The publication examines the legal nature of wars, looks into the law of war genesis, reviews its conventions, as well as identifies the aim, objectives, causes together with the consequences of Russia’s military aggression on February 24, 2022; it provides a testimony on the war of aggression against Ukraine and identifies its threats to post-war international law and order. The aim of the article is to determine the background, nature, fundamentals and nature of the war the Russian Federation launched on February 24, 2022 against Ukraine within the context of confrontation with the values of Western democracy. Historical-legal dialectical, comparative-legal and system-structural methods, as well as methods of formal logic (induction and deduction, analysis and synthesis, abstraction and concretization, etc.) were used to study the issues. The application of these research methods entails a cross-sectoral scientific nature.
Wars have accompanied the entire history of mankind. Since the 17th century the theoretical foundations of the law of war have been laid, which enshrined in international laws and customs of warfare (Geneva Conventions, Hague Convention, etc.) since the 19th century, thus forming the international humanitarian law. After World War II, violations of the latter by the belligerent party are viewed by the world community no less harshly than the mere war. The paper questions the purpose, reasons, conditions and intermediate consequences of the war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. Obviously, the military aggression and the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022 marked the beginning of the de facto war, under a specific formal definition by a Russian official as a “special military operation” instead of naming it an attempt to avoid legal responsibility for war crimes committed in Ukraine. The article analyses the aggressive nature of this war on the part of the Russian Federation, demonstrates numerous violations of international law conventions by the Russian armed forces during the military invasion and temporary occupied territories in Ukraine. It emphasizes that the law of war has always been replaced by signing a peace treaty and relevant international agreements, which entails the obligation to severe the political, economic, and legal responsibility of the state violating international humanitarian law. The paper reviews the key institutions and legal tools for bringing the Russian Federation authorities to justice for the war crimes committed in Ukraine. So far, the President of Ukraine, the Supreme Council of Ukraine, and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine have managed to apply legitimate international legal
mechanisms, primarily the International Criminal Court and the UN Security Council, to prosecute Russia for violating the international humanitarian law and committing war crimes in Ukraine. At the same time, on the Ukrainian territories currently liberated from the Russian army’s occupation (Bucha, Gostomel, Irpin, etc.), it is already possible to implement a special mechanism of justice, which consists in the collaboration between national and international experts: specialists, investigators, prosecutors, and judges to collect objective and impartial evidence of gross violations of international law and war conventions in Ukraine. It is obvious that for Ukraine today both the victory and just punishment for the committed and continuing committed war crimes on its territory are important. The aftermath of World War II’s “Never Again” now requires, as never before, its effective guarantee and protection

The article is devoted to the study of the correct application of the evaluative concepts contained in the norms of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Attention is drawn to certain difficulties in the application of the evaluative norms in the Convention: despite their objective necessity and usefulness, they create a room for the law enforcement entity’s own discretion up to subjectivism in resolving specific cases; they serve as an objective obstacle to the unification of the case law of the ECtHR and this creates preconditions for unequal implementation of ECtHR judgments in the national legal order; they cause the risk of errors in the application of the provisions of the Convention by the competent authorities of the Contracting States. It is established that the application of legal norms containing evaluative concepts is challenging not only owing to the specific properties of the evaluative concepts themselves, but also due to the peculiarities of adjudication by the ECtHR when applying the evaluative norms. The relevant case law of the ECtHR as well as examples of national legislation are analysed in support of these theoretical conclusions. Since the lack of uniform application of the evaluative norms of the Convention causes divergent use of the ECtHR’s judgments in the domestic judicial system, it is advised to follow a number of rules for reasoning of decisions by the domestic court. These rules will serve as a certain guarantee against ambiguous implementation of ECtHR judgments at the national level.

The role of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in the management of cases and disputes in Nigeria and across the globe cannot be overemphasized. The judicial arm of the government is the arm responsible for interpretation of laws in Nigeria and the judiciary’s role in preserving the rights of citizens across Nigeria also cannot be overemphasized. It ensures that the society is stable in the face of insta-bility and ensures that lawlessness is not maintained. The judiciary ensures that laws made by the legislature are obeyed by ensuring that those who violate the provisions of any established laws are punished. In doing all these, it has been established that the system of administering justice in our courts in Nigeria is extremely slow. Considering the foregoing, alternative dispute resolution as a means of settling disputes has been of tremendous help in easing the hardship of getting cases resolved through the court system. This paper examines ways through which alternative dispute resolution has assisted the Nigerian judicial system and the need to use alternative dispute resolution the more in order to ensure that number of cases handled by courts are drastically reduced. Recommendations are made at the end of the research.

The interest in the profession of a mediator increased with the popularisation of mediation in Poland. The tendency was supported by the legislator’s liberal defini-tion of requirements for performing this professional function. In the article, we raise issues related to the principles of entering in the register of permanent mediators in Poland. We present the currently applicable legal regulations and we analyse them, focusing on the requirement to have knowledge of mediation and to be skilled in it. This requirement is interpreted in different ways by individual authorities that enter candidates’ names in the register of permanent mediators (presidents of district courts), and its interpretation is also evaluated differently in both Polish literature and case law.
The purpose of the article is to show the areas of legal regulations that require changes and unification, on the basis of analysing the results of statistical research conducted by the authors. It is significant particularly from the perspective of the ongoing discussion on the professionalisation of mediators in Poland, especially in the context of the planned changes and the introduction of the National Register of Mediators. The accomplishment of the task undertaken by the authors is primarily served by the formal and dogmatic method as well as the comparative method used in the statistical research. The purpose of that method was to show discrepancies in interpreting the regulations concerning mediation.

