Chapter 4 follows the trajectory of Ernst Frey and other European anti-fascists, who enlisted in the Vietnamese Army after defecting from the French Foreign Legion. It focuses on the complicated relationship between the soldiers who survived the anti-fascist struggles in Europe and the new generation of soldiers of the anti-colonial wars in the Global South. After 1945, many Spanish Civil War veterans followed events in Algeria and Indochina with great interest and sided with those fighting for national self-determination. Notwithstanding the visibility of both causes, notable armed support materialised only in Indochina, where foreign volunteers were initially well-received and saw their military influence grow much beyond what their modest careers in the French Foreign Legion might indicate. With time, however, they were also seen as a challenge to the nationalistic Vietnamese leadership, who, thanks largely to Chinese support from the early 1950s onwards, were radically altering their military structure, leaving little or no space for French Foreign Legion defectors.

In Chapter 3, firstly, we reconstruct central theoretical models of democracy and enquire how an expansion of representation mechanisms for future generations could be conceptualised within these justificatory narratives. Secondly, we analyse the values that underlie democratic practices which can be helpful for advancing proxy representation at the international level by providing ethical criteria for such reforms. This involves analysing the discourses of intergenerational justice, solidarity and vulnerability. The chapter then turns to examine how these discourses can be translated into political forms of proxy representation by drawing on the all affected principle which requires that those affected by a decision have a role in the making of that decision, which is argued to be an element of most, if not all theories of democracy. This in turn is hypothesised to provide a basis for extension of the demos to include future generations, which then justifies proxy forms of representation to enable their representation . Human rights are argued to constitute a practice of global values which provides a powerful normative orientation for climate law and policy-making.

Chapter 6 addresses the protection of the marine environment. The seas are common pool resources that have become open access resources owing to the pollution that states discharge into the seas. This chapter examines the different regulatory approaches that have been adopted by states to change the open access character of the seas and oceans, such as the Law of the Sea Convention, the MARPOL Convention, the London Dumping Convention, and various regional conventions including those on the Mediterranean Sea, the Caribbean Sea, and the North-East Atlantic. The chapter concludes that, despite the global regulatory efforts, the seas have remained an open access resource due to the lack of controls on pollution inputs.

Chapter 3 challenges long extant narratives about the ethnic homogeneity of Grenada's liberated Africans. Using archival evidence and M. G. Smith's unpublished field notes, it provides a demographic profile of liberated Africans detailing their ages, genders, ethnicities, linguistic groups, and geographical origins. The chapter argues that examining their backgrounds provides an understanding of their cultural legacies, specifically the African cultures that were carried to Grenada, and how these impacted the formation of African work.

Cumulative environmental impacts are a central problem that contemporary environment-related laws must face, from laws that allocate natural resources such as forests and water, to rights-based approaches to nature and human health. This introduction sketches the basic characteristics of a cumulative environmental problem – accumulating, incremental harms at different scales, caused by many and diverse actors, with the added complexity of interacting and uncertain effects addressed by multiple legal regimes. It explains why addressing cumulative environmental problems requires reaching across disciplines, legal contexts, and jurisdictions. The CIRCle Framework is introduced - a Framework of four integrated functions of formal rules for responding to cumulative environmental problems – conceptualization, information, regulatory intervention, and coordination. The chapter also introduces case studies of laws addressing environmental justice concerns related to groundwater in the Central Valley of California, cumulative harms to the biodiversity of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, and cumulative impacts to grasslands as biocultural landscapes in South Tyrol, Italy.

This chapter examines representations of and responses to the law’s attempts to regulate poverty in early nineteenth-century England. Drawing upon poems by William Wordsworth, periodical essays, legislative reports, legal cases, and popular treatises, the chapter shows how writers alternately affirmed and interrogated the law’s efforts to strip paupers of agency. It focuses on the legal discourse that governed metropolitan paupers and that some paupers themselves deployed in the service of self-representation. Many writers cast beggary as a professional mode characterized by inventiveness and effort, qualities that paupers were thought to lack. In mobilizing the theatricality of which they stood accused, paupers emerge as both competent and competitive, internally well-regulated and chaotic, criminalized by their very performance of selfhood. By defending their own character in both law courts and the court of public opinion, beggars interrogated legal constructs such as property and testimony.

Chapter 7 uses the life and career of US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis to contemplate how a Progressive social-justice advocate might seek to redress entrenched housing segregation today. While acknowledging that Brandeis did not expressly speak out for racial equality in strong and unequivocal words in judicial opinions, the chapter looks for present guidance in the kind of lawyer Brandeis was, including his Progressive cause advocacy and pioneering of the Brandeis brief using extensive social science data to support government policies addressing social and economic inequalities. Observing that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) successfully used the Brandeis brief technique to overturn racial segregation in the courts, the chapter highlights the importance of evidence from sociological study about the adverse impacts of housing segregation and the interconnectedness of race and poverty in housing conditions. Brandeis would be cautious about judicial imposition of reparations but would support legislative consideration of reparations to remedy past discrimination, tailored to balance benefits and costs, as well as state and local policy solutions as laboratories of democracy.

