This article by Alexander Lock and Jonathan Sims describes the context in which Magna Carta was obtained. It distinguishes different versions of the charter and signposts particular documents and publications in the history of its transmission and interpretation up to the early nineteenth century. It also identifies various texts and objects which have indicated the charter's significance for groups and individuals at particular junctures. These include information carrying objects which might support research on Magna Carta within the context of the circulation and reception of legal meaning. A major focus of the article is a chronological account of the charter's invocation from the thirteenth century to the early nineteenth century.

This article, written by Lesley Dingle, is based upon an in-depth interview with Dame Rosalyn Higgins in March 2014. It highlights particular elements that characterise her contribution to legal scholarship and international adjudication, and should be read in the context of the biography presented in the Eminent Scholars Archive: http://www.squire.law.cam.ac.uk/eminent_scholars/dame_rosalyn_higgins.php. Dame Rosalyn Higgins was born in Kensington in 1937. She grew up in London during the Blitz and her matter-of-fact account of these times epitomised her later career: application to the task in hand, and a lack of a sense of expectation. After the War, she passed successively through grammar school, Girton College, Yale and the Royal Institute of International affairs, steadily immersing herself over fifteen years in the work of the United Nations during its formative period. It was on the UN's role as the global peace-keeper and international law-maker that she became the acknowledged authority. There followed a long period of formal academia (1978–95: Kent and LSE), during which she rose to high office. This experience further honed her scholarly and administrative instincts, and she was honoured in 1995 with a DBE. Later that year Dame Rosalyn was appointed to the Bench of the International Court of Justice – the first woman to rise to this position, and in 2006 was elected its President. She retired in 2009.

Historically, civil justice has been conceived as a concentration of non–criminal matters, including several heterogeneous procedures, and that is the main reason why it has been subject of study in several countries in Latin America where procedure reforms are being designed, implemented or evaluated. Santiago Pereira Campos examines justice systems in Latin America in collaboration with Alejandra Pírez Ledesma who worked with him on this article.

This article, written by Teresa M. Miguel-Stearns, explores the vast differences in judicial authority not only between the common law and civil law traditions, but also among various countries steeped in the civil law tradition in Latin America. Judicial review, certiorari, precedent, and other functions and characteristics of the judiciaries of five distinctly different countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico) are compared and contrasted with each other and with the common law tradition. This evaluation demonstrates that despite their, arguably, similar distant histories and legal foundations, each country has evolved into a unique legal system with significant differences in the treatment of the judiciary and its jurisprudence.

The article below, which is written by Gloria Orrego Hoyos, presents an overview of the Inter-American Human Rights System, its main instruments, its organs for the protection and promotion of human rights in the Americas and the available tools for the academic research and the activism in the vindication for human rights in the region. This information is presented from the contextualization of the system within a history of violation of human rights in the region, and the role of both the Inter-American Convention and the Inter-American Court in the transformation of the social, political and institutional realities of the people of the continent.

This article by Renê Francisco Hellman and Mariana Cesto aims to analyse how the New Civil Procedure Code will influence the Brazilian legal education system. The new Code is opposed to ‘surprise decisions’ and emphasizes the need for substantial opportunity to contradict the opponent's submissions. This will constrain judicial decision-making. On that basis, new challenges appear for teaching, and they must be faced and solved in order to make the new prescriptions effective. The proposal is to use an interdisciplinary approach to reformulate the legal education system. This would effectively provide better support to future lawyers regarding their development, making them better qualified to operate within the legal system.

This article, by Mercedes Robba and Mariana Lavalle, deals with the civil right to reproduction and procreative liberty aroused by the Argentinian legislation and Court's decisions, in the light of the new concept of family in the country. This contribution focuses exclusively on the barriers to equal access to reproductive health in Argentina, taking into account infertility, infecundity and childlessness, according to the right to raise a family in conditions of equality and freedom.

In Queensland, Australia, community legal centres utilise a range of different types of information technology to provide legal advice and assistance to their clients, which include marginalised and disadvantaged groups. In this article Emma Phillips and James Farrell considers the use and efficacy of different types of information technology within the community legal sector, discussing the findings of recent empirical research on this issue in the context of the relevant research literature. The article then explores issues associated with the use of information technology in the provision of legal information and advice, including the limitations associated with this technology in the context of the delivery of legal assistance to vulnerable clients.

The ever increasing capabilities of online legal research platforms have revolutionised the strategies we adopt in tackling routine research questions. It is now possible, for example, to comprehensively identify later judicial references to any given earlier case at the click of a button. However, we are potentially running the risk of believing that the online platforms are capable of providing us with answers to questions that they are not yet able to deliver. In this short article Daniel Hoadley focuses on the capability of the current spread of online research platforms to answer a frequent and fundamental legal research question: “is this case still good law?”

Kate Faulkner introduces a collection of material left to the Squire Law Library by veteran historian, Henry Button. Her article discusses the sorting through of this small collection of books, pamphlets and correspondence that was gathered during his research. It looks at how Button's interests developed to include the first female lawyers and the longest-serving legal professionals. It concludes with some information about Henry Button himself and provides a list of the books that were part of the collection.