Volume 47, Issue 3

The significance of career choice in human life cannot be overstated. Many law students upon graduation do not proceed to mainstream legal practice. They pursue careers in public administration, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), as corporate secretaries, and so on. The aim of this study is to confirm the readiness of law students to proceed to legal practice upon graduation and to assess their level of career awareness in relation to law-related careers. The study also determined the areas of interest of law students in law-related careers. The study employed the survey research design in which questionnaires were used to collect data from the twelve universities that run the approved undergraduate law program up to 500 level in south-west Nigeria. Krejcie and Morgan's formula was used to select the sample size of 597. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The results showed that a majority of law students do not wish to proceed into mainstream legal practice. Law students’ career intentions are in a variety of legal careers.

Due to new technologies, the speed and volume of disinformation is unprecedented today. As seen in the 2016 US presidential election, especially with the conduct of the Internet Research Agency, this poses challenges and threats for the (democratic) political processes of internal State affairs, and in particular, (democratic) elections are under increasing risk. Disinformation has the potential to sway the outcome of an election and therefore discredits the idea of free and fair elections. Given the growing prevalence of disinformation operations aimed at (democratic) elections, the question arises as to how international law applies to such operations and how States under international law might counter such hostile operations launched by their adversaries. From a legal standpoint, it appears that such disinformation operations do not fully escape existing international law. However, due to open questions and the geopolitical context, many States refrain from clearly labelling them as internationally wrongful acts under international law. Stretching current international legal norms to cover the issue does not seem to be the optimal solution and a binding international treaty would also need to overcome various hurdles. The author suggests that disinformation operations aimed at (democratic) elections in the context of public international law will most likely be regulated (if) by a combination of custom and bottom-up law-making influencing and reinforcing each other.

In 2017, several colleagues and I published a “Guide to Cuban Law and Legal Research” in the summer issue of the International Journal of Legal Information (IJLI) (Vol. 45, no. 2). Since then, much has transpired in Cuba, and much has happened vis à vis the island's relationships with the outside world. The following article highlights a number of these developments and notes several new resources related to Cuban law and politics. I drew some of the article's content from a contribution I penned for the blog of the International Association of Law Libraries (IALL) in July 2019.