bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Combined B-cell immunomodulation with rituximab and belimumab in severe, refractory TAFRO syndrome associated with Sjögren’s syndrome: A case report
Authors: Watanabe Mitsuru , Haji Yoichiro , Hozumi Mirai , Amari Yui , Mizuno Yukina , Ito Takanori , Kato Mizuki , Okada Masato
Published: April 2023

TAFRO syndrome is a systemic inflammatory disease of unknown aetiology. It is characterised by thrombocytopenia, anasarca, myelofibrosis, renal dysfunction, and organomegaly. Herein, we report the case of a 60-year-old male with TAFRO syndrome. A few weeks after the patient developed an intermittent fever, he presented to our hospital with diarrhoea, abdominal distension, and whole-body oedema (face, extremities, and abdomen). Autoantibody and lip biopsy findings supported the diagnosis of primary Sjögren’s syndrome. High-dose steroids and tocilizumab were used to treat his refractory thrombocytopenia and ascites. However, systemic inflammation and renal dysfunction did not improve, resulting in temporary haemodialysis. Eventually, combined B-cell immunomodulation therapy with rituximab and belimumab ameliorated the patient’s symptoms. About 16 weeks after discharge, the overall condition of the patient had improved. The TAFRO syndrome may be a severe manifestation of primary Sjögren’s syndrome. Considering the immunological context, combined B-cell immunomodulation therapy provides new insights into improving this life-threatening disease and enables rapid steroid tapering.
Combination treatment with Janus kinase inhibitor and nintedanib for rheumatoid arthritis with progressive interstitial lung disease: A case report
Authors: Mochizuki Takeshi , Yano Koichiro , Ikari Katsunori , Okazaki Ken
Published: April 2023

Interstitial lung disease (ILD) is a common extra-articular manifestation of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Nintedanib has been approved for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Herein, we described the case of an 87-year-old woman treated with Janus kinase inhibitor (JAKi). Chest computed tomography revealed increased honeycombing; she was administered nintedanib while continuing RA treatment. The combination treatment (JAKi and nintedanib) controlled the RA disease activity without ILD deterioration. This case shows the potential of combination treatment with JAKi and nintedanib for the prevention of worsening of disease activity in RA and ILD.
Expression pattern and prognostic implication of zinc homeostasis-related genes in acute myeloid leukemia
Authors: Zhu Bo , Yang Chunhao , Sun Longshuo , Li Zhonghua , Li Jiahuang , Hua Zi-Chun
Published: April 2023

Zinc homeostasis is regulated by the SLC39A/ZIP, SLC30A/ZnT, and metallothionein (MT) protein families. The association of zinc homeostasis with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is unclear. We previously demonstrated that zinc depletion by TPEN triggers apoptosis in NB4 AML cells with the degradation of PML–RARα oncoprotein, suggesting that zinc homeostasis may be associated with AML. The primary aim of this study was to explore the expression pattern and prognostic roles of zinc homeostasis-related genes in AML. Bioinformatics analyses were performed using integrated datasets from the TCGA and GTEx projects. The GEPIA tool was used to analyze the differential expression of zinc homeostasis-related genes. Correlations between zinc homeostasis-related genes were assessed with Spearman's correlation coefficient. OncoLnc was used to evaluate the prognostic roles of zinc homeostasis-related genes with Kaplan–Meier and Cox regression models. In both NB4 and U937 cells, the transcriptional regulation of zinc homeostasis-related genes by zinc depletion was detected through qPCR. We found that multiple ZIPs, ZnTs, and MTs were differentially expressed and correlated in AML tumors. In AML patients, higher expression of ZIP4 and lower expression of ZnT5 and ZnT7 predicted poorer survival. We further found that zinc depletion by TPEN upregulated ZIP7, ZIP9, ZIP10, ZIP13, and ZnT7 and downregulated ZIP14, ZnT1, ZnT6, and most of the positively expressed MTs in both NB4 and U937 AML cells. Our findings suggest high expression of ZIP4 and low expression of ZnT5 and ZnT7 as potential risk factors for the prognosis of AML. Zinc homeostasis may be a potential therapeutic target for AML, deserving further exploration.
Genre-Bending: A Discourse on Globalization and Culture with Implications for Music Therapy
Authors: Banzon Gabrielle , Leonard Hakeem
Published: April 2023

