaches to regulations and guiding practices. It may be argued that animal law is following a similar trajectory to environmental law, which only recently became a key legal speciality. Environmental law is now a rapidly growing area with over 1200 courts and tribunals operating across 44 countries.[8] It has become a legitimised legal speciality as a result of a number of facilitators: its alignment with human rights, public support for environmental issues, scientific support for a need for action, and a public health/survival debate.[9] Animal law has not had the benefit of these key drivers heretofore. However, there is now increasing public support for ethical produce and the recent COVID-19 pandemic has brought the human–animal relationship into mainstream discourse.[10] This discourse is now underpinned by scientific arguments about public health, providing the green shoots that drove the legitimisation of environmental law. As such it may be an ideal time to revisit animal law using an empirical lens.

Dr Mostafa El Feki is Director of the New Library of Alexandria. He has been a Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo, and has held numerous posts in the Egyptian government, including Ambassador to Austria.   Dr Mostafa El Feki has witnessed five Egyptian presidencies and been prominent in the political sphere for the last four and a half decades. He is well placed to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of each Egyptian President to have served over the last 50 years. He outlines in detail how each President has helped or hindered Egypt’s status as a major Middle Eastern state, in addition to how the Egyptian populace have felt about each President.   I have to be honest and say that if I answered this question based on my own personal emotions, I would favour President Nasser’s legacy above all else. However, objectively speaking, with regard to stratagem and policy-making, I am compelled to highlight President El Sadat’s policies for their success. At first glance, this may feel like a contradiction. However, I don’t feel it is so. To offer you just a snapshot of my thought process regarding your question, President Nasser’s charisma and leadership were extremely attractive to my generation. For us, and many after us, he was a national hero. However, President El Sadat’s wisdom and political initiatives were also well received by the majority of the Egyptian people, especially in relation to the breakthrough he accomplished towards securing peace between Egypt and Israel in 1978, an accomplishment for which he was rightfully recognised by virtue of his ascertainment of a Nobel Peace Prize.   Having ‘worked most closely with [Hosni Mubarak] during [his] time as Political Secretary’ (July 1985–October 1992), Dr El Feki speaks candidly of this highly controversial President, whose 30-year reign incited the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Acknowledging that ‘Mubarak was a highly nationalistic leader and had a great career in the military service within the Egyptian Air Force’, Dr El Feki also expresses his reservations. ‘His problem was that he didn’t take full advantage of the “time factor” despite his extensive presidency, hence losing out on several valuable opportunities for the country during his term in office’.   With respect to the 2011 Egyptian revolution, Dr El Feki identifies ‘the main goal of the revolution’ as ‘the call for social justice and equality in Egypt. This is the reason you could see signs reading “A loaf of bread and justice” at the heart of the mobilisation in Tahrir Square […] This is also why many raised the picture of Nasser, as he was considered the symbol of social justice during his period of leadership’. Dr El Feki insists, ‘[i]t is also important to note that none of the slogans of the Egyptian revolution made an indication towards foreign policy or propaganda against Israel’.   When asked about Mohammed Morsi, a President yet more controversial whose term was cut short after one year and one month, Dr El Feki keeps his response brief and forthright. ‘With respect to President Morsi, he had no remarkable achievements during his tenure and his policies were widely considered to be a reflection of those the Muslim Brotherhood adopted’. When pressed on why Morsi’s tenure proved fruitless, Dr El Feki insists that ‘he made no progress whatsoever in any field of development. In fact, I believe his entire presidency was an immense failure’.

