The Faculty has distributed Volume 16 Number 3 of the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series on SSRN.
This issue includes the following articles:
David Erdos: Ireland and the Commonwealth, 1960s-1970s: The Ends of (Informal) External Association (9/2025)
Although Ireland enjoyed a strong - albeit ultimately informal - external association with the Commonwealth in 1960, this was at an end by 1979. It had abolished all migration exemptions for Commonwealth citizens and the special status Irish citizens still enjoyed in some Commonwealth countries had become at most almost entirely symbolic. Ireland no longer granted or received trade preferences based on 'Commonwealth' status and it had severed its relationship with Sterling to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Ireland was no longer an associate of any Commonwealth body and no longer significantly participated in Commonwealth fora. However, although the Sterling rupture highlights how Europeanisation could be disruptive even here, new arrangements had almost invariably been established with the UK-thus highlighting that the ends of Irish Commonwealth association were always primarily focused on this special, although complex, relationship. Ireland's Commonwealth dissociation primarily traces to the demise of a tangible Commonwealth citizenship and economic framework. At the same time, the Commonwealth experienced a substantial expansion in development cooperation and emerged as a significant North/South (or West/South) forum. Whilst this could have synergised well with Ireland as a Global Citizen, its adoption of a narrowly self-interested approach to its Commonwealth linkages rendered this otiose and ensured the end of its informal external association.
Ted Gleason, Markus Gehring, Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, Javiera Paz Cáceres, Jorge Cabrera & Matheus Garcia: Economic Rules Toward Net Zero in 2040: Legal Options for the Future of Trade in a Net Zero World (10/2025)
Climate change is no longer a distant threat; it is a present reality with profound and far-reaching consequences. According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the year 2024 marked a sobering milestone as global average temperatures exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. This threshold, emphasized in the Paris Agreement as a critical limit to avoid the most catastrophic effects of global warming, signals the urgent need for accelerated global action. The crossing of this benchmark reveals the stark gap between international climate ambitions and actual progress, underscoring the complexities of transitioning to a sustainable, low-carbon future.
This study builds upon the foundational analysis presented in The Future of Trade in a Net Zero World report by offering detailed legal ‘worked examples’ of trade and investment accord provisions tailored to each of the scenarios identified. By providing concrete, actionable language, this research bridges the gap between conceptual frameworks and practical implementation, demonstrating how legal text can operationalize varying degrees of ambition in international trade governance. Particular emphasis is placed on provisions that exemplify best practices for advancing the Green Scenario — the “preferred future vision” characterized by strong global cooperation, ambitious climate policies, and sustainable trade systems. These model provisions serve as tools to inspire and guide policymakers, negotiators, and stakeholders in designing agreements that align trade with the overarching goal of achieving net-zero emissions while fostering equitable economic growth and environmental stewardship.The Future of Trade report deals with a vast amount of topics that meander from politics to meteorology. Thus, the present study will address the aspects related to investment and trade of the report.
This study seeks to identify both the most effective and the least effective legal innovations that have emerged in recent years, drawing insights from international court decisions and their implications for trade and investment law. By analyzing these examples, the study highlights provisions that can be adopted in future trade and investment agreements to address climate change more effectively. The aim is to illustrate practical approaches that either promote or hinder climate action within the global trade framework, providing policymakers and negotiators with a clearer understanding of legal strategies that align trade with sustainable development goals. This dual focus on best and worst practices underscores the importance of crafting legally robust and forward-thinking agreements that drive climate resilience while avoiding pitfalls that could undermine environmental progress.
Holli Sargeant: From Estimation to Discrimination: Algorithmic Bias, Predictive Uncertainty, and Anti-Discrimination Law (11/2025)
Machine learning (ML) systems, increasingly deployed in high-stakes decisionmaking, inherently produce uncertain outputs that can lead to unlawful discrimination. This article examines the legal implications of predictive uncertainty in ML systems under UK antidiscrimination law. Employing a decision-theoretic framework, the article distinguishes between aleatoric uncertainty, stemming from irreducible randomness, and epistemic uncertainty, arising from incomplete knowledge or deliberate model design choices. It argues that intentional modelling decisions introduce epistemic uncertainty, which can directly and indirectly cause discriminatory outcomes. Instead of evaluating ML as a 'black-box' or solely by its outputs, greater legal importance should be placed on the policy and design choices of ML systems embedded within these systems than has been traditionally acknowledged. While identifying and justifying aleatoric uncertainty presents a unique challenge, given its reflection of underlying, irreducible risk external to the model, the practical difficulty of distinguishing these two forms of uncertainty poses pressing issues for discrimination law. The article contends that aspects of current anti-discrimination frameworks are ill-equipped to address these probabilistic harms and advocates for enhanced interdisciplinary interpretation of anti-discrimination doctrine with support from proactive oversight and regulatory measures beyond individual litigation. This article provides the first legal analysis of predictive uncertainty and unlawful discrimination.
Narine Lalafaryan: Chameleon Capital (12/2024)
Equity and debt are blurred in the private capital domain. "New" sophisticated players-private credit funds-craft bespoke blended and braided investments that this paper coins as chameleon capital. Chameleon capital includes (i) traditional and modern hybrids instruments (blended capital), or (ii) braided equity and debt investments (braided capital), or (iii) a dynamic combination of blended and braided capital used by sophisticated investors with long-term interests and calculated objectives in mind. Chameleon capital shows the reduced capacity of legal forms to deal with the complex realities of private ordering. By enabling investors to blend and braid 'equity' and 'debt', chameleon capital demonstrates that the conventional division between those categories is only relevant to bankruptcy proceedings. For a single investor, or a small group of associated/affiliated investors, such as private credit firms and private equity firms, the distinction between 'equity' and 'debt' has become further blurred and, arguably, disappears altogether as per the Modigliani-Miller theorem. Yet, the legal characterisation of what is 'equity' and what is 'debt' in law remains very important, including in bankruptcy proceedings. Chameleon capital also challenges foundations of corporate governance and corporate law-debt investors are interested in wealth maximization and corporate control when their debt instruments provide them with equity-like returns that depend on long term wealth maximization-and represents the pinnacle of how corporate finance influences corporate control. The opportunities and challenges arising from chameleon capital present global momentous possibilities, but also raise new important issues as private funds operate globally.
Sarah Nouwen & Wouter Werner: Embracing Discomfort: From Textbook to Scriptbook in Legal Education (13/2024)
Textbooks provide comfort. But does comfort provide the most fertile ground for learning? In this paper, we propose an alternative to the international legal textbook: a scriptbook to be used for reenactments. Where textbooks in international criminal law seek closure, scriptbooks written for re-enactment are meant to open up. Where textbooks provide order and structure, scriptbooks cherish the contingent and the undecided. Where textbooks engender feelings of comfort, re-enactments of scripts in a scriptbook can be discomforting. But it is precisely this discomfort that makes the re-enactment a powerful pedagogical tool. This Working Paper is forthcoming as a chapter in Luíza Leão Soares Pereira and Fabio Morosini (eds), International Law Textbooks.
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