Explainers on Quillets of the law:

The Advisory Opinion on the Legality of Nuclear Weapons

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 19:57:34 +0000

On the 5th of February 2026, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed in 2010 by the US and Russia (known as the New START treaty) will expire.¹ This treaty is the successor to a series of treaties signed by the US and the USSR which aimed to control the deployment of nuclear weapons.¹ With its expiration, there is no longer a single bilateral arms control agreement between Russia and the US, which had led to fears of a new nuclear arms race.

For Women Ltd v the Scottish Ministers- Explained

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:53:01 +0100

On Wednesday 16th April 2025, the UK supreme court ruled in a case about the meaning of the word sex, woman and man in the Equality Act. The court ruled the meaning of the word sex in the Equality Act is biological. Therefore trans people including those with gender recognition certificates are not their acquired/ certificated gender for the purposes of the Equality Act. This post aims to explain the reasoning in the courts judgment in the hope this will combat the large amount of misreporting by the press about what this judgment means. It also discusses the recent announcements by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and British Transport Police about their interpretation of this judgment and why their interpretation may be wrong.

What is the Universal Postal Union?

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 18:43:40 +0100

My friend Abi wrote a blog post about the S10 standard created by the Universal Postal Union. You can find it here: https://www.akpain.net/blog/s10-upu/. As a result, I googled the union and realised it was created via an international treaty: the Treaty of Bern and pre-dates the UN by 71 years. So here is a brief outline of the treaty of Bern, how the UPU became part of the UN and what the treaty looks like today.

Abrahart v University of Bristol & its impact on disabled students

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:40:39 +0000

(CW: Suicide, depression, mental health)

Natasha Abrahart was a 19-year-old Physics student at the University of Bristol who took her own life in April 2018. Ms Abrahart was suffering from depression and social anxiety disorder before her death as the result of the oral presentation assessment that was part of a lab based module in her degree. In the words of her father Dr Robert Abrahart the judge found the university ‘failed our daughter, broke the law, and contributed to her death’.¹ Had the university followed the requirements of the Equality Act, this tragedy likely could have been avoided.