Imagine Boris Johnson ordering the bombing of Edinburgh because the Scots voted for independence in a referendum, or the British Government declaring war against Northern Ireland because it wished to join the Republic of Ireland. Unlike the political dialogue and the search for legal remedies that dissatisfied nations of the United Kingdom utilise to resolve their conflicts, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, who have been natives of the territory for centuries, have been the target of years of demonisation in Azerbaijan for voting for independence in 1991 as the Soviet Union was collapsing. Karabakh was a ‘devolved statelet’ within the Soviet legal system. Ilham Aliyev, President of Azerbaijan, has on numerous occasions declared that ‘Karabakh is Azerbaijan’.[1] But one wonders: why would a leader of a country bomb its own people, a region of its own territory? The simple answer is that from a legal perspective Karabakh has never been part of the Republic of Azerbaijan.   On 27 September 2020, Azerbaijan—with substantial Turkish military involvement and thousands of mercenaries from Syria— attacked the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh to ‘liberate’ it from the control of the self-declared Republic of Artsakh. By the end of a 44-day devastating war, the Armenians not only lost control of significant parts of Karabakh, but also the seven regions around Karabakh, which they had controlled since the first Karabakh war in the early 1990s, as a security buffer zone and as a bargaining chip in the negotiations process for final status.   After the recent ‘historic victory’, President Ilham Aliyev declared that ‘there is no Nagorno-Karabakh conflict anymore’. It was resolved militarily. Nevertheless, the conflict—the core of which has been Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and the Karabakh Armenians right of self-determination—remains unresolved. A ceasefire agreement was signed on 9 November 2020 with Russian mediation (2,000 Russian peacekeepers have been deployed in Karabakh), but the absence of a final settlement or a peace treaty keeps this oldest conflict in the former Soviet Union unresolved for the foreseeable future. Baku has portrayed the war as a ‘last resort’ response to decades-long Armenian intransigence to negotiate a settlement. Yet, since 1994, the only ‘status’ the Azerbaijani leadership was willing to grant to the Karabakh Armenians was ‘highest form of autonomy’—more or less similar to the status Karabakh had during Soviet times. Neither self-determination nor independence were ever on Baku’s agenda. Yet the legal and political developments that occurred towards the end of the Soviet Union are still relevant to the final political and legal solution of the Karabakh conflict.   On 30 August 1991, the Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic (Azerbaijan SSR) declared independence by restoring the independent Republic of Azerbaijan that existed between 1918 and 1920, and declared the establishment of Soviet power in Baku as illegal. Two articles formulated in the Constitutional Act were significant: Article 2 stated that ‘The Azerbaijani Republic is the successor of the Azerbaijani Republic which existed from 28 May 1918 to 28 April 1920’; and Article 3 declared that ‘The treaty on the establishment of the USSR on 20 December 1922 is considered not valid in the part related to Azerbaijan from the moment of signing it’.[2] Furthermore, the law previously proclaimed the Azerbaijani nation’s sovereignty over the republic. Azeri was confirmed as the state language, and the republic’s land and natural resources were defined as ‘national wealth’ belonging to ‘the Azerbaijani people’.   By refusing to become the legal successor of Azerbaijan SSR, Baku freed itself from recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as an Autonomous Region, a semi-state within the legal framework of the Soviet Union. Back in 1923, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh were recognized as a legal entity within Azerbaijan SSR by becoming a state unit  within a state, ie the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. As such, legally speaking, in 1991 the ‘Mountainous Karabakh Republic’ was declared over territories that the Republic of Azerbaijan had no sovereignty over—in view of the fact that it had rejected the Soviet legal system, the very legal basis of its claim over Karabakh. The Armenians argue that Nagorno-Karabakh was not part of the first republic of Azerbaijan between 1918 and 1920. Indeed, on 26 August 1919, the government of Azerbaijan and the Karabakh National Council had signed an interim agreement whereby the sides had agreed that the Paris Peace Conference would settle ‘the problem’ of Karabakh. This implied Azerbaijan’s recognition of Karabakh as a distinct ‘legal entity’.

auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium, atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant (To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire, and where they make a desert, they call it peace.) —Tacitus, Agricola Despite having a democratic constitution, Belarus has never been a democratic country, before or after the 2020 presidential elections. This has not stopped the authorities stating otherwise.   Alyaksandr Lukashenka came to power amid post-Soviet nostalgia and maintained the rhetoric of a ‘welfare state’, insisting that prosperity is more important than respect for civil rights. Continuity with the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic became a part of the official discourse. After coming to power in 1994, he initiated the restoration of Soviet symbols as the official symbols of the Republic of Belarus—they replaced the historic white-red-white flag and the ‘Pahonya’ coat of arms, which have been state symbols since 1991.[1] Soviet-style administrative and ideological structures, including the KGB, continue to function in the country.   A period of press freedom began following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, but it ended in late 1994 when Lukashenka, who had just come to power, began to interfere in the work of the media. At that time, a lot of newspapers printed blank spaces instead of the report of MP Siarhei Antonchyk on corruption in the circles of the new president. The presidential administration banned the report’s publication in state-owned media, which had previously enjoyed fairly major editorial freedom.[2] Since then, the government has aimed at limiting press freedom, constantly tightening legal restrictions on the activities of journalists and the media. The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) appeared in 1995 to address precisely these government actions, since the Soviet-tradition Belarusian Union of Journalists was unable to defend independent media representatives.   Belarus is sometimes called a ‘reservation of socialism’, and there is still evidence of this in its media. Denationalisation and privatisation of the media have not taken place in the country. The state system of Soviet-style propaganda has been preserved, which is designed to spread ‘state ideology’. The Ministry of Information can block websites and shut down media outlets to ensure that few alternatives to the state propaganda can be heard.[3] The media sphere in Belarus can be divided into two sectors: state-run and independent. Media outlets in the independent camp are either privately owned or funded from abroad.   Throughout Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s presidency, the authorities have demonstrated all the attributes of ‘decorative democracy’. There were periodical ‘warmings’ of relations with democratic countries, so-called ‘liberalisation’ efforts, which were followed by periods of tightening repression against the opposition and human rights defenders, who were generally associated with election campaigns. Belarus, to one degree or another, interacted with the UN and the OSCE human rights mechanisms, and engaged in dialogue on human rights with the EU. While it was criticised for human rights violations, the government usually complied with domestic law as well as with ‘national traditions’. Laws were formally respected. There were certain ‘rules of the game’ in interaction with political opponents. Mere dissent was not criminalised.

Since the detection of massive Russian interference in the 2016 American presidential election, there has been a morass of studies analysing the manipulation, fakes, and distortions, particularly on the Internet, which seem to assault the very notion of truth.   In the US, we have been horrified and perplexed by the huge numbers of people who believed, without much evidence, that there had been massive fraud in the 2020 presidential election, of whom hundreds attacked the building housing Congress in Washington.   Still others are convinced by conspiracy theories about the nation’s elite being satanic paedophiles and cannibals swigging babies’ blood.   The world’s ability to achieve ‘herd immunity’ against the coronavirus pandemic is threatened, because millions of people across the planet believe vaccinations are a cunning cover to, among other nefarious goals, inject microchips into humans, or cause heterosexuals to become gay.   Numerous articles in publications ranging from the popular to the academic have discussed information manipulation, fake news, hybrid war—both classic black techniques used throughout history, and modern variants adapted for the new technologies which yielded ‘social media’.   That a significant proportion of the new range of technologies and media has been exploited to transmit downright lies—in the way every previous form of communication has also been subject to abuse—should not have been a surprise.   Most of us—some sooner than others—became aware of the previously secret techniques, such as sophisticated algorithms, working like Avatar predators, luring or prodding us into informational zones filled with traps.

I. The case of George Gavriel   A recent incident in Cyprus re-ignited the debate about the limits of artistic freedom. George Gavriel, a director and teacher of art of a secondary education public school, who is also an artist in his leisure time, posted on social media in September 2020 pictures of some of his latest paintings.[1] Some of them have a clear anti-Church theme, with one picture in particular showing a naked Jesus riding a motorcycle and wearing a scarf with the symbols of a well-known Cypriot soccer team, and yet another picturing a dog urinating on the current Archbishop of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus. Another picture takes a political stance, with yet another dog defecating on a statue of former General Georgios Grivas, who was the military leader of guerilla organisation EOKA during Cyprus’s liberation struggle against the British during 1955-59,[2] but who later became a controversial figure when leading a paramilitary organisation, ironically named EOKA II, in the years prior to the military coup against former President of the Republic of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.