I have obtained permission to change the title of my talk to members of the SCMA worldwide on 20 November 2025 to – ‘Mediation Advocacy in the Tax-Efficient Settlement of Inheritance Act, Beneficial Interest & Proprietary Estoppel Claims.’

The working title of my next book is ‘Mediation of International Cultural Heritage Disputes – Anachronism, Orientalism, Culture, Ethics & Law’ – See the ‘International Cultural Heritage Disputes’ page at www.carlislam.co.uk.

This will be written as both a multi-disciplinary academic course text book for Law Students, and as a handbook for Mediators and Mediation Advocates – globally. To view the current chapter structure, please visit the ‘International Cultural Heritage Disputes’ page at www.carlislam.co.uk. I have already started work on the book, and will be able to devote all of my available free time to it, after I have written the article above. That is likely to be from September 2025 onwards.

In August 2026, I am also planning to launch a YouTube Channel – ‘Art and Civilization.’ For more information, Google – www.artandcivilization.tv.

Although the ‘Art and Civilization’ and ‘Mediation of International Cultural Heritage Disputes’ projects are personally very close to my heart, I felt that I had to close the circle of writing I have undertaken and talks I have given, over the last 4 years about Mediation and Mediation Advocacy (i.e. facilitated negotiation) in Trust and Estate Disputes, by tackling Mediation Advocacy in the principal forms of claim associated with Contentious Probate.

Inheritance Act, Beneficial Interest and Proprietary Estoppel Claims are not Contentious Probate Claims, but are often brought as part of a complex multiple, and sometimes ‘kitchen-sink’, claim scenario. Throw tax-efficient settlement into the negotiation mix, and the result is a series of practical challenges for both Mediators and Mediation Advocates about which, as far as I am aware, nobody has yet presented a talk.

So, be prepared to have both your eyes opened wide and your imagination stretched, because for the amateur and the unwary, both Mediation and Mediation Advocacy in these disputes, is potentially a mine-field. That of course is both a challenge and an opportunity!

My 8th book, the 2nd Edition of the Contentious Probate Handbook (2025), which was published by the Law Society last month, is now on display, and can be read, in all four Libraries of the Inns of Court – Lincoln’s Inn, Inner Temple, Middle Temple and Gray’s Inn.

It is also available to read in the Library of the Law Society at Chancery Lane.

You can order the book using one of the following links:
– https://lnkd.in/dHtHQjBz. (NB Wildy’s deliver worldwide).
– https://lnkd.in/ejzMFjyn.
– https://lnkd.in/eQeZaqC8.

The book is also on sale at Waterstones and WH Smith.

My next live Zoom webinar to be presented to members of the Standing Conference of Mediation Advocates worldwide in 2025 is entitled – ‘Mediation of International Cultural Heritage Disputes – Anachronism, Orientalism, Culture, Ethics & Law.’

This is provisionally scheduled for the afternoon of Thursday 20 November 2025.

That is also the working title of my next book, which will be written as both a multi-disciplinary academic course textbook for Law Students, and as a handbook for Mediators and Mediation Advocates – globally. See the ‘International Cultural Heritage Disputes’ page at www.carlislam.co.uk. Over the weekend, I started work on the ‘Ethics’ component of both the talk and the book. See also my post below – ‘Reframing International Law by adopting an intercivilizational” paradigm?’

If art is a window into the soul of a culture and ancient civilization, then you would expect there to be a coherent body of law known as the ‘International Law of Art and Civilization’. However, you will struggle to find a legal textbook about the subject, even though the subject-matter is as old as time.

There are books about International Cultural Heritage Law and Practice, whose disparate sources include:

·       International Law Treaties.
·       Jus Cogens (absolute) and Erga Omnes (universal) norms of International Law (including ‘inalienability of sovereignty’).
·       ‘Fiduciary Principles’ under International Law.
·       Museum Codes of Practice.
·       Ethical principles grounded in moral philosophy (including reparative justice, distributive justice and natural law).

However, ‘Rights and Civilizations – A History and Philosophy of International Law’ (2010), by Gustavo Gozzi (which was translated into English in 20I9) and published by Cambridge University Press, is one of the few books that traces the history of International Law, in order to explain how the West sought to justify its own ‘colonial’ conquests through an ideology that revolved around the idea of its own assumed ‘superiority’, thereby exposing the fallacy at the heart of International Law – that while the Western conception styles itself as being ‘universal’, it is in fact ‘relative’.

Since the emergence of a geopolitically ‘multipolar’/’multi-nodal’ world order and of ‘BRICS’, there has been an urgent need for an ‘intercivilizational’ approach to international law. This requires a dialogue about reform, between key stakeholders.

In my next book – ‘Mediation of International Cultural Heritage Disputes – Anachronism, Orientalism, Culture, Ethics & Law’, in the context of the Mediation of these disputes, I advocate the adoption by the participants, of an ‘intercivilizational’ approach to international law, as their ‘lodestar’.

In doing so, I explore whether the substantive issues in dispute that divide ‘state actors’ in these disputes, are in fact a potential source of convergence and consensus for their mutual benefit. To view the current chapter structure for the book, please visit the ‘International Cultural Heritage Disputes’ page at www.carlislam.co.uk.

I ask whether the adoption of an ‘intercivilizational’ paradigm to international law, is the key which can unlock the hidden door to the resolution of these seemingly intractable international disputes.

In other words, I wonder – ‘What is the potential power in the Mediation of an International Cultural Heritage Dispute, of reframing International Law by adopting an intercivilizational” paradigm?’

Online ordering links for book:

https://lnkd.in/dHtHQjBz [who deliver worldwide].
https://lnkd.in/ejzMFjyn
https://lnkd.in/eQeZaqC8

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who has helped with the production of the book, and in particular:

·       Toby Graham of Farrer & Co: (https://lnkd.in/dW9wkHhN), who wrote the Foreword.
·       Hugh Series, a consultant in old age psychiatry at the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and member of the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford, who wrote and kindly contributed Appendices A1 (‘Mental Disorders’) and A2 (‘Chronological tables in expert evidence’).
·       Ellen Radley BA PgDip (Law) MAE, a forensic document examiner at the Radley Forensic Document Laboratory (The Radley Forensic Document Laboratory Limited, Queens Meadow, Oakhurst, Grayshott, Hindhead, Surrey GU26 6JW www.docexam.co.uk) who wrote and kindly contributed Appendix A3 (‘Forensic examination of handwriting and questioned
documents’). Ellen is amongst the foremost international experts in forensic document examination.
·       My editors: Nia Cummings, Michelle Afford and Nicholas Catlin, for their eagle-eyed and rigorous diligence, and all of the team at Law Society Publishing, who made this book possible.

As Toby wrote in the Foreword:

‘The Law Society’s Probate Practitioner’s Handbook, now in its 9th edition, has become a popular and widely regarded resource. The continuing growth in the number of will disputes makes an equivalent resource dealing with will disputes essential reading for any practitioner. Carl Islam provides just such a treatment in the present Handbook, now in its 2nd edition, enabling busy practitioners to navigate all aspects of will disputes in eight practical, accessible, and authoritative chapters covering both law and practice at all stages, from preliminary steps
through to trial.’

This is my 8th book, see: https://lnkd.in/dX8CAUkm.