The erosion of international law is not unique in today’s world. Its crisis of legitimacy is characterised by polarisation in world affairs, declining trust among actors on the international plane and competing claims to authority. Existing perspectives on international law and international relations explain this erosion only partially since they overlook the relational processes through which international law acquires meaning and binding force. This article introduces the Theory on the Relational Normativity of International Law (TORNIL), which reconceptualises the sources of international law’s normativity as arising from the interaction of formal rules, moral values, and relationships— between actors concerned with and affected by its application and development—characterised along a continuum of trust and distrust. By operationalising this framework through the practices of principled negotiation, the article advances a relational understanding of international law’s normativity and offers a pathway for rebuilding legitimacy and trust in global governance.

The growing pace of artificial intelligence (AI) in Asia has changed the nature of human–machine interaction. This article builds on the idea of “relational protocols” that are normative and procedural systems that govern the growth of co-developmental AI systems, as they are developed in an iterative fashion with human users. Through comparative jurisprudence, the article analyses the difference in frameworks between four Asian legal systems, China, Singapore, Japan and India, each of which has its own cultural logics, constitutional orders and administrative traditions. Article critically questions the idea of the “mediation of conflict” between administration and individual communicative rights by using a normative analysis of each jurisdiction. Based on the results, there is a need for more than just technical efficiency in AI governance in Asia; relational accountability, cultural sensitivity, and meaningful human oversight must also be incorporated in designing the human–machine dialogue.

AI in clinical decision-making challenges liability frameworks grounded in subject–object dichotomies, linear causation, and atomised attribution. Drawing on relational responsibility, this article argues that the human–machine association, rather than the AI system or clinician alone, should be treated as the fundamental decision-making unit. Responsibility should therefore emphasise interaction quality, harm prevention, and relationships that sustain future cooperation. The article proposes dialogic responsibilities for technology providers, medical institutions, clinicians, and patients. For external compensation, medical institutions should act as the primary responsibility hub, reducing patients’ burden of proof while retaining rights of internal recourse based on specific human–machine interaction patterns. Internally, liability should reflect calibrated trust, documented dialogue, and the respective commitments of technology providers and clinical users. It thereby promotes accountable collaboration throughout the clinical AI lifecycle. By linking physician–patient trust with algorithmic trust, this relational framework seeks to reconcile technological innovation, professional autonomy, and the protection of patients’ rights.

Observing the high compliance rates of tech giants with judicial suggestions from Internet courts in China, this article supplements Galanter’s thesis by reconsidering the extent to which repeat players inherently dominate litigation outcomes over one-shotters. Drawing from theories of relational contracts and governance, it proposes a theory of relational adjudication that not only explains the compliance phenomenon but also offers new insights into the high success rates of repeat players. This theory suggests that courts, acting as “repeat referees,” leverage long-term interactions to encourage greater compliance and improve litigation outcomes among these players. Central to this cooperative dynamic are reciprocal expectations and frequent information exchanges. Contrary to traditional views, within a relational governance framework, court intervention extends beyond case-by-case decisions to include systematic compliance advice, thereby integrating legal risk prevention into daily corporate practices. However, potential drawbacks such as risks to judicial credibility and integrity warrant careful consideration.

The essence of the Metaverse lies in the inter-subjectivity revealed by phenomenology. The many-worlds model reveals the significance of interaction and communication for digital human existence. The Metaverse exhibits a rhizomatic structure of narrative from multiple small universe interpretations, particularly the cross-embedding and close coupling between digital relational orders and analog legal orders formed through interface revolution. Virtuality-reality interfacing permits rational design based on exchange concepts, yielding twelve fundamental digital-age juridical propositions from subject interaction ordering mechanisms. These propositions indicate that with consumer sovereignty and distributed autonomous organizations, the Metaverse will transform order principles. A corridor system connecting cyberspace to off-chain society will be built using code and smart contracts as dual interfaces, producing varied relationship-law combinations.

This study analyses the diversification of the South Korean legal field following institutional changes. South Korean reforms to legal education and legal practice between 2007 and 2011, specifically the 2007 Act on the Establishment and Management of Professional Law Schools and the 2011 Attorney-at-Law Act amendments, expanded the pool of new attorneys and increased the number of law firms. The government increased the supply of lawyers by reforming the legal education system, while concurrent regulations promoted gender diversity in the system. Restrictions on establishing law firms were loosened. Using data on founding partners who established law firms in South Korea from 2000 to 2016, this study examines the effects of these legal reforms on the gender diversity of founding law firm partners. The findings reveal that the proportion of women among founding partners increased following these reforms, suggesting that the institutional changes encouraged gender desegregation in the Korean legal field.

The financialisation of household wealth has sharpened a tension between family collectivism and individual property rights in China, where Article 35 of the Civil Code permits a guardian to dispose of a ward’s property only for the ward’s benefit while the indigenous Tongju Gongcai tradition treats the household, rather than the individual, as the property-holding unit. Drawing on an original dataset of 58 contested disputes, this article shows that courts divide almost evenly on facts the standard cannot itself distinguish, but not randomly. Outcomes turn on antecedent features the statute does not name: the character of the property, whether the ward’s sole home is at stake, and the destination of the proceeds. The divergence reflects a collision of three institutional logics rather than doctrinal disorder. The article proposes a modest fiduciary floor anchored in the ward’s subsistence in shelter, while preserving space for household-property understandings above that floor.

This article examines China’s legal framework for protecting healthcare information in the artificial intelligence (AI) era from a rule of law perspective. Critically analysing the Basic Healthcare and Health Promotion Law (2020) alongside the Personal Information Protection Law (2021), we identify systemic vulnerabilities enabling institutional overreach: ambiguous consent thresholds, absent use-case governance, and deficient auditing mechanisms. Case studies, including coronavirus disease 2019 data leaks, demonstrate how legislative gaps perpetuate power asymmetries, violating Lon Fuller’s principles of clarity and congruence. We argue that China’s “socialist rule of law” paradigm prioritises state control at the expense of individual safeguards, contravening global norms like General Data Protection Regulation accountability standards. The article proposes statutory reforms: embedding objection rights, codifying purpose-limited data processing, and establishing independent audits. Only through such measures can China reconcile AI-driven healthcare innovation with the rule of law’s core tenets: transparency, accountability, and restraint on arbitrary power.