City Law Forum

Exploring Opportunities and Human Rights Implications of AI and Modern Technologies in Criminal Justice

June 6, 2025 / City Law Forum / 2 Comments

City Law School Symposium Report

By Sekander Zulker Nayeen, Laura Vialon, Cheryl Dine and Talha Boyraz

On Tuesday, 6^th May, 2025, Professor Dimitrios Giannoulopoulos organised an influential symposium entitled ‘AI and Modern Technologies in Criminal Justice: Opportunities and Human Rights Implications’ held at the City Law School, City St George’s, University of London. It was focused on discussing the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies on the criminal justice system, while critically examining accompanying human rights considerations.

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Panel 1 – Live Facial Recognition, technologically enhanced investigative methods and suspects’ digital rights

The first panel was chaired by the Head of Department at The City Law School, Professor Dimitrios Giannoulopoulos. He stated that the symposium would bring together three aspects: criminal justice, technology and human rights. He hoped that it would give an insight into the topics to everyone who joined both in-person and online. He then introduced and called all the panellists to start the discussion on their topics.

Madeleine Stone, a Senior Advocacy Officer of Big Brother Watch, presented on Live Facial Recognition and Human Rights. She informed that facial recognition is being used in both the private and public sectors. For example, the retailer, as a private entity, uses it. At the same time, police, as a public sector entity, use it. It could be of two types: facial recognition for identification and facial recognition for verification.

Police usually use facial recognition for identification and verification in three ways: live facial recognition, retrospective facial recognition, operator operator-initiated facial recognition. In case of live facial recognition, police scan faces in real time in public spaces, such as streets, events, and then they match the faces against a watchlist. It can also immediately create alerts when someone on the list is detected. Retrospective facial recognition, common in the US but also used in the UK, involves matching images from CCTV or social media to extensive police databases. Operator-initiated recognition allows officers to take photos in the field and instantly compare them against existing image databases.

UK-EU Reset May Break International Law

By Prof. David Collins

For a government that has continually emphasized the importance of upholding international law, even when it is evidently against the national interest (for example the relinquishing of the Chagos Islands), the UK’s EU ‘reset’ agreement is a baffling development. The UK has evidently succumbed to all of the EU’s demands, gaining little more than vague statements in relation to defence procurement and e-gates in airports, while giving away fishing rights for an astonishing twelve years, free movement of young adults as well as budgetary contributions. Each of these is arguably a rejection of UK voters’ wishes to leave the EU but do not in themselves put the UK in breach of the country’s international legal obligations. The new agreement’s dynamic alignment with the EU’s sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) regulations on the other hand could well do this, potentially leading to claims from other treaty partners via international arbitration tribunals.

The new UK-EU reset agreement effectively creates a single market for agri-foods in which the UK agrees to follow EU regulations, the ultimate conformity to which lies at the discretion of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). This feature of the new arrangement was important for the EU because it ensures that the UK remains a captured market for its agricultural produce, preventing the UK from importing cheaper, better foods from other countries, ostensibly for the purpose of safeguarding public health.

It is bad enough that this worsens the choice available to British consumers from markets around the world. It is even more problematic, though, if, like Prime Minister Keir Starmer, one claims to be a supporter of and adherent to international law. This is because alignment with the EU’s regulations in this area may violate the terms of some of the UK’s recent Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). This includes the mega-regional Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) which the UK joined after lengthy negotiations at the end of last year. The 12-nation CPTPP comprises 15 per cent of global GDP and some of the world’s fastest growing economies in the Asia-Pacific.

The City Law School and KPUM: Building Bridges Through Mooting and Professional Development

May 8, 2025 / City Law Forum / 0 Comments

By Michelle Lee Shu Ling*

The United Kingdom and Eire Malaysian Law Students’ Union (KPUM) is proud to continue strengthening our collaboration with City Law School (CLS). Over the past few years, CLS has been a valued supporter of KPUM’s efforts to nurture the next generation of Malaysian lawyers, both academically and professionally.

We are excited to share that CLS is now an official sponsor of KPUM, marking an important milestone in our relationship. This sponsorship recognises our shared commitment to empowering Malaysian law students through opportunities for advocacy training, practical experience, and professional development in the United Kingdom.

CLS has been instrumental in supporting KPUM’s flagship events. We are deeply grateful to CLS for generously allowing KPUM to host our mooting competitions on their campus, not just once, but twice. Their hospitality and logistical support have enabled us to deliver high-quality events that provide our mooters with invaluable exposure to real-world legal practice.

The AI Black Box Issue and Patent Disclosure

May 6, 2025 / City Law Forum / 0 Comments

by Prof Enrico Bonadio, Prof Eduardo Alonso (City St. George’s University of London), and Mr Vansh Tayal (Symbiosis Law School, Pune, India)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has notoriously been making inroads into the inventive process, from drug discovery to engineered systems, and beyond. The widely reported DABUS project is notorious for igniting a global legal and philosophical debate over whether AI can be recognised as an inventor under patent law. But patent applications for the DABUS inventions were rejected in several jurisdictions including UK, US, Germany, at the European Patent Office, and Australia, primarily because patent laws require that an inventor must be a natural person, not a machine or an AI system.

