The integration of smart contracts within blockchain technology represents atransformative approach to intellectual property rights (IPR) management, fundamentally altering traditional copyright enforcement mechanisms. This article demonstrates how distributed computer networks combined with automated regulatory devices provide superior alternatives to conventional IPR handling methods. Smart contracts reduce the need for arbitration through automated execution of predetermined terms and coding protocols. The implementation of blockchain-based smart contract systems enhances proprietary rights management, which can be particularly relevant for the BRICS nations currently facing evolving digital governance challenges. Research indicates that automated proprietary system networks are progressively superseding traditional IPR management approaches. The development of automated governance systems, coupled with decentralized IPR frameworks, presents both opportunities and regulatory challenges for the BRICS countries. Embedded payment mechanisms within smart contracts ensure automatic royalty distribution when copyrighted content is accessed, eliminating manual processing burdens and associated costs for creators. The implementation of smart contracts also enhances agreement integrity and reduces plagiarism risks through the use of immutable blockchain records. This study examines how organizations can establish enhanced trustworthiness and optimize digital business processes through blockchain-based copyright management. Advanced analytical tools accelerate the understanding of both the benefits and limitations within current copyright frameworks. Users are able to seamlessly access blockchain systems, creating multiple account types as required. Every blockchain entry provides transparent records of content usage and account activities. The digital system prevents misrepresentation by maintaining visible platform activities that are accessible to all stakeholders, ensuring comprehensive transparency of development and execution history for all agreement participants.

In an era marked by the increasing importance of aGlobal South agenda to overcome environmental challenges, the BRICS have gained prominence as an influential actor in pursuing sustainable development. This paper investigates how transnational legal mechanisms have become indispensable in propelling sustainability in the BRICS context. It explores the complexities of current environmental legal documents and how the BRICS founding members have addressed them to understand the challenges associated with harnessing legal processes to foster sustainability. By analyzing the interplay between transnational legal frameworks and sustainability agendas, this research contributes valuable insights into the evolving landscape of global governance. It illuminates how BRICS nations navigate legal pathways to address environmental concerns, promote clean energy, and bolster socio-economic development while balancing their domestic legal frameworks. Finally, this paper underscores the significance of transnational legal processes, highlighting the implications for international sustainability efforts in an increasingly interconnected world, particularly in emerging economies.

This study analyzes the experience of smart city development in core BRICS jurisdictions, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The legal frameworks, as well as approaches towards management and implementation of the smart city concept, are examined. The research is methodologically based on a multidisciplinary approach, incorporating the analysis of academic literature, legal acts, and program documents. The authors explore top-down and bottomup approaches to the development of a smart city and conclude that both of the approaches have distinct advantages as well as certain limitations, which suggests the necessity of a combined model for both the regulation and implementation of relevant projects. The authors also maintain that BRICS as an institution may itself serve as aplatform to share and create appropriate tools. Additionally, a specialized mechanism for knowledge exchange and capacity building could be instituted within BRICS, aimed at systematically documenting and disseminating best practices, technical standards, and key insights on smart city development among member-states.

This article analyses the development of Brazilian consumer protection in disputes involving cross-border consumer transactions through the lens of private international law in light of the growing impact of economic globalisation, which has encouraged the consumption of foreign goods and services. To achieve this objective, the study employs two methodologies: the dogmatic method, which involves the analysis of relevant norms at the international and domestic levels, and the empirical method, which examines the leading cases and other judicial cases that reflect prevailing jurisprudence on the matter. The article also examines legislative bills and treaty drafts that are aimed at the future regulation of consumer protection at the international level.

This article examines the different issues involved in saving the Aral Sea, viewing them in their unity and interconnections. The causes of the Aral Sea crisis are explored, alongside a general overview of the current state of the sea and the Aral Sea region. An analysis of transboundary water resources in Central Asia is provided. The study also analyzes the evolution and progression of interstate cooperation in saving the Aral Sea and the surrounding region. Furthermore, the article examines, from a legal perspective, the regulatory frameworks underpinning cooperation efforts and discusses the main directions of activity of intergovernmental bodies tasked with addressing the problems of the Aral Sea basin. The authors claim that the Central Asian region has not yet been able to reverse the situation associated with the degradation of the former Aral Sea. The efforts of the five states of this region are clearly insufficient in dealing with this global environmental problem, and it is evident that broader external international assistance is needed. At the same time, the established regional cooperation mechanisms have led to significant accomplishments in the issue of the current management of each of the five bordering countries’ water withdrawal limits and forecast operation regimes of the reservoir cascades in the Syr Darya and Amu Darya River basins. This has played a crucial role in preventing acute water conflicts in the region, which undoubtedly would have arisen long ago without this cooperation. Following an analysis of all the factors, the article authors propose several recommendations to improve the recovery process of the Aral Sea.