Genre-bending is an evolving term that indicates the tendency for musical and cultural elements to interact with each other, often defying previously established genre distinctions. Evolutions of technology have expanded the way music is both created and consumed, and together with globalization, has shaped the development of a global music landscape. Hybrid elements and dynamics of music and culture have important implications for the development and exchange of musical identities outside of and within music therapy. In this article, there is a brief review of the digitalization of music technology related to consumers and curators. We highlight how digitalization and globalization have increased access through media democratization and afforded a global digital agency. This agency is explored with both the access and engagement of consumers, and the impact on curation by music creators. Those introductory elements are used for grounding the article’s main idea of genre-bending; including what it is, the ways it functions in popular music today, sociocultural and relational elements, and implications for music therapy. As part of this discourse, we highlight how the global music landscape has encouraged diverse music tastes and normalized inclusive engagement, and the subsequent importance of understanding individuals as being situated through multicultural music personhood. These shifts shape the intersubjective meaning making between therapist and client, impacting musical identities. The article concludes by delving into the ways these realities influence how music therapists hold space for curation, clients’ resources, and cultural assets through hybrid therapeutic dynamics.
Cluster analysis of kidney function decline among males with Fabry disease in a large United States electronic health records database
Authors: Chiorean Alexandra , Lyn Nicole , Kabadi Shaum , Blanchon Margot , Hayat Paul , Loustalot Paul , Maski Manish , Montmerle Martin , Ponce Elvira
Published: April 2023

Background

Fabry disease (FD) is an X-linked lysosomal storage disorder caused by deficient α-galactosidase A activity. The spectrum of disease includes phenotypes ranging from “classic” to “later-onset,” with varying kidney disease progression. Identifying patterns of declining kidney function and involvement of other major organs in patients with FD is important to guide therapy decisions.

Methods

Clusters of patients with FD and similar estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) decline and age were created using agglomerative clustering of data captured between 2007 and 2020 in the United States Optum Market Clarity database. Male patients with a diagnosis of FD and two or more eGFR values ≥6 months apart were included. Disease progression was compared with a control cohort of patients without an FD diagnosis.

Results

eGFR values from 234 male patients with FD were analysed, yielding seven clusters. Five clusters demonstrated disease progression from “natural” eGFR decline, with a slight decrease in kidney function and eGFR usually within the normal range, to rapid, early decline in eGFR and cardiac complications. When compared with the control cohort, a more rapid decline and a higher percentage of cardiac hypertrophy, heart failure, arrhythmias and stroke were noted in the study group. An inflection point was observed in each cluster when deterioration of kidney function accelerated.

Conclusions

Clustering of male patients with FD by decline in kidney function, organ involvement and phenotype through analysis of real-world data provides a reference that could help determine the optimal time for initiation of FD-specific treatment and facilitate management decisions made by healthcare professionals.
Nicotine Intake in Adult Pod E-cigarette Users: Impact of User and Device Characteristics
Authors: Giberson Jeremy , Nardone Natalie , Addo Newton , Khan Sameera , Jacob Peyton , Benowitz Neal , St.Helen Gideon
Published: April 2023

Introduction

This study examined user behavior, e-cigarette dependence, and device characteristics on nicotine intake among users of pod-mod e-cigarettes.

Aims and Methods

In 2019–2020, people who use pod-mods in the San Francisco Bay Area completed questionnaires and provided a urine sample for analysis of total nicotine equivalents (TNE). The relationship between TNE and e-cigarette use, e-cigarette brands, e-liquid nicotine strength, e-cigarette dependence, and urine 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanol (NNAL), as a measure of combustible cigarette exposure, were examined.

Results

Of 100 participants (64% male, 71% in the 18–34 age group, 45% white), 53 used JUUL primarily, 12 used Puff Bar primarily, and 35 used other brands, including Suorin; 48 participants reported current cigarette smoking. Participants most often reported use of e-liquid with 4.5%–6.0% nicotine (68%), fruit (35%), tobacco (28%), and menthol or mint flavors (26%), used e-cigarettes on 25.5 (SD = 6.3) days a month, 10.2 (SD = 14.2) times a day, and 40% used 1–2 pods/cartridges per week. In bivariate analysis, urinary TNE was higher with greater frequency (days used) and intensity (number of pods used) of e-cigarette use, e-cigarette dependence, and combustible cigarette use. In multivariable analysis, days of e-cigarette use in the last 30 days, number of pods used per week, and NNAL levels were significantly associated with TNE. There was no significant impact of e-liquid nicotine strength on TNE.

Conclusions

Nicotine intake among people who used pod-mod e-cigarettes increased with e-cigarette consumption and e-cigarette dependence, but not with e-liquid nicotine strength. Our findings may inform whether FDA adopts a nicotine standard for e-cigarettes.

Implications

The study examined how device and user characteristics influence nicotine intake among pod-mod e-cigarette users. Nicotine intake increased with frequency (days of e-cigarette use in past 30 days) intensity of use (number of pods used per day) and e-cigarette dependence but not with the flavor or nicotine concentration of the e-liquids. Regulation of nicotine concentration of e-liquids is unlikely to influence nicotine exposure among adult experienced pod-mod users.
Service user satisfaction with telemedicine in an occupational healthcare setting
Authors: Carr P , Kevitt F
Published: April 2023

Background

Telemedicine has existed pre-pandemic and has been used in some healthcare settings with high patient satisfaction. The COVID-19 pandemic increased the use of telemedicine to help minimize transmission while maintaining service provision.