[3] Some of the paintings have also been described as sexist and misogynist due to the manner in which the female body was depicted.[4]   The artist defended his work, which he described as ‘anti-systemic art’, an expression reflecting his artistic creativity.[5] However, following a public uproar, and complaints by organized groups, who called for Gavriel’s dismissal, including a letter by the Archbishop himself to the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports and Youth, effectively asking for Gavriel’s dismissal,[6] the Ministry (ie Gavriel’s employer) launched a probe to examine whether the teacher-artist was liable for disciplinary offences. The Ministry noted that the freedom of artistic creation could not justify the insult of public feeling and the messages of the paintings that cultivate a sense of contempt or possibly a climate of intolerance within the student community, when such expression derives from an official in the field of public education.[7]   Many defended Gavriel’s art, or at least his right to be provocative, and accused the Ministry of arbitrarily violating freedom of artistic expression. The debate included announcements by political parties and statements by individual politicians, as well as heated discussion and passionate statements by organized groups or the public at large, either supporting or criticizing the disciplinary action against Gavriel.[8] Many accusers of Gavriel demanded his immediate dismissal or even imprisonment, with some even calling him an antichrist or a left-wing conspirator; on the other hand, many of Gavriel’s defenders labeled anyone who disagreed with Gavriel’s work as racist or fascist.[9] Even the Senate of the leading public university in Cyprus, in a rare public announcement requesting the termination of the disciplinary action against Gavriel, could not avoid the extreme comparison between the case of Gavriel and the cases of Salman Rushdie and Charlie Hebdo.[10] Such comparisons, however, are entirely disproportionate.[11] A fatwa was issued against Salman Rushdie and the publishers of the book, convicting them to death under Islamic law. Calling on all zealous Muslims to execute the death sentence, it forced Rushdie to live in hiding and led to the murder of the Japanese translator of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses , to the wound of the Norwegian publisher of the books, and   to 22 deaths in violent protests in India, Pakistan, and Egypt.[12] The violent shooting by two French Muslim brothers in the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo  resulted in 12 murders and 11 injured persons.[13] So far there has only been a probe for potential disciplinary offences against Gavriel, with the artist freely holding successful unrestricted exhibitions of his paintings, and appearing in all mainstream media discussing his work.[14]

The below is adapted from Fakir Aijazuddin's 2021 book Imperial Curiosity: Early Views of Pakistan, 1845-1906 . Introduction   The nineteenth century was a period of imperialist expansion. Powerful countries in Europe like Great Britain, Germany, and Russia recognized the potential of countries in the near and far East—potential for travel, for tourism, for the advancement of scientific knowledge, for trade, and perhaps most important of all, resources with which to fuel their own domestic economies.   The British came to India as equals and stayed as victors. By the 1840s, after having dominated most of the Indian peninsula, they turned westwards, annexing first Sindh in 1843, then extending into the Punjab following the First Anglo-Sikh war of 1845-46, and then with finality after Punjab’s annexation in 1849. As one historian of the British Raj has put it, the subcontinent of India thereafter became ‘a manageable entity, brought to order by British method; on the ground, first to last, it was a pungent virile and gigantic muddle, kept in hand by British bluff’.[1]   When the winter of 1845 began, the Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singh had been dead for less than ten years. The kingdom he had put together with stratagem and guile was left in the inept hands of his successors, each less memorable than the last. The army that he had so assiduously trained with the help of French mercenaries like General Jean Francois Allard and Charles Court, the artillery he had manufactured and assembled at his fort at Govindgarh, the cavalry that rode on horses many of whom he knew by name had all been pitted against the forces of the East India Company in a reckless challenge of misplaced bravado. The irascible Sikh darbar dared to do what the canny maharaja had avoided. It crossed the Sutlej river which served as the border between the Sikh empire and the incipient British one. Had the Sikh darbar read Roman history, they would have understood what the phrase ‘crossing the Rubicon’ meant. They crossed their own Rubicon, except that it resulted not in victory but a humiliating defeat. The Sikh army had to return to its side of the river. With more impulsiveness than reason, the Sikh Khalsa fought the troops of the East India Company. Again, they lost. The Sikh kingdom of the Punjab forfeited both sovereignty and independence.   Before this debacle, in the early part of the nineteenth century, numerous British and European visitors had come to the Punjab to marvel at the court of the fabled Maharaja Ranjit Singh. After the annexation of his kingdom in 1849, the subjects of their curiosity became Queen Victoria’s loyal subjects.   Nothing typifies this more, for example, than an image that appeared in the Illustrated London News  of the preparations for the visit of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1876. It shows local workmen lifting a crown to form the apex of their decorations. The caption ends with a condescending but telling pun: ‘Supporting the Crown’. His and other such tours by British royalty were to become benign affirmations of an irreversible conquest—the clamp of a crested yoke that would not be lifted until 1947.

