Welcome to the October/November edition of Global Insight – the traditional post-IBA Annual Conference highlights edition. This year, the Conference, in Mexico City, was graced with the presence of former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and the current President of Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice, Norma Lucía Piña Hernández, who received the inaugural IBA Impact Award. Both spoke eloquently on the urgent need to support and protect the independence of the judiciary in Mexico at the current time. Piña invoked the words of Alexis de Tocqueville: ‘by thus diminishing the independence of the magistrates, not only has the judiciary been attacked, but the democratic Republic itself’. We’ve reproduced their passionate speeches in the pages that follow.

Other highlights include interviews with high-level speakers, such as former US Ambassador to the Russian Federation, John Sullivan, who shared his in-depth expertise garnered from his time in Moscow on what is currently driving Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The ‘Conversation with…’ strand at the Annual Conference also provided a platform to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, Andriy Kostin and Hollywood actor Liev Schreiber, founder of the non-governmental organisation BlueCheck, to provide interesting insight on the judicial and humanitarian responses currently underway in response to Russia’s invasion. Full-length versions of the films can be viewed on the IBA website. In this issue, you can read abridged versions of the interviews.

Elsewhere in this edition, we have an edited transcript of the keynote session on artificial intelligence and its impact on the legal profession. We’ve also continued our coverage of 2024 as ‘the year of elections’. The worrying trend that is seeing an apparent resurgence of the far right across Europe is the subject of one of the commissioned features in this edition. Another covers the upcoming US election, reminding readers of the forensic investigation undertaken by the former FBI chief, Robert Mueller, following the last presidential election, the shocking revelations in his report and the fact that such issues remain very much in play as we approach, arguably, the biggest test of US democracy and rule of law to date. We hope you enjoy the edition.

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