Aims

To assess service user satisfaction with telephone assessment and to assess distance/time saved by telephone assessment as services users did not have to travel to their appointment.

Methods

Prospective review of service users attending one occupational health clinic over a 1-month period. Service users were asked two questions regarding method of travel, and satisfaction with telephone review. All data captured were anonymous, and distances and times for travel were calculated for driving using Google Maps.

Results

Seventy-three service users were recruited to the review. Ninety per cent were reviewed by telephone and 10% reviewed in person. Eighty-eight per cent of service users were satisfied with telephone review. Seventy-eight per cent of service users planned to drive to Dr Steevens’ Hospital. In total, 4058.4 km (77 h 6 min) of commuting was saved with phone reviews, and 2753.2 km (54 h 16 min) driving was saved.

Conclusions

Service user satisfaction with telephone review was found to be high, and telephone review resulted in saving of both commuting time for the healthcare worker, reduced time away from the workplace, as well as having a positive environmental impact.
Introduction
Authors: Endicott Timothy , Kristjánsson Hafsteinn Dan , Lewis Sebastian
Published: April 2023

This Introduction sets the scene for the forty chapters of Philosophical Foundations of Precedent, pointing out reasons for the range and the depth of the investigations offered in the book. The central question concerning precedent in law is: why should a judicial decision today depend on what a court decided in the past? Any answer to that question generates a tension between the putative value of following previous decisions, and the value of readiness to reform the law. This book offers a broad array of philosophical investigations into the central question and the central tension, and into the variety of ways in which the fact of an earlier decision may be treated as a reason for decision in later cases. The book addresses the nature and authority of precedent and of the forms of reasoning that it involves in common law and civil law systems, and addresses fundamental principles as to how and when to act in accordance with precedent. The Introduction explains the way in which the project of the book emerged as a collaborative, collegial enterprise among a large and inclusive group of established contributors and new voices in legal philosophy.
On the Nature of Stare Decisis
Authors: Lewis Sebastian
Published: April 2023

Why must certain courts in the common law follow precedent? This chapter identifies two approaches to this question: moral and juridical. According to the former, courts must follow precedent whenever there are sufficiently strong moral reasons to ground a moral obligation. According to the latter, courts must follow precedent because their duty is to give effect to the law—and precedents, or at least many of them, constitute sources of law. The upshot of my analysis is that the grounds on which courts may be morally required to follow precedent need not be those on which they are legally bound to do so. The chapter aims to conceptualize these two approaches and the way they interrelate. I will argue that stare decisis is a legal doctrine because morality cannot account for central features of it—for example, the distinction between ratio and obiter, the rules on vertical and horizontal precedent, and the grounds on which certain courts may overrule precedent. But this view may be objected to by proponents of the ‘one-system view’—that is, a new and distinctive approach to jurisprudence which draws from Ronald Dworkin’s late work. I will consider that objection and the problems of this view in accounting for stare decisis.
Precedent and Legal Creep
Authors: Rigoni Adam
Published: April 2023

This chapter considers an undertheorized aspect of precedent within Anglo-American common law systems: the distinction between law and fact in determining the binding force of a past case. It then introduces the phenomena of ‘legal creep’, wherein factual determinations are tacitly converted into legal rules of precedent, using the example of negligence in tort actions. Next, it identifies the factors that will encourage and accelerate legal creep now and even more so in the future, including features of digital legal research and current research directions in theorizing precedent. This includes a discussion on the role of the models of artificial intelligence and law (AI and law) in accelerating legal creep. Finally, the chapter concludes with thoughts on how and why we might slow legal creep.
Elements of Precedent
Authors: Kristjánsson Hafsteinn Dan
Published: April 2023

The chapter provides a general analysis for all legal systems of the roles that precedents play in determining a legal norm according to the legal method. It argues that some precedents are ‘independent’ sources of law in the sense that they are identified by a norm of recognition (relatively) independently of how the ‘underlying source’ was treated. These precedents become sources even if they were wrongly decided according to the legal method in the jurisdiction. Common law precedents in England may be examples of this. Contrariwise, some precedents are a ‘dependent’ source of law. These precedents count as sources if a court has identified the law used to decide the case according to the legal method in the jurisdiction. A precedent that is wrongly decided is not recognized as a source of law. Perhaps this is the case in some civil law jurisdictions. The chapter argues that precedents can be sources of law even though there is no norm of change empowering a court to create law. It is enough that the precedent is identified as a source by a norm of recognition. Moreover, the chapter argues that norms of institutional decision-making, such as norms of adjudication, matter for understanding the legal effects of precedent. It suggests that stare decisis is best understood as an institutional duty imposed on particular institutions, that is courts, to follow past decisions but not a norm of recognition. This view allows for different mixtures of norms of recognition and institutional duties in different legal systems.
Dog Law
Authors: Celano Bruno
Published: April 2023