The recent upsurge of interest in the history of the British Empire has produced a wealth of literature that often presents empire and imperialism in a hegemonic light, couched in a dichotomy that sets the ‘oppressor’ against the ‘oppressed’, the ‘coloniser’ against the ‘colonised’, and so on. Underpinning fashionable postcolonial discourse, this binary terminology can obscure important nuances of political thought in its proper historical context, such as how prominent figures who were governing the Empire yet at the same time opposed imperialism could articulate their ideas. In this article I consider the case of John Morley, a lifelong anti-imperialist who had pursued a career in journalism before entering politics in 1883 as a radical MP. His appointment as Secretary of State for India in the new Liberal government of December 1905 presents an apparent paradox, for as one of Irish Home Rule’s staunchest advocates he had built a reputation as a committed opponent of unjust British rule. Drawing on archival manuscripts and published writings, I argue that Morley’s five-year tenure at the India Office towards the end of his active life was not, as has often been seen, an aberrant postscript to an otherwise principled career in politics but was consistent with a coherent political philosophy he had developed over his lifetime.[1]   Morley was first and foremost an intellectual. He wrote extensively: in addition to his editorship of the Fortnightly Review  and the Pall Mall Gazette , he compiled biographies of philosophers and politicians in an oeuvre that encompassed Cromwell, the major figures of the French Revolution, Burke, Cobden, and finally Gladstone. In doing so, he was a rare example of someone who had expounded a developed critique of imperialism who then had the opportunity to put it into practice in holding political office. It is a truism that he compromised his position as an anti-imperialist in its strictest sense by agreeing to participate in imperial government. Yet this is not the criterion against which he should be measured. A comparison with John Stuart Mill is instructive. Like Morley, albeit to a far greater extent, Mill had set out his theory before entering politics. Renowned as an exceptionally principled politician, he was nevertheless able and willing to compromise, justifying doing so on the grounds of utility and progress.[2] So too with Morley, often labelled as a ‘disciple’ of Mill, who inherited these ideas from him and recognised similarly that short-term expediency and long-term progress were not incompatible priorities.[3]   Furthermore, it is important to draw a distinction between imperialism and empire. Opposing the former entailed a criticism of ‘mis-rule’: a phenomenon that primarily manifested itself in despotism, militarism, and unchecked bureaucracy. Opposing the latter, however, necessitated a deeply held belief in its inherent illegitimacy. Few, save a small band of radicals, were prepared to go this far in this period. I therefore suggest that Morley was not anti- empire , for he accepted its continued existence as a fact—one that   was ultimately compatible with his liberal ideals. He was, however, anti-imperialist in the sense that that connoted at the time—directly opposing the imperialist conduct of his Conservative predecessors in government.   The lack of a detailed study within the last 50 years of this important figure in Liberal politics has led to a certain amount of scholarly oversight. Passing mentions of Morley often dismiss him as an anachronistic intellectual cul-de-sac of Gladstonianism or, in one bizarre assessment, as a ‘New Liberal’.[4] I seek to remedy this by giving prominence to Morley’s biographies and historical studies, which reveal much about the workings of his mind and the themes he prioritised. When Morley concluded of Gladstone ‘always let us remember that his literary life was part of the rest of his life, as literature ought to be’, he could just as easily have been referring to himself, such was the apparent centrality of a literary-historical mindset to his way of thinking.[5] As he agonised over the decision to exchange his literary career for politics, so too, he mused, must it ‘sometimes have occurred to Burke to wonder whether he had made the right choice when he locked away the fragments of his history, and plunged into the torment of party and Parliament’.[6] The transition from a man of letters to a man of action was a rare one. Morley therefore presents a unique opportunity among anti-imperialist politicians because of the volume of his literary output before his time as India Secretary, much of which was written before he was even contemplating a career in politics. It gives us crucial insight into Morley’s underlying philosophy and principles, shows his consistency of thought, and lays bare the ambiguities of liberalism’s compatibility with empire.

