Legal Studies Research Paper Series Vol. 15, No. 6

The Faculty has distributed Volume 15 Number 6 of the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series on SSRN.

This issue includes the following articles:

Wojtek Buczynski, Felix Steffek, Fabio Cuzzolin, Mateja Jamnik & Barbara J. Sahakian: Hard Law and Soft Law Regulations of Artificial Intelligence in Investment Management (15/2024)

Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) technologies present great opportunities for the investment management industry (as well as broader financial services). However, there are presently no regulations specifically aiming at AI in investment management. Does this mean that AI is currently unregulated? If not, which hard and soft law rules apply?

Investments are a heavily regulated industry (MIFID II, UCITS IV and V, SM&CR, GDPR etc). Most regulations are intentionally technology-neutral. These regulations are legally binding (hard law). Recent years saw the emergence of regulatory and industry publications (soft laws) focusing specifically on AI. In this Article we analyse both hard law and soft law instruments.

The contributions of this work are: first, a review of key regulations applicable to AI in investment management (and oftentimes by extension to banking as well) from multiple jurisdictions; second, a framework and an analysis of key regulatory themes for AI.

Catherine Barnard & Fiona Costello: From EU Citizenship to British citizenship via the EU Settlement Scheme: Some Socio-Legal Reflections from the east coast (19/2024)

In this paper we want to consider how EU nationals who moved to the UK pre-Brexit view their future. Specifically, we should like to know whether they think their EUSS (EU Settlement Scheme) rights are sufficient, or whether they will apply for British citizenship and, if so, what barriers might stand in their way. We also would like to know what holding British citizenship might mean for their relationship with the UK and for their country of origin.

We shall argue that many consider applying for British citizenship for reasons of pragmatism: they want the security that comes from holding British nationality because they doubt that the rights under the EU Settlement Scheme are sufficient. For parents, they want British citizenship, at least for their children, because they see it as a way of investing in their child’s future. For others it is about claiming what they see they are entitled to, or to improve their social status. None of the explanations given talk of principle or patriotic fervour. Rather their approach is strategic/instrumental, obtaining another passport/ citizenship for the benefits and opportunities it offers, a phenomenon well known in the literature. However, for the particularly marginalised group of (low paid) workers in Great Yarmouth, the cost of applying for British citizenship, together with the language requirements necessary to pass the English language test, present significant barriers.

This work sits within and contributes to wider scholarship around the impacts of Brexit, EU free movement and citizenship and migration literature. Finally, our findings suggest that low paid workers do appear less likely to plan for British citizenship for themselves but may do so for their children in order to ensure their security.

Sarah Nouwen: North-South Skirmishes Over Transitional Justice: 1975-2000 (20/2024)

The years 1975–2000 represent the era of a series of opening skirmishes in the protracted battle over transitional justice. It is in this period that transitional justice emerged as a creative site of engagement for political scientists, lawyers, and activists concerned with the search for new beginnings in societies undergoing political transitions. Initially anchored in the experiences and practices of states in the Global South, the discourse of transitional justice came to be internationalized and dominated by law, legal practices, lawyers and legalism. It did not, however, constitute a field of law as such. This had implications for the North-South battle over transitional justice. Whereas related fields of law such as international criminal law or human rights law were debated and disputed in the General Assembly, the International Law Commission and international courts, transitional justice, while an increasingly technocratic discourse, did not have central institutional arenas for contestations. The story of transitional justice between 1975 and 2000 thus illustrates how a shift from international law to normativity outside law (‘informal law’, ‘soft law’, ‘standards’, ‘best practices’) can also mean the loss of venue for articulating alternative agendas that challenge Global North dominance in the development of international norms. But the absence of a clear battleground did not preclude skirmishing over the field. The period between 1975-2000 may not have witnessed a clear North-South battle over transitional justice, but it did see the drawing of battle lines: is transitional justice inherently liberal; does it permit compromises; and who possesses epistemic authority in this discourse?

Holli Sargeant, Ahmed Izzidien & Felix Steffek: Topic Modelling Case Law Using a Large Language Model and a New Taxonomy for UK Law: AI Insights into Summary Judgment (21/2024)

This paper addresses a critical gap in legal analytics by developing and applying a novel taxonomy for topic modelling summary judgment cases in the United Kingdom. Using a curated dataset of summary judgment cases, we use the Large Language Model Claude 3 Opus to explore functional topics and trends. We find that Claude 3 Opus correctly classified the topic with an accuracy of 87.10%. The analysis reveals distinct patterns in the application of summary judgments across various legal domains. As case law in the United Kingdom is not originally labelled with keywords or a topic filtering option, the findings not only refine our understanding of the thematic underpinnings of summary judgments but also illustrate the potential of combining traditional and AI-driven approaches in legal classification. Therefore, this paper provides a new and general taxonomy for UK law. The implications of this work serve as a foundation for further research and policy discussions in the field of judicial administration and computational legal research methodologies.

David Erdos: ‘Penniless Orientals of the Pedlar Type’: The Republic of Ireland and Commonwealth Migrant Rights 1940s-1970s (22/2024)

Especially as regards Commonwealth citizens, the Republic of Ireland’s immigration policy has been seen as dependent (even if surreptitiously) on that of the UK. Although the value placed on the Common Travel Area undoubtedly imposed serious limitations, Irish discretion was significant and often more restrictive. In 1948-9 the UK secured Ireland’s public commitment to extend reciprocal citizenship rights to all of the Commonwealth notwithstanding its exit but, in reality, Ireland successfully avoided this as regards the ‘new’ Commonwealth countries and the reach of Ireland’s aliens exemption law also remained deliberately opaque. Whilst broadly mirroring the UK’s extension of immigration control to the Commonwealth in 1962, Ireland retained apartheid South Africa as partially privileged and only comprehensively exempted those UK citizens born within the UK. From 1973, the UK largely abandoned any privileged treatment for Commonwealth citizens. However, in entirely removing such privileges in 1975 and imposing visas on new Commonwealth countries from 1976 Ireland went beyond even this. These divergences reflected the greater strength of religiously, ethnically and even racially homogenous nationalism in Ireland compared to the UK and the fact that, whereas Ireland left the Commonwealth in 1949, the UK remained a leading member of this increasingly divided but also increasingly diverse grouping.

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