This chapter discusses whether, or to what extent, in jurisdictions where precedents are binding and distinguishing is practised (and, arguably, in constitutional adjudication), the law is certain, in the sense of being predetermined. In subsequent cases, does the norm applied, and to be applied, remain the same, or, if it changes, does it change entirely or only in part (by ‘specification’)? The chapter shows that, in distinguishing, as new cases arise, the normative solution adopted, and to be adopted, in many of the subsequent cases is different from, and incompatible with, the normative solution adopted, and to be adopted, in the preceding cases. True, in common law jurisdictions (and in constitutional adjudication) normative generalizations embodied in lines of precedents display a remarkable inertia. The aim of this chapter is to show what this inertia is not. Whatever it may be, it is not the enduring identity of one and the same norm.
Statutory Interpretation and Binding Precedents in the Civil Law Tradition
Authors: Ramírez-Ludeña Lorena
Published: April 2023

Vertically binding precedents are often rejected in the civil law tradition by reference to three interrelated arguments: (1) judges do not create the law, they merely apply it; (2) judges are bound by statutory law, not by the decisions of other judges; and (3) statutes, not the judicial decisions that interpret and apply them, are sources of law. This chapter addresses the three arguments and argues that precedents can have binding force even in countries where their very existence is highly contested. First, it is argued that judges of higher courts engage in important creative activity when they interpret the law, so that we can speak of genuine precedents governing the interpretation of the law, which add something new to the law. Secondly, it is shown that the binding force of these precedents in civil law countries can be quite robust, especially when compared to systems where their bindingness is generally accepted. The final section discusses the extent to which precedents that interpret the law can be considered sources of law.
Precedent Slippery Slopes
Authors: Stevens Katharina
Published: April 2023

This chapter discusses slippery slope arguments that are used in the context of common law precedent. The slippery slope argument is often treated as a fallacy. Nonetheless, using or answering slippery slope worries in legal decision-making is conspicuously common. And not only that: several authors have remarked that slippery slope arguments can often be valid, even strong, in the context of legal precedent. This chapter investigates why this should be so. It is argued that there is a special type of slippery slope argument, the precedent slippery slope. Understanding its mechanism reveals why slippery slopes are so strong in the context of precedent.
Consistency in Administrative Law
Authors: Perry Adam
Published: April 2023

This chapter argues that English law should require administrative officials to treat like cases alike. The exception is if an official is more likely to decide a case correctly than the official who decided a previous and like case. The burden should be on the claimant to prove that his or her case was treated differently than a previous and like case. The burden should be on the official to show that he or she falls within the scope of the exception. Although these claims are relatively modest, they are practically important. In particular, they suggest that many cases in English administrative law should have been decided differently.
Escaping Precedent
Authors: Roughan Nicole
Published: April 2023

Avoiding a precedent does not typically alter a legal system’s ultimate rules of recognition. Individual precedents are binding on their particular facts, but may be straightforwardly overruled, distinguished, found to be unworkable, or per incuriam, without unsettling the recognition of sources of valid law in that system. This chapter examines how, in contrast to such avoidance, an escape from precedent is effected through changes in a legal system’s ultimate rules of recognition. The escape examined in this chapter arises from a type of ‘interlegality’ found in the interaction of state and Indigenous legal orders in common law settler states. The example of state–Indigenous interlegality in New Zealand is relied upon to illustrate escapes from precedent that give effect to the content of Indigenous law, the authority of Indigenous legal officials, or the sources of Indigenous legalities. Such changes suggest that the operation of precedent can provoke reflective changes to a legal system’s rule of recognition, posing a challenge to claims that such a rule is changed primarily by accident.
Frames and descriptions
Authors: Cooper Robin
Published: April 2023

This chapter looks at frames associated with common nouns. Frames are construed as situations (modelled as records in TTR). A common noun like dog is associated with a type of situation which is common for dogs, for example, where the dog has a name, an age, and various other attributes we commonly attribute to dogs and this plays an important role in interpreting utterances such as the dog is nine. Some nouns, such as temperature, represent frame level predicates. Nouns which normally predicate of individuals can be coerced to predicates of frames. An example is ship in four thousand ships passed through the lock which can either mean that four thousand distinct ships passed through the lock or that there were four thousand ship-passing-through-the-lock events some of which may have involved the same ship. Such examples are analysed by associating an appropriate frame type with the noun ship.
The Emperor’s Henchman
Authors: Menze Volker L.
Published: April 2023

