The EU AI Act seeks to balance the need for societal protection against the potential risks of AI systems, with the goal of fostering innovation. However, the Act’s ex-ante risk-based approach might lead to regulatory obsolescence (already materialised in 2021 with the spread of LLMs and the consequent reopening of the regulatory process), as well as to over or under-inclusion of AI applications in risks’ categories. The paper deals with the latter outcome by exploring how AI uses in law and rulemaking hide risks not covered by the EU AI Act. It is then analysed as to how the Act lacks flexibility on amending its provisions, and the way forward. The latter is tackled without utopian and not really feasible proposals for a new act and risk-based approach, but focusing on codes of conduct and national interventions on AI uses by public authorities.

This article delves into the doctrine of inherent powers within the Sudanese Civil Procedure Code, with a specific focus on its origin, nature and scope. It posits that this doctrine empowers the courts to undertake actions essential for fulfilling their duties and ensuring the pursuit of justice, even in instances where such powers are not explicitly granted to them under statutory provisions. Additionally, the article examines the potential advantages and disadvantages associated with inherent powers and contemplates whether their exercise might pose a threat to the rule of law. It also explores the arguments both in favour of and against the possibility of rule-making within the framework of these powers and the potential impact of such regulations on the administration of justice. The article asserts that while a court's inherent powers are indispensable for the efficient dispensation of justice, it is imperative that they are not wielded capriciously or arbitrarily. Instead, their exercise should be guided by the principles of equity and good conscience.

This paper explores Elinor Ostrom's account of practical reason through the conceptual lens provided by a typology of dimensions of rational conduct advanced by Amartya Sen. On Sen's view, self-interested behaviour has three independent, and separable, features: self-centred welfare, self-welfare goal and self-goal choice. We suggest that Ostrom is committed to a version of rational choice theory that retains the assumptions of self-welfare goal and self-goal choice but, by acknowledging that people's welfare is affected by factors beyond their material consumption, departs from the assumption of self-welfare goal. We argue that this departure is not necessarily driven by an acknowledgement, along Senian lines, that people may have reasons for action other than the single-minded pursuit of their own goals, but rather by Ostrom's belief that the decision problem people face is so complex that maximising behaviour is rendered impossible. We illustrate this argument by analysing how Elinor Ostrom's position differs not only from Sen's but also from that of her husband and long-time collaborator Vincent Ostrom, who in his analysis of the covenantal aspects of rule-making seems to depart from the assumptions of instrumental rationality and preference-satisfaction.

In this article, the predominant approach to legal research on the rule of law is analysed, and three alternative approaches which enable empirical research are presented. All four approaches are then assessed by applying them to the Dutch practice of judicial rule-making by agreement. The current evaluation approach is shown to be limited in its analytical scope with regard to the actual workings of the rule of law through its lack of empirical grounding. It is unable to critically examine its own assumptions regarding this matter. The first alternative approach focuses on how legal arrangements affect the prevalence of some interests over others in society. This enables an analysis to be made of how social groups are favoured or disfavoured by different rule of law arrangements. The second alternative approach examines how law influences citizens' acceptance of their government and thus focuses on the legitimacy that the rule of law is often assumed to generate. The third alternative approach analyses the rule of law as a discourse. It asks the questions how power relations in society influence the content of the debate on the rule of law and how the content of the rule of law in turn influences power relations in society. The author claims that adopting a combination of these approaches and analysing the interrelations of the findings of these approaches leads to more fruitful rule of law research than continuing on the narrow path of the evaluation approach.