This chapter explores the integration of the One Health (OH) approach into the European Union’s agri-food legal and policy framework, focusing on the 2023–2027 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). It does so within the broader context of the European Green Deal and its Farm to Fork Strategy, which aim to steer the EU toward sustainable agri-food systems. OH has gained global prominence, especially among intergovernmental organizations, but its implementation in the context of agri-food policy and legislation remains limited, even though the transition to sustainable agri-food systems is one of the most critical challenges of our time, and one of the most complex issues that would benefit from a holistic approach to health.

The chapter traces the evolution of OH in EU policy, from its origins in antimicrobial resistance to its potential role in advancing sustainability. It evaluates the extent to which OH principles are reflected in the CAP Regulation (EU) 2021/2115, by analysing its objectives, conditionality systems, and incentives related to sustainable agricultural practices.

The analysis concludes that, although the CAP incorporates various OH-related measures, such as provisions concerning animal welfare and biodiversity, it does not adopt OH as a unifying legal or policy basis. In fact, the integration of OH remains fragmented and superficial, hindered by conflicting policy objectives, inconsistent implementation, and a lack of legal clarity. For OH to truly serve as a guiding principle in EU agri-food law, it must be embedded through coherent legal tools, cross-sectoral coordination and inclusive governance mechanisms.

Chapter 7 involves an analysis of the 2019 case brought to the UN committee on the rights of the child by 16 young people (Saachi et al. 2019). The case is assessed in terms of its legitimacy and effectiveness in promoting intergenerational justice discourses and its capacity to act as an indirect proxy representative for future generations. The chapter argues that while there are distinct limitations in the rights of the child complaints system (with an asymmetry in power between children and the states involved, with decisions being non-binding), the Saachi case, nevertheless, has the potential to have both a political and legal impact. It is one of the few avenues at the international level which allows young people increasingly impacted by climate change to have a voice. It can also allow young people to act as proxy representatives for future generations, while the Committee to date has been reticent to move in this direction. Finally, some elements of the decision are likely to be taken up in future climate litigation at the international and national levels.

The chapter begins by examining how groups form and socialise members, and the forces of conformity that sustain existing norms. We then consider the emergence of differentiation and innovation, exploring how processes of minority influence and dissent challenge conformity. The chapter then explores the impact of contested norms, particularly in systems of inequality, and considers how these norms are challenged and transformed under more repressive and open regimes. This chapter also explores power, repression, agency and resistance, and how reinterpretations of classical studies by Milgram and Zimbardo are now understood through the lens of social identity theory. The transmission of norms between groups is discussed, alongside the entrepreneurs of identity who mobilise advantaged groups to support disadvantaged groups. This chapter makes a transition from traditional theories of intergroup relations to new paradigms that emphasise the fluidity of norms, the role of emerging leadership, and the transformative potential of identity in group dynamics.

Use case 1 in Chapter 4 explores the regulation of MDTs in the context of mental health and well-being under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Medical Devices Regulation (MDR), the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA), and the European Health Data Space (EHDS) Regulation. The analysis reveals that data protection issues in this sector are not primarily due to deficiencies in the law, but rather stem from significant compliance weaknesses, particularly in applications extending beyond the traditional medical sector. Consumer mental health and well-being devices could greatly benefit from co-regulatory measures, such as a sector-specific data protection certification. Additionally, legislators need to tackle the issue of manufacturers circumventing MDR certification due to ambiguities in the classification model. The EU’s regulatory approach to non-medical Brain–Computer Interfaces (BCIs) within medical devices legislation is highlighted as a potential blueprint and should be advocated in ongoing global policy discussions concerning neurotechnologies.

This chapter examines how groups respond to disadvantage, beginning with a discussion of the various ways intergroup inequality manifests across three levels: material (e.g. violence, segregation), symbolic (e.g., stereotypes, devaluation), and systemic (e.g., biased judicial systems). The chapter emphasises the real and diverse impacts of these disadvantages on everyday lives. Further, this chapter explores individual and collective reactions to disadvantage, from acceptance and minimisation to social mobility and reappraisal of group differences. Collective responses, such as social creativity and mobilisation, are highlighted as vital for resilience and social change. The factors are discussed that influence disadvantaged groups’ choice of responses, including individual factors, social support and ‘intersectionalities’ – being part of multiple groups. The chapter also suggests that individual and societal levels of analysis influence internal group dynamics and the effectiveness of collective actions.

Chapter 9’s case study of a major market-driven development project in Baltimore, the Port Covington project, explores how racial segregation and economic segregation are implicitly assumed to be normal parts of zoning’s spatial ordering of American cities. Inner cities are now places where private developers in a global neoliberal economy seek to use both public and private investments to create new exclusive, elite spaces for higher wealth consumers. Port Covington, a forty-two-block multi-use redevelopment of a vacant industrial site, is one such example on a massive scale. Although Baltimore’s relatively weak inclusionary zoning ordinance forced the developers to agree to include a limited number of affordable housing units in its new development plan, there were no discussions about whether or how to remedy Baltimore’s racialized geography and its legal and policy history of segregation, exclusion, and unequal opportunity. Major land-use decisions should not only embrace mixed-income and mixed-use policy goals but also government-provided affordable housing units and robust inclusionary measures to redress the subordinating dynamics of entrenched structural racism in local zoning.