After the Reunion of 433 Alexandria and Antioch were in communion again but the fragile balance of power collapsed in the 440s. Cyrillians and dyophysites regarded each other as heretics and attempted to win over as many episcopal sees as possible. It is notable—and against previous scholarly assumptions—that until 448 Dioscorus remained on the side-lines, in contrast to Emperor Theodosius (408–450) whose mistrust towards Theodoret of Cyrrhus and other dyophysite near eastern bishops increased during the 440s. The bishop of Cyrrhus actively engaged in the controversy not the least through his literary oeuvre: by declaring the Council of Constantinople in 381 to have been ecumenical, he caused such a turmoil so that Emperor Theodosius summoned the Second Council of Ephesus in August 449. Presided by Dioscorus, the council deposed with Flavian of Constantinople, Eusebius of Dorylaeum, Theodoret, and Domnus of Antioch all leading dyophysite bishops in the Eastern Roman Empire. Theodosius wished to regard it as the third ecumenical council (after Nicaea in 325 and the First Council of Ephesus in 431) that should have ended questions of doctrine but Pope Leo denounced it as ‘robber-council’ and insisted to annul it. The chapter discusses particularly questions of the councils’ canonicity and Dioscorus’ role in it.
Against Procrustean Public Health
Authors: Persad Govind , Emanuel Ezekiel
Published: April 2023

In this chapter, we identify two ways in which Procrustean reasoning—which requires that everyone be treated identically regardless of their differences—has infected and hampered pandemic response. The first is Procrusteanism about public health restrictions, which wrongly holds that fairness requires imposing the same public health restrictions on everyone, and in particular imposing the same restrictions on vaccinated people as on those who are unvaccinated. The second is Procrusteanism about medical interventions, which wrongly holds that fairness requires providing everyone with the same treatment—for instance, the same type of vaccine—regardless of their individual risk. These mistakes have both been exacerbated by unwillingness to conduct clinical trials to compare different approaches to public health and medical intervention. Our observations focus on the COVID-19 pandemic, but apply to future public health responses as well, where similar issues are likely to recur.
Pluralism and Allocation of Limited Resources
Authors: Wilkinson Dominic
Published: April 2023

In the response to this pandemic two vital, but controversial, ethical questions are how we should allocate ventilators to patients with severe respiratory failure, and how we should distribute vaccines to people at risk of contracting coronavirus. There are opposing ethical views about how to prioritize, and countries have taken different approaches. There is a strong ethical argument that policies should take a pluralistic approach to allocation that reflects multiple ethical values—both because of the diversity of viewpoints within communities and the recognition that there are competing relevant ethical values. This chapter looks at the epistemic and normative problems raised by pluralistic allocation in this pandemic and suggests implications for future pandemics. Some of the relevant evidence about the public’s views and values relating to prioritization are summarized. The chapter also explores some practical approaches to prioritization of scarce resources in the face of contrasting and competing ethical values.
Communion in Two Kinds
Authors: Ross Shaun
Published: April 2023

This chapter compares the work of John Milton and Richard Crashaw, arguing that the differences between these two authors’ poetry can be mapped onto the two elements of the eucharist: the bread and the wine. Claiming that these two contemporaries share an understanding of poetics tied to the sacrament, it nevertheless distinguishes Crashaw as fascinated by sacramental fluids, and Milton as deeply concerned with eucharistic solid food. Contrasting the extravagant liquid devotion of Crashaw’s lyrics with the digestive universe presented in Paradise Lost, it argues against the traditional view that Crashaw is one of England’s literary dead ends, while Milton is the pivotal figure of transition from the early to the truly modern. Instead, this chapter contends that Milton’s engagement with the eucharist reveals a desire for individual autonomy that can co-exist with mystical incorporation, while Crashaw’s reflects a paradoxically modern longing for the dissolution of distinctions.
‘What does Mr Parnell say?’
Authors: Bew Paul
Published: April 2023

In Dillon’s absence, Parnell pushed Irish nationalists along a parliamentary, non-revolutionary path, his progress impeded only by the re-surfacing of stories of his connections with violent revolutionaries of the P. J. Sheridan type in the Land League era. He played both English parties off against each other before finally accepting in 1886 that Gladstone was the most likely to deliver Home Rule. The prospect of such a triumph was enticing for Dillon, who returned from exile but explicitly refrained from supporting Parnell’s more moderate views on the land question. Indeed, he openly subverted them. In the disappointing juncture of parliamentary defeat for Home Rule, followed by the Tory and Unionist election victory, Dillon sought to relaunch the land war whilst Parnell supported a path of moderation and patience.
Human Action, the Will, and Freedom
Authors: Bogle Stephen
Published: April 2023

As an aspect of human action, the will is an important concept within Stair’s account of law and is critical to his description of conventional obligations and the idea that man has a freedom to contract. Prior to the 1660s, the term ‘will’ did not play a significant role either in contemporary legal writing about contracting in Scotland or within legal literature used by lawyers in Scotland. In terms of the history of contract law in Europe, James Gordley and Wim Decock have argued that the will becomes a key legal concept in contractual thought from the early seventeenth century onwards via the juridical commentaries of the late scholastics. In contrast, it does not appear to have played a role in English legal thought until the late eighteenth century. It does appear in Grotius’s The Rights of War and Peace of 1625, but does not figure in his basic account of the law applying to contracting in the Dutch provinces, the Introduction to Dutch Jurisprudence published in 1631. This raises some basic questions which link to the development of contractual thought during the early modern period. This chapter offers an explanation of why Stair embedded it within his account of contractual and promissory obligations.
The Reception of Stair’s Contractual Thought
Authors: Bogle Stephen
Published: April 2023

