Terms of Use

2. About Lex et Ratio

Lex et Ratio is the independent research platform of Peter Kahl. It is not a separate legal entity. The website and its published materials are operated and maintained by Peter Kahl unless otherwise stated.

References to ‘we’, ‘us’, or ‘our’ in these Terms refer to Peter Kahl in connection with the operation of this website, unless the context requires otherwise.

Enquiries may be directed to peter.kahl@lexetratio.com.

3. Informational and scholarly purpose only

The content of this website is provided for general informational, scholarly, research, and public-interest purposes. It does not constitute legal advice, regulatory advice, fiduciary advice, financial advice, investment advice, governance advice, psychological or clinical advice, or any other form of professional advice.

No reliance should be placed on material published on this website when making legal, financial, commercial, regulatory, clinical, psychological, operational, academic, institutional, or other decisions requiring professional judgement. Appropriate professional advice should be obtained in relation to specific circumstances where necessary.

Nothing on this website creates:

• a client relationship;
• a fiduciary relationship;
• a duty of care;
• an advisory engagement;
• a solicitor-client relationship;
• a therapist-client, clinician-patient, or similar professional relationship;
• or any obligation to provide advice, services, representation, or assistance.

Any research collaboration, speaking arrangement, advisory relationship, consultancy, professional engagement, or other contractual relationship arises only where separately and expressly agreed.

4. No offer or engagement

Material published on this website does not constitute an offer to provide professional services, nor an invitation to treat. Publication of contact information or research interests does not create any obligation to enter into correspondence, collaboration, representation, consultancy, or any other engagement.

Any proposed collaboration, engagement, licence, commission, speaking arrangement, or other agreement may be accepted or declined at Peter Kahl’s discretion, subject to any binding agreement then in force.

5. Intellectual property

Unless otherwise stated, copyright and other intellectual property rights in the original content of this website, including text, research materials, graphics, images, structure, design, and page layout, are owned by Peter Kahl or used with permission.

Lex et Ratio is the name under which the website and associated independent research are presented. Nothing in these Terms transfers any intellectual property right in the name, website, research frameworks, publications, or other materials.

You may:

• view pages for personal, academic, policy, journalistic, or internal professional use;
• quote short extracts for lawful purposes including criticism, review, scholarship, teaching, research, journalism, and policy discussion, provided appropriate attribution is given;
• link to publicly available pages of this website;
• download temporary technical copies necessary for ordinary browser caching.

You may not, without prior written permission:

• reproduce substantial portions of the website;
• republish, mirror, or systematically archive the website;
• distribute website materials commercially;
• modify website materials or create derivative works from them except where permitted by law or by a licence applicable to the particular work;
• present website content, research, frameworks, terminology, or other original material as your own;
• extract content for bulk databases, commercial datasets, or unauthorised automated systems.

Individual papers, preprints, articles, repository-hosted works, datasets, images, or other materials may carry their own licences or usage terms. Where a specific work states its own licence, that licence governs use of that work. It does not grant permission to crawl, scrape, mirror, or extract other parts of this website.

Nothing in these Terms is intended to restrict any use that is permitted by applicable copyright law and cannot lawfully be excluded by agreement.

Requests for permission should be directed to peter.kahl@lexetratio.com.

6. Acceptable use

You agree not to use this website:

• in any way that breaches applicable law or regulation;
• to attempt unauthorised access to systems, infrastructure, logs, private files, source code, or non-public directories;
• to interfere with site security, integrity, or availability;
• to introduce malicious code, malware, exploit payloads, or harmful traffic;
• to probe, scan, test, or attack the server or associated infrastructure without permission;
• to harvest data or conduct automated scraping except as expressly permitted by the Crawler Policy;
• to impersonate another person, organisation, crawler, browser, or search engine;
• to circumvent technical access controls, rate limits, or blocking mechanisms.

We reserve the right to restrict, rate-limit, block, log, or otherwise respond to requests where misuse, abuse, deception, unauthorised automation, excessive crawling, or security risk is reasonably suspected.

7. Automated access, AI crawlers, and scraping

Automated access is governed by the separate Crawler Policy, together with any machine-readable instructions published in robots.txt, ai.txt, or llms.txt.

Unless expressly authorised in writing or otherwise permitted by applicable law, automated collection of website content for training, fine-tuning, benchmarking, evaluating, augmenting, or operating machine-learning systems, generative-AI systems, search substitutes, commercial datasets, or retrieval systems is not permitted.

Ordinary indexing by reputable search engines is permitted where it complies with robots.txt, reasonable crawling practices, and the Crawler Policy.

8. Privacy and data protection

The handling of personal data is explained in the Privacy Notice.

The website may process technical data such as IP addresses, user-agent strings, request URLs, timestamps, referrers, GeoIP-derived information, ASN or network information, visitor or session indicators, blocked-request records, robot logs, and 404 logs for security, abuse prevention, operational diagnostics, and traffic analysis.

Personal data processed in connection with this website is handled with regard to applicable UK data protection law, including the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 where those laws apply. Website logs and security records are used for legitimate operational and security purposes and are not sold to advertisers.

This section is not a complete privacy notice. The Privacy Notice should be read for fuller information about processing, lawful bases, retention, rights, and contact details.

9. Accuracy and status of information

Reasonable care is taken in preparing website content. Nevertheless, research, working papers, commentary, and other materials may contain errors, provisional arguments, disputed interpretations, hypotheses, or conclusions that are subsequently revised.

No representation or warranty, express or implied, is made as to the accuracy, completeness, currency, suitability, or fitness of website content for any particular purpose.

Working papers and research frameworks may develop over time. Content may therefore be updated, corrected, revised, reorganised, superseded, withdrawn, or replaced without notice.

10. External links and repositories

This website may contain links to third-party websites, repositories, academic platforms, DOI services, publishers, social media services, or other external resources. Such links are provided for reference and convenience.

Peter Kahl does not control external services and accepts no responsibility for their content, availability, security, terms, licences, or privacy practices. The inclusion of a link does not by itself imply endorsement.

11. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Peter Kahl excludes liability arising from reliance on website content or from use of, or inability to use, the website.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Peter Kahl shall not be liable for:

• indirect or consequential loss;
• loss of profit, revenue, business, or opportunity;
• business interruption;
• reputational damage;
• loss or corruption of data;
• loss arising from external links or third-party services;
• loss arising from unauthorised access, malware, or security incidents, except where liability cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, or any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.

12. Availability

The website is provided on an ‘as is’ and ‘as available’ basis. Continuous, uninterrupted, secure, or error-free availability is not guaranteed.

We may suspend, withdraw, restrict, modify, reorganise, or discontinue all or part of the website without notice where operational, technical, security, legal, policy, research, or editorial considerations require.

13. Security

Reasonable technical measures are implemented to support the security and integrity of this website. However, no internet transmission or publicly accessible system can be guaranteed secure.

Users are responsible for ensuring that their own devices, browsers, networks, and systems are appropriately protected.

14. Changes to these Terms

These Terms may be amended from time to time. The current version will be published on this page.

Continued use of the website after revised Terms have been published constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms to the extent permitted by applicable law.

15. Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales.

Any dispute arising in connection with these Terms or use of this website shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales, subject to any mandatory legal rights or jurisdictional rules that apply.

16. Contact

Enquiries concerning these Terms may be directed to:

Peter Kahl
Lex et Ratio
Email: peter.kahl@lexetratio.com