On 9 April 2003, in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad, in the first month of the invasion of Iraq, a crowd assembled in Baghdad’s Firdos square and tore down a statue of Saddam Hussein. The event was publicized widely, celebrated by many as an authentic expression of popular revolt against tyranny. Soon, however, it became embroiled in controversy as evidence emerged that the event (ultimately accomplished by American soldiers and equipment) was stage-managed by the American military. In all the ensuing debate, to my knowledge, no voices were raised to complain of the destruction of cultural heritage, nor of the erasure of history. Fig 1. Acción de Duelo (Doris Salcedo 2007, candles, approx. 267 x 350ft). Ephemeral public project, Plaza de Bolívar, Bogotá 2007. Credit: Juan Fernando Castro. In 2017, following a vote of the city council, a statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee was removed from Lee Park in Dallas, Texas (the park’s name was also changed). The removal was preceded—and followed—by vigorous debate, part of a broader dispute in the United States over monuments to the Confederacy, as well as those who owned or profited from slavery, or those who, following Emancipation, perpetrated or profited from racial violence. This ongoing conflict parallels similar arguments taking place currently in Britain and other European countries.   The debate over Confederate monuments pits those who frame their complaints over what they claim is the destruction of heritage and the erasure of history against those who note the historical inauthenticity of the monuments, which were for the most part created not as memorials immediately after the Civil War, but a generation or more later, following the defeat of Reconstruction. They served as ideological and emotional buttresses to the institutions of segregation and disenfranchisement, and the ruthless exploitation then being enforced against Black Americans (the Lee monument dates from 1936). In any case, opponents of the monuments note that these objects portray individuals who fought to maintain an institution that can only be considered one of history’s great crimes—they do not deserve a place of public veneration.   As the debate proceeded in Dallas, one voice spoke in defence of the Lee monument, but from a somewhat different perspective. The art critic for the Dallas Morning News , also an eminent scholar of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting, argued not in support of Confederate monuments in general, but rather in defence of the Lee monument in particular and of the artist who created it. That artist, Alexander Phimister Proctor, the critic noted, was a sculptor of public monuments of some significance, and his autobiography and other works demonstrate that he was not a racist. His reputation and his intentions for the Lee monument, the critic argued, merited serious consideration.

SCENE. Manhattan. Street with jazz club and apartment building on a muggy late summer evening.   The tired leaves on the trees are damp with rain. Yellow cabs whoosh by, nearly drowned out by a thrum of cicadas. A door swings open from the jazz club, releasing a bubble of music into the street and ALAN, CLAUDE, and JOHNNY, three young men engaged in animated conversation.   ALAN : [ To CLAUDE. ] Brilliant. Thanks for bringing us. We couldn’t have heard this in London.   CLAUDE : You’re welcome. Should we walk over to my place for a drink? It’s only a block away. [ To JOHNNY. ] OK, Johnny?   JOHNNY : Sure!   They saunter down the street and enter CLAUDE’s apartment building. It is a mess, with papers, books, magazines, empty beer bottles, sheet music, and electronic gear strewn everywhere. CLAUDE sweeps the papers off two chairs and onto the floor and gestures to ALAN and JOHNNY to sit.   CLAUDE : Don’t mind the mess. I’ll get to it one of these days.   JOHNNY : So, what did you mean when you said in the jazz club that ‘It’s all the same thing’? What’s all the same thing?   CLAUDE : Well, let’s see. Did you like the jazz performance?   [ JOHNNY nods. ] OK, so what you heard was a series of notes, right?   JOHNNY : Yes.   CLAUDE : So if I had a way to write every note down, then the concert could be replayed just as you heard it?   JOHNNY : Yes, of course. That’s like cutting an LP record.