This chapter examines how Stair’s contractual thought relates to other accounts of contracting given in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. The approach is to examine the contractual thought of Stair in comparison to George Mackenzie (1636/8–1691) and Gershom Carmichael (1672–1729). It reframes the question of how Stair’s contractual thought was received by arguing that Stair was just one of many writers in the seventeenth and eighteenth century to engage with, respond to, and be influenced by Grotian natural law. It demonstrates how many moral philosophers of the eighteenth century offered to a greater or lesser extent a theistic account of natural law: each considered human action and man’s access to moral knowledge; each drew from the tradition of Grotius and Pufendorf, speaking of natural law in terms of rights and duties; and each used Roman law as a point of comparison when discussing the specifics of natural law. Stair may be the first in Scotland to write about natural law in this manner, but he was certainly not the last.
The King's Felons
Authors: McGlynn Margaret
Published: April 2023

This book examines the subtle but intentional development of criminal confinement as an alternative to capital punishment in early Tudor England. As the judicial establishment looked for ways to enhance law and order without provoking political opposition, they increasingly turned to two traditional mitigations of criminal punishment, benefit of clergy, and sanctuary. Often reviled, then and now, as corrupt clerical rights which served to undermine secular authority and the rule of law, benefit of clergy and sanctuary in fact provided the justices with room to manoeuvre, allowing them to punish a larger number of felons less harshly while avoiding political scrutiny. Their approach to this problem evolved over the sixty years of this study, allowing us to see not only the internal development of both law and process, but the ways in which the judicial system responded to external pressures: both ordinary pressures like the tension between local and central power and extraordinary ones like the Reformation. The dissolution of the monasteries between 1536 and 1540, together with the steady erosion of the wealth and power of the bishops, meant that the institutional and financial foundations on which the justices built this system began to crumble as it was reaching fruition. Over the next two decades they scrambled, with limited success, to secure some small vestiges of the system they had built. The epilogue connects the state of the system in the aftermath of this collapse to our existing understanding of the system in the later part of the century.
Persuasion and Paternalism
Authors: McKenna Robin
Published: April 2023

This chapter discusses the problem of what to do about public ignorance, and in particular the problem of global warming scepticism. The chapter starts by distinguishing between the empirical issue of which methods of persuading global warming sceptics to change their minds are likely to be effective and the normative issue of whether these methods are morally permissible. It then addresses both the empirical and the normative issue. So far as the empirical issue is concerned, the chapter draws on political psychology and science communication to argue that the most effective methods of persuading people to change their minds about politically contentious scientific issues are ‘marketing methods’—methods that seek to sell science, rather than persuade purely through the force of reason and evidence. So far as the normative issue is concerned, the chapter argues that science marketing need not infringe on our intellectual autonomy and is not objectionably paternalistic.
Historicism and Relativism
Authors: Beiser Frederick C.
Published: April 2023

This chapter treats the problem of ethical relativism as it arose within Lebensphilosophie. Nietzsche, Dilthey, and Simmel are the first philosophers in the modern tradition to tackle the problem of relativism. They have abandoned the hope of an ethics with a moral code valid for all human beings. They offer differing responses to relativism: Nietzsche affirms it but still finds a fundamental principle of morals in his will to power; Dilthey disapproves of relativism but admits that he has no solution to the problem; and Simmel affirms it without qualification and makes resignation to it a characteristic trait of modern culture. The sources of relativism lie in the collapse of the natural law tradition, the decline of the religious tradition, and the individualistic ethic of the Lebensphilosophen.
Plato of Athens
Authors: Waterfield Robin
Published: April 2023

Plato of Athens is the first-ever biography of the world-famous philosopher. Born into a well-to-do family, Plato grew up in the gloom of wartime Athens at the end of the fifth century bce. In his teens he honed his intellect by attending lectures by the many thinkers who passed through Athens and toyed with the idea of writing poetry. He decided to go into politics but became disillusioned, especially after the Athenians condemned his teacher, Socrates, to death. Instead he turned to writing and teaching, focusing especially on political theory, metaphysics, and ethics. In 383 he founded the Academy, the world’s first higher-educational research and teaching establishment. He also returned after a while to practical politics and spent a considerable amount of time trying to create a constitution for Syracuse in Sicily that would reflect his political ideals. The attempt failed, and Plato’s disappointment can be traced in his later political works. In his lifetime and after, Plato was considered almost divine. This led to the invention of tall tales about him, by both those who adored him and those who wanted to dethrone him. Plato of Athens steers a judicious course among these stories, debunking some but accepting a kernel of truth in others. As well as tracking the events of his life, considerable attention is paid to his written works—his “dialogues,” as they are called: they are summarized and discussed. Clearly and engagingly written throughout, Plato of Athens is the perfect introduction to the man and his work.
Last Years
Authors: Waterfield Robin
Published: April 2023