A less researched aspect of AI inventions and their intersection with patent regimes focuses on the disclosure requirement. As is known, patent laws around the world require an invention to be disclosed in a manner which is clear and complete enough to allow the expert in the field to reproduce it, as dictated by Article 29 of the WTO/TRIPS Agreement. Yet, many AI models, such as neural networks, operate in ways that are not fully understood even by their creators. This is the so-called ‘black box’ issue. While the input and output of the system can be observed, the internal logic or decision-making process is often inscrutable or cannot be described in human-understandable terms. In other words, even when inputs and outputs are known, the internal logic or parameters can be inscrutable to human observers.

This lack of explainability often makes it impossible to provide the detailed, step-by-step descriptions required for patent disclosure. IBM, for example, observes that “the input and output may be known … but the logic in between is in some respects unknown,” making AI inventions hard to fully disclose. And scholars such as Tabrez Ebrahim note that this lack of transparency – i.e. the difficulty of replicating an AI-constructed outcome – “profoundly … challenges disclosure theory in patent law”.

US Tariffs Threaten International Law but Could Save Free Trade

April 4, 2025 / City Law Forum / 0 Comments

By Prof. David Collins

President Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariff onslaught could inflict the most significant shock to international trade of all time. Markets have already collapsed and recessions around the world, including in the US, are feared. Economists are in near-unanimous agreement that the sudden 20% (on average) charge on trade with the world’s largest economy, plus 25% on automobiles, are a strategic error on the part of the White House. President Trump’s own economic advisors struggle to justify them. Some in the Republic party are even breaking ranks, pleading with the president that American consumers will be worse off by thousands of dollars a year, languishing under inflation and a drop in GDP by up to 3%. While it has attracted limited attention from the media, the tariffs are almost certainly illegal, breaching the US’s commitments under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and various bilateral trade agreements, including the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) although Mexico and Canada were omitted from Liberation Day measures.

As harmful as the US’s sweeping tariffs are on their own, worse damage could be inflicted via retaliation, even if Trump were not to escalate with further counter-tariffs, which is unlikely. The EU, China and others are already planning a suite of measures. But a tariff is a tariff, whether or not it is morally justified. It will only raise costs of US imports more, forcing consumers to switch to alternatives which will in turn become dearer in their scarcity. Countries with large trade surpluses with the US (like the EU and China) will find retaliation unhelpful as a weapon of persuasion – we are not in the 1930s. Another danger is the looming spectre of dumping. A glut of goods that would have been shipped to the US, especially from mega-manufacturer China will now end up elsewhere. Anti-dumping duties, yet again tariffs, may end up being levied to head-off this surge.

The UK, seemingly wisely, is holding off on tariff retaliation against the US. Having been hit with ‘only’ a 10% tariff by the Americans (notwithstanding the car, steel and aluminium tariffs at 25%), the UK has fared better than the EU, which faces a 20% Trump tariff. Many have been quick to present this as a ‘Brexit dividend’ – but while a lower tariff is always better than a higher one, it is unlikely that the cross-Channel differential will spur a manufacturing boom in the UK as European firms rush to locate production here as a way of lowering the costs of entry to the US. Supply chains do not re-orient overnight and White House policy can turn on a dime – the UK could just as easily get thumped in the next round.

The WTO dispute between China and EU over Chinese SEPs global rate-setting

April 3, 2025 / City Law Forum / 0 Comments

By Enrico Bonadio and Federico Manstretta at Parma University, IP Law Galli

Back in January 2025, the EU initiated consultations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to challenge the practice of Chinese courts to unilaterally set binding global royalty rates for non-Chinese standard essential patents (SEPs) without the consent of the parties to the litigation. According to the EU Commission press release, this unfairly pressures European high-tech companies to lower their royalty rates worldwide, granting Chinese manufacturers cheaper access to European technologies. Additionally, the EU claims this approach interferes with the jurisdiction of EU courts over patent matters and violates WTO rules, including transparency obligations under the TRIPS Agreement.

The initial 60 days term given to the parties to find a satisfactory solution in the WTO consultations stage has expired, and the EU could then request a panel to be appointed to hear the case.

Book launch: ‘EU Trade and Investment Treaty-Making Post-Lisbon: Moving Beyond Mixity’

April 3, 2025 / City Law Forum / 0 Comments

By Cheryl Dine

On Monday 31^st March, 2025, City Law School welcomed Dr. Gesa Kübek to formally launch her book ‘EU Trade and Investment Treaty-Making Post-Lisbon: Moving Beyond Mixity’. This book launch was a public event that brought together EU, trade and investment law academics to explore the evolving landscape of EU trade and investment agreements in the post-Lisbon era.