The purpose of the article is to accomplish several complementary research tasks. First, the issue of sources of the content of conventional acts in law is discussed. Then, detailed issues regarding the content of conventional acts in law are presented against the background of dogmatic and legal reflections as well as problems related to the identification of conventional acts. Additionally, the author makes an attempt to determine the ways of understanding ‘the content (of conventional acts in law)’ in particular legal sciences. The research results presented in the article (apart from their cognitive value) are supposed to serve the development of the general theoretical concept of conventional acts in law, as well as to organise the dogmatic and legal discussion on the titular issue as much as possible.

The author offers an analysis of the controversial Israeli Nation-State Law of 2018 and B. Netanyahu’s involvement in its adoption. He claims that its ideas manifest Netanyahu’s desire to depart from the state-centred, social democratic, and liberal views advocated by Ben Gurion. This desire stems from his strong disagreement with Israel’s founder’s claim and belief that secularism is a guarantee that Israel does not fall into the same trap as the leaders of the bicentennial Crusades – which ultimately failed. The author of the paper makes an insightful comparison of this law with the contents of Point 13 of Thomas Woodrow Wilson’s 1918 plan – a docu-ment from exactly 100 years before, designed to shape Europe after victory in the war against Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary, on whose lands an independent Polish state was to be established.

The author offers an analysis of the controversial Israeli Nation-State Law of 2018 and B. Netanyahu’s involvement in its adoption. He claims that its ideas manifest Netanyahu’s desire to depart from the state-centred, social democratic, and liberal views advocated by Ben Gurion. This desire stems from his strong disagreement with Israel’s founder’s claim and belief that secularism is a guarantee that Israel does not fall into the same trap as the leaders of the bicentennial Crusades – which ultimately failed. The author of the paper makes an insightful comparison of this law with the contents of Point 13 of Thomas Woodrow Wilson’s 1918 plan – a docu-ment from exactly 100 years before, designed to shape Europe after victory in the war against Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary, on whose lands an independent Polish state was to be established.

The necessity of providing healthcare to citizens is one of the basic principles of every state, regulated by provisions of national, EU or international law and comple-mented by soft law. Civilisational changes and technological advancement make it possible to develop new healthcare tools and services (i.a. telemonitoring, telecon-sulting, telerehabilitation and electronic medical documentation). The COVID-19 pandemic greatly emphasised the need to provide such services. The wide use of e-health, however, which may be a remedy for numerous problems that the health-care sector is wrestling with, requires securing the rights of those who are not digitally included, especially the elderly. The prevalence of various degrees of digital exclusion, not only among the elderly, makes these issues socially significant and they should be solved by law. The purpose of the article is an initial analysis of the validity of developing e-health services in the ageing society in Poland and a presentation of proposals for adjusting legal solutions as regards the use of digital tools in healthcare to the changing reality.

The ambiguity of understanding and use of the term “human rights” reduces the effectiveness of the law-making and law enforcement activities of state and inter-national bodies, creates negative conditions for the formation of the unified worl-dview and legal position of future lawyers and representatives of other humanities. This article aims to define, formulate the content and describe the legal essence of the term “human rights,” and to substantiate the thesis about the harmfulness of the legal science, law-making and law enforcement use of this term with different meanings. The leading method of research is the method of analysis, which allows one to study the subject, imaginatively dividing it into constituent elements, and to consider each of the selected elements separately within a single whole. This article presents the argumentation of the need for a single wording, understanding, and use of the legal term “human rights.” The materials of the article have practical value for the effective implementation of the law-making and law enforcement activities of state and international bodies, for the formation of the unified worldview and legal position of future lawyers and representatives of other humanities, as well as for a correct and clear explanation of problems with the implemen-tation and protection of human rights.

The purpose of the article is analyse how essential the issue of personal data protection is in the procedure of leading a collective dispute. In order to make some findings in this matter, the dogmatic and legal method was primarily used and the provisions of the Act on Resolving Collective Disputes and the GDPR were analysed in the first place. The findings made lead to the conclusion that despite the fact that the dispute itself is collective, both parties (both the trade union and the employer) process a range of personal data during the dispute. Due to the specifics of the procedure and the fact that the Act was essentially created before the GDPR came into force and it was not amended for the inclusion of broadly understood requirements for the correctness of the processing of personal data, it is necessary to rely on general principles resulting from the GDPR, and a certain indicator of it may be opinions issued by the PDPO.
The issue raised in this paper has so far been included in certain statements from the doctrine, but its practical significance and importance for social partners who execute their constitutional right to lead collective disputes fully justify further research in this direction as well as the fact of findings resulting from that research reaching various target groups (apart from the above-mentioned social partners, representatives of the judicature and science should also be reached).

The rule of law does not govern all human interactions. There are times when the state bypasses legal constraints, as documented by the World Justice Project. Other times, jurisdictions may be mutually unfriendly and refuse to enforce foreign laws. Blockchains create trust between contracting parties at the individual level, enabling them to transact freely and increase consumer welfare. Blockchains can only supple-ment antitrust if the legal constraints do not impede their development. The law should thus support the decentralization of blockchains so that blockchain-based mechanisms may take over (even if imperfectly) where the law does not apply. With that in mind, we justify the attractiveness of that approach by showing that blockchain causes an increase in the number of transactions by creating trust (Part 1), and that it may overall increase the decentralization of economic transactions (Part 2). The law should take into account where it applies (Part 3). We conclude afterward (Part 4).