Did Plato make a final visit to Syracuse in 349 BCE? The evidence (often overlooked by writers on Plato) is too thin to be sure. Plato remained in touch with the followers of Dion in Syracuse after Dion’s death and had some suggestions as to how they should proceed and what would be best for Syracuse under the circumstances. This chapter outlines some of Plato’s last and longest political work, Laws, and suggests (following on from what was said about Statesman in chapter 7) that it shows a further degree of realism, and that this should be attributed to his experiences with Dionysius II. The nature and content of the other late dialogues are summarized. The chapter describes Plato’s death and tomb, his heroization, and what happened to the Academy—first in the decades immediately following his death, and then on to the sixth century ce, when it finally came to an end.
Elizabeth Hall Davis
Authors: Gumprecht Blake
Published: April 2023

Tells the life history of Elizabeth Hall Davis, one of tens of thousands of Black people who moved to Boston from the South during the Great Migration, transforming the city. Davis moved to Boston from Columbia, South Carolina, in 1963. She is one of ten people featured in a book that explores the Great Migration by examining the lives of individual migrants. Each is the focus of one chapter. Their stories bring to life the history of the Great Migration. They reveal a hidden aspect of Boston’s history and shine a spotlight on a singularly important event in the making of Black Boston. They also provide a rare glimpse into the lives of ordinary people living in one city’s Black community.
Barbra Hicks
Authors: Gumprecht Blake
Published: April 2023

Tells the life history of Barbra Hicks, one of tens of thousands of Black people who moved to Boston from the South during the Great Migration, transforming the city. Hicks moved to Boston from Jasper, Alabama, about 1964. She is one of ten people featured in a book that explores the Great Migration by examining the lives of individual migrants. Each is the focus of one chapter. Their stories bring to life the history of the Great Migration. They reveal a hidden aspect of Boston’s history and shine a spotlight on a singularly important event in the making of Black Boston. They also provide a rare glimpse into the lives of ordinary people living in one city’s Black community.
Black Health
Authors: Ray Keisha
Published: April 2023

Why do American Black people generally have worse health than American White people? To answer this question, “Black Health” dispels any notion that Black people have inferior bodies that are inherently susceptible to disease. This is simply false racial science that has been used to abuse Black people since our African ancestors were brought to America on slave ships. A genuine investigation into the status of Black people’s health requires us to acknowledge that race has always been a powerful social category. Race largely predetermines individuals’ social and political power and access to resources needed for health and wellbeing. And as a group, Black people have been intentionally denied this power and access. Systemic racism, oppression, and White supremacy in American institutions have largely been the perpetrators of differing social power and access to resources for Black people. It is these systemic inequities that create the social conditions needed for poor health outcomes for Black people to persist. An examination of social inequities reveals that it is no accident that Black people have poorer health than White people, instead in America, almost every institution has been designed to withhold what Black people need for proper health and wellbeing. Black Health provides a succinct discussion of Black people’s health, including the social, political, and at times cultural determinants of their health. This book examines the ways that Black people’s multiple identities—social, cultural, and political—intersect with anti-Black institutions, such as housing and health care to determine their poor outcomes in pregnancy, pain management, sleep, and cardiovascular disease.
Parallax Historiography and Metareference
Authors: Player Mark
Published: April 2023

This chapter considers the extent to which intermediality can read cinema and its complex media-historical development by applying the concepts of “parallax historiography” and “metareference” to the work of Japanese filmmaker Nagasaki Shun’ichi. Nagasaki’s Heart, Beating in the Dark—New Version (2005) marks a complex return to his seminal Super 8 feature Heart, Beating in the Dark (1982), acting as a sequel to and remake of the original, while also documenting its own production via fictionalised “behind-the-scenes” sequences. By using conceptual tools that self-reflexively address film’s past and present specificities, this chapter demonstrates how Heart, Beating in the Dark—New Version not only fulfils intermediality’s political potential by abolishing “the schism between art and life” but also conjures a peculiar kind of “intramediality,” absorbed by its own media archaeology, legacy, and specificities. As such, multifarious passages open up between the real and fictional histories of Nagasaki’s Heart, Beating in the Dark diptych, which are presented in blurred parallel.
When the Past Is Present
Authors: Xavier Ismail
Published: April 2023

This chapter focuses on a digital film made by Carlos Adriano, a Brazilian filmmaker whose works explore intermedial connections created by the assemblage of a variety of materials, genres, and editing procedures. Here I present a close reading of Santoscópio = Dumontagem, emphasising the way it explores a process of repetition and difference applied to images extracted from a fifty-five-second actuality made in London in 1901: a single shot registering a conversation between Alberto Santos Dumont, an eminent figure associated with the invention of the airplane, and Charles Rolls, the founder, alongside Henry Royce, of the industrial enterprise Rolls-Royce Limited. Intermediality here appears in the guise of media archaeology, as Adriano accessed this brief scene by means of a Mutoscope, one of the proto-cinematic “philosophical toys” of the nineteenth century, alongside the kaleidoscope, the praxinoscope, and others of domestic use. This set of inventions and their differences and similarities with digital filmmaking inform my analysis of intermediality in Adriano’s experimental film.
Flamenco on Screen
Authors: Elduque Albert
Published: April 2023