Dr. Kübek’s book critically examines the evolution of EU treaty-making following the Lisbon Treaty, particularly the shift away from mixed agreements – where both the EU and its member states share competence. In her book, she argues that the EU is increasingly asserting exclusive competence over trade agreements, reshaping the legal and political dynamics of bilateral trade and investment treaty making. According to Dr. Kübek, “mixity in the field of trade and investment has become a matter of substance” as opposed to Heliskoski’s (2001) traditional view of mixity as a “procedural choice”.

During the book launch, Dr. Kübek explored how the practice of mixity has evolved over time. Fast forward to the 2020s, the notion of ‘mixity’ seems to involve deeper substantive considerations, including political, legal, and constitutional complexities. One of the key takeaways from Dr. Kübek’s analysis is that there is a growing tension between EU institutions and its member states in regards to the division of powers in external trade relations. For instance, Belgium’s decentralised constitutional structure, which adds another layer of complexity to the mixed procedure calling for a substantive design in EU’s recent treaty-making.

Reimagining Prosperity – Toward a new Imaginary of Law and Political Economy in the EU

March 24, 2025 / City Law Forum / 0 Comments

Conclusions from Prof Marija Bartl’s presentation at the ISEL City Law School about her new book “Reimagining Prosperity – Toward a new Imaginary of Law and Political Economy in the EU”

By Laura Vialon

On the 20th of March Marija Bartl, Professor of Law at the University of Amsterdam, came to City Law School to present her new book on prosperity in the EU which came out in November last year as open access, available on Cambridge Core. The book argues that a clear imaginary for a shared prosperity in the EU is needed (again), while at the same some efforts in that regard have been already made, attempting to leave neoliberalism behind. For showing that EU policy is becoming “thicker” again, Professor Bartl analysed a variety of important policy fields – consumption, technology, industrial policy and corporate policy.

Professor Bartl passionately and eloquently guided the audience through her three main theses that (1) democracies need prosperity. Prosperity for Bartl means neither economic growth or mass consumption, but a “credible route to material and social basis of a good life” for the current and future generations. We need to have trust in this better future, this is what holds societies together and this trust has been eroded from the 1990’s onwards and heavily crushed after the 2008 financial crisis. Prosperity has become more concentrated in the hands of the few and trust in democracy and its institutions dwindled.

Withdrawal of the European Union from the Energy Charter Treaty: A Case Study for Mixity

March 24, 2025 / City Law Forum / 0 Comments

On 12 March 2025 at City St George’s, University of London, Institute for the Study of European Laws (ISEL), Prof. Eleftheria Neframi presented her recent paper, titled ‘‘Withdrawal of the European Union from the Energy Charter Treaty: A Case Study for Mixity.’’

This blog post outlines the key ideas of the presentation, collated by Christos Karetsos

The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) was concluded by more than 53 contracting parties, including the European Union (EU) and Euratom, as well as the Member States of the EU. It was approved by the EU in 1998 as a mixed agreement. Establishing a framework for energy cooperation, promoting energy security and the protection of foreign investments in the energy sector, the ECT was heavily criticized for its incompatibility with the objective of phasing out fossil fuels and making a rapid transition to renewable energies. Such criticism was an opportunity for the EU to promote its environmental standards and reform international investment law in line with its green transition objectives, given its interest in regulating the neighbourhood market through the ECT as a way of ensuring security of supply. The EU participated in the process launched in 2018 to modernise the ECT and submitted a proposal. After four years of negotiations, the Agreement in Principle of the Modernisation of the ECT (AIP), which was adopted in June 2022, largely reflected the content of the EU proposal. The main changes included a flexibility mechanism allowing parties to exclude fossil fuels from the energies whose investments are protected and to phase out existing fossil fuel investments after 10 years (instead of the 20 years sunset clause), a reference to the International Energy Charter, the application of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) rules on transparency in investor-state dispute settlement, and recognition of the need to respect the rights and duties of Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement. However, Member States representing more than 70% of the EU population considered that the modernisation proposal did not meet their environmental ambitions. The modernised text failed to gather the necessary majority in the EU Council. Consequently, under the pressure of sustainability concerns, the door to withdrawals was opened.

4th Conference on Financial Law and Regulation – Call for Papers

March 14, 2025 / City Law Forum / 0 Comments

Call for Papers

4th Conference on Financial Law and Regulation

The City Law School

City St George’s, University of London

Thursday, 3rd July 2025

Submit your paper to ilias.kapsis@citystgeorges.ac.uk

Deadline for abstract submission: Thursday 17th April 2025.

The organisers, Dr Ilias Kapsis, Dr Clara Martins Pereira, Dr Virag Dr Virág Blazsek, Dr Andreas Kokkinis, and Professor Federico Lupo-Pasini, would like to invite paper abstract submissions for the 4th Conference on Financial Law and Regulation to take place at the City Law School, City St George’s, University of London on the 3rd of July 2025. This conference is supported by the Society of Legal Scholars, and the City Law School.