There are certain global issues that pay no attention to national borders or natural barriers: climate change; the COVID-19 pandemic; nuclear weapons proliferation; and a migration and refugee crisis. These challenges can only be met by collective action.   This demand binds every country to a multilateral system, but the current global framework is showing its age 76 years after the creation of the United Nations. To be sure, the network should keep out no one: even authoritarian nations belong at the table of universal membership bodies. Their role in potential solutions to world threats often intermingles with their tragic record as the source of many of the same challenges.   But democracies need to be at the global decision-making table in force if the world is to confront the existential threats facing humanity. These require coordinated solutions reflecting the inclusion and diversity that self-correcting representative political systems provide.   Nations unite and exert influence under regional banners like the African Union, cultural/linguistic alliances like the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, or religion-based groupings like the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. So, too, should there be a coalition of countries acting as a bloc founded upon adherence to explicitly stated human rights and democratic values.   Fortunately, there is momentum behind a new multilateral structure for the world’s democracies. Whether it’s growing a D-10, or Democracy-10, from the current G-7 as suggested by Boris Johnson[1] or hosting a Summit for Democracy as pledged by President Joe Biden,[2] or people movements like ‘NOW!’ building a league of democracies,[3] these are good steps in support of a values-based energizing of the global system.   21 years ago, driven by events of the twenty-first century, a group of thinkers turned its attention to giving a new global framework to the idea of democracy, which was rapidly becoming the dominant form of governance. At the founding of the United Nations in 1945, there were only 30 countries, almost all Western, that identified as democracies. With the swell of the ‘Third Wave of Democratisation’ described by Samuel Huntington,[4] by 2000, some 120 nations were considered democracies with representative and elected governments. And in notable instances, as in Portugal’s Carnation Revolution in 1974, the contribution of outside support to indigenous democratic institutions, in that case by West German foundations linked to the country’s political parties,[5] showed the importance of international democratic solidarity.   In his two terms of office (1993–2001), US President Bill Clinton made good on his 1992 campaign promise of promoting democracy around the world. In response to the increasing voices of ‘America first’ following the end of the Cold War, Clinton stated that official support for democracy was both in the national interest of the US and reflected America’s values. Since 1993, significant government funding increases for democracy-supporting NGOs joined structural changes in US foreign policy. At the State Department, the little-known Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs was rebranded as Democracy, Human Rights, and Labour. The US Agency for International Development’s stable of experts in global health delivery and clean irrigation systems developed new skillsets in elections and civil society support. And America’s diplomatic missions were required to include information on democracy in their country reports back to Washington.

In the digital age, the sharing of images is prevalent across a variety of online platforms. Instagram, one of the largest of these, can provide an up-and-coming artist with an audience of over one billion users. Some already predict the platform’s decline. Kenny Schachter recently commented that, given Instagram’s ever-changing format, ‘it is only a matter of time before the powers that be get too greedy and the ease and accessibility of the app decline’.[1] Yet platforms like Instagram provide a space to interact with a vast amount of material. They form what Hayleigh Bosher and Sevil Yeşiloğlu call a ‘cultural “remix” environment’, a space for creatives to be influenced and inspired by other works.[2] This can create tension between an artist’s legal moral rights and the creativity of users on the platform.   In the United Kingdom, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CPDA) ss 77-89 protect moral rights. Notably, they give the author the right to be named and the right to object to derogatory treatment of their work.[3] Both of these moral rights could be undermined in the creative environment of Instagram if an ‘alterer’ were to digitally change their image. An altered image could be deemed original if it expressed a new aesthetic idea. Since current copyright law only protects works that result from individual ‘skill and labour’, the new image is unlikely to be afforded copyright protection. But as copyright law begins to recognise changing artistic practices, could the actions of an ‘alterer’ be legitimised? And would this lead to a weakening of the moral rights of the original artist?   The high originality threshold for ‘skill and labour’ in the law of England and Wales has thus far proved a stable groundwork for establishing authorship. Yet this approach must keep up with the shift in the technology used by artists, and with how apps like Instagram offer an artistic outlet for millions of people worldwide. One way forward could be an objective test using a ‘public’. This notional public would have an interested, informed view that could objectively recognise artworks. This view could be used in an assessment of infringement of moral rights. After all, the ‘real’ public has a vested interest in moral rights, as all artistic work created becomes part of our cultural history, no matter its aesthetic quality. By considering the public view in cases of moral rights, copyright law would recognise the stake society has in knowing who is contributing to its heritage, and in preserving that information. Any lowering of the originality standard in copyright law must balance the new artistic capabilities of the digital world and the importance moral rights have for both the artist and society. In evolving from existing standards for skill and labour, the test of a ‘public’ view could preserve the rights an artist wishes to claim over a digital image.   Can filters make an original image?   In the UK, the test for originality remains largely the standards of skill and labour. An author must show that they have expressed their ideas by the application of techniques that create a fixed work. Bingham LJ in Designer Guild Ltd v Russell Williams Ltd  defined this principle:   [A]nyone who by his or her own skill and labour creates an original work of whatever character shall, for a limited period, enjoy an exclusive right to copy that work. No one else may for a season reap what the copyright owner has sown.[4]