In doctrinal sources, a claim for the recognition of property rights constitutes a special protection method that is not commonly found in the legislation of every country and is not widespread like vindication and negatory actions. However, there has been no sufficient research on the judicial means of correcting the errors that occur during the registration of real estate rights. This article is a comparative legal study of national laws of those countries that provide for the registration of rights (titles) in real estate but not for the acts (deeds) from which the rights emerge. It is commonly held that claims for the recognition of property rights are known only to some legal systems and are not found in the laws of several states. Our study revealed that this is not entirely true. First, claims for the recognition of property rights do exist in the laws of countries of the Romano-Germanic legal family. In several countries, they are enshrined at the legislative level; in other countries, they are formulated at the level of judicial practice and recognized in legal doctrine; while in some countries, this claim relates to contesting the registration of real estate rights. Second, there are analogs of claims for the recognition of property rights also found in common law legal systems, which operate through tort claims arising from two possible violations – conversion (appropriation) and slander of title (libel of the title). The many different methods and instruments for correcting registration errors in the laws of different countries may be described as a single type of claim – the claim for the recognition of property rights. This claim is applied when the reliability of an entry in the registry of the real estate rights is questioned or when the right of an individual entered in the registry is contested. Claims for the recognition of property rights aim to correct erroneous entries in the registry of rights to real estate when an individual considers themselves the owner of a real estate, but the real estate is registered under a different individual.

The article analyzes the role and significance of the current Russian Constitution. It examines its advantages and disadvantages that have accumulated over the thirty-year period of its existence. The author also discusses the problems associated with the need to reform and modernize constitutional norms in order to improve legislation. It is noted that the development of national constitutional legislation is impossible without relying on progressive international experience and without taking into account the preservation of social principles and traditional values of its multinational people. The norms of the Constitution are an integral element of the country’s national security, a legal guarantor of the preservation of state sovereignty, independent domestic and foreign policy, national and constitutional identity.

Legal regulation governing indigenous rights related to the Northern lands and traditional economic activities began to take shape in the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods, when legislators established a special legal regime of land use for indigenous peoples, including for reindeer herding. Later, federal legislation was formulated based on international legal norms and the provisions of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, which guaranteed the rights of indigenous peoples to use the land as a material basis for their traditional activities. This article demonstrates that the current Russian legislation in this regard is merely symbolical, fragmentary, contradictory, and has gaps. The legislation of the Russian regions, in which reindeer herding is developing, partly compensates for the above-mentioned shortcomings. The most complete implementation is seen in Yakutia and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug regions, where land plots are assigned to reindeer owners with the obligation to use the allocated lands in accordance with land management projects and regulations that protect against the depletion of natural resources. This article references both domestic and foreign experience in this area and offers legislative proposals from an ethnocultural perspective that justify the right of northern indigenous peoples to reindeer herding as an integral form of their traditional economic practices. In this context, the free use of lands for reindeer herding should be guaranteed in the regions of traditional dwelling and economic activity; additionally, special regulations should be implemented to ensure the environmentally sustainable use of those lands alongside some adaptation measures that can be taken to protect reindeer herders from climate change. The abovementioned provisions can be incorporated in land and environmental legislation, as well as in the federal law on reindeer herding.

The techniques and content of legal education have not changed much over the years, but the law itself has changed a great deal. There is a clear need for law faculties to rethink their approach to teaching, including students who intend to embark on careers as legal practitioners, and others whose legal studies will take them in other directions. The core of legal training should, in the author’s view, be advocacy: the ability to present a case on behalf of another to a neutral reader or listener in a way intended to inform or to persuade. Obviously, legal education requires mastery of material, but far more emphasis needs to be placed upon how that material came into being, how it relates to other cultural phenomena, and how it can be used going forward. It is, moreover, essential for law teachers to be aware of the demands of globalization: they must expand their horizons to include developments occurring outside their own countries and legal regimes. This article suggests several devices that might serve to broaden law faculty curricula, and to promote the elusive goal of “learning to think like a lawyer” in the contemporary world: a set of skills that should be valuable to all students as they embark on their careers