This chapter explores the ways in which Giorgio Agamben’s medial understanding of gesture is articulated in the case of dancer Carmen Amaya (1913−1963), who was born in a marginalised Roma community in Barcelona but became an international flamenco star. The chapter first explores the intermedial history of Amaya’s dancing gestures in her cinematic performances, most notably in María de la O (Francisco Elías, 1936) and Los Tarantos (Francisco Rovira Beleta, 1963). It then focuses on the music documentary Bajarí (Eva Vila, 2013), which explores Amaya’s legacy in her hometown by filming both the rehearsals for an homage event and the story of a five-year-old Roma kid who wants to be a dancer. By analysing the circulation of gesture from Amaya’s image to the contemporary characters, the chapter argues that Bajarí not only finds and recovers these gestures for the present but also uses specific self-reflexive techniques to enhance their mediality.
A Rational Teaching
Authors: Mitchell Scott A.
Published: April 2023

The specific processes by which Buddhism was transformed during the colonial period into a modern religion, and how this modern religion is an amalgam of both traditional Buddhist and post-Enlightenment thought, are now well established. It is largely taken for granted, especially on a popular level, that Buddhism is a rational and scientific religion of peace. This assumption, of course, obscures how Buddhism was understood as the religion of the enemy in the decades leading up to World War II. And the role Japanese Americans played in the making of Buddhist modernism has been understudied. This chapter begins with an overview of scholarship on Buddhist modernism before detailing how modernist themes are prevalent in the Berkeley Bussei. The chapter ends with a discussion of the exclusion of Asian Americans generally from the scholarly lineage of Buddhist moderns.
Conclusion
Authors: Mitchell Scott A.
Published: April 2023

The conclusion summarizes The Making of American Buddhism and examines the continuing relevance of the Berkeley Buddhist community. Following the reconstruction of the temple and the end of the Bussei’s print run, participants in the community’s programs continued to study and promote Buddhism in the United States. Some figures, such as Alan Watts, popularized Buddhism for mass audiences. Others, such as Alex Wayman, went on to successful careers in the academy. In this way, the conclusion argues, Japanese American Buddhists at midcentury played a key role in the development of American Buddhism, Buddhist modernism, and academic Buddhist studies.
Exit without Agreement
Authors: Pinfold Rob Geist
Published: April 2023

Chapter 4 examines another “unilateral” Israeli withdrawal: the “disengagement” from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Critics have labeled the disengagement as an ignominious concession in the face of the Second Intifada’s violence. Others have argued that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew to distract the public from corruption allegations against him. However, this chapter demonstrates that the withdrawal from Gaza was neither unilateral nor an irrational retreat. The Second Intifada did escalate the occupation’s costs. But exit was a rational choice because the status quo lost its strategic utility. Additionally, the withdrawal from Gaza cannot be reduced to policymakers appeasing a restless domestic arena, since the “disengagement plan” actually precipitated a domestic political crisis. Finally, bargaining between Israel and the US delineated the contours of withdrawal and concessions Israel would gain in return. Hence, the withdrawal from Gaza was not a “something for nothing” exit, nor was it unilateral.
Preemption and the Plural Harm Approach
Authors: Feit Neil
Published: April 2023

This chapter discusses the most significant challenge to the counterfactual comparative account of harm, the challenge of preemption and overdetermination. Suppose that Bob injures Simon but also that if Bob had not acted, Peter would have injured Simon in the very same way. The account implies that Bob’s act does not harm Simon, since he would not have been better off had Bob not acted. The chapter sketches a preliminary solution to the problem, namely, the plural harm approach. It argues that Bob and Peter together harm Simon even though neither one does. It discusses the plural harm approach and its features, but a detailed discussion appears in the following chapter. This chapter concludes with a critical discussion of other approaches to the problem of preemption, ones defended by those who favor the general counterfactual perspective. It argues that an adequate account of harm needs to recognize plural harm.
CCA with Plural Harm
Authors: Feit Neil
Published: April 2023

This chapter discusses the problem of preemption for the counterfactual account of harm, and defends the plural harm approach as a solution. It defends a detailed account of harm, namely, CCA with Plural Harm, which provides necessary and sufficient conditions for any given individual’s being harmed by one or more events. This account entails, but is not entailed by, the counterfactual comparative account of harm. The chapter discusses how it can be the case that some events harm a given individual, even if none of those events individually is harmful. It proceeds to extend the basic view so that it accounts for the amount, or degree, of harm inflicted by an event or events, and also for the times at which, or during which, harmful events are harmful. It concludes by presenting a fully general account of overall and all-things-considered harm.