bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Power and Influence
Authors: Corry Richard
Published: September 2019

This book investigates the metaphysical presuppositions of a common—and very successful—reductive approach to dealing with the complexity of the world. The reductive approach in question is one in which we study the components of a complex system in relative isolation, and use the information so gained to explain or predict the behaviour of the complex whole. So, for example, ecologists explain shifts in species population in terms of interactions between individuals, geneticists explain traits of an organism in terms of interactions between genes, and physicists explain the properties of a gas in terms of collisions between the particles that make up the gas. It is argued that this reductive method makes substantive metaphysical assumptions about the world. In particular, the method assumes the existence of causal powers that manifest ‘causal influence’—a relatively unrecognized ontological category of which forces are a paradigm example. The success of the reductive method, therefore, is an argument for the existence of such causal influence. The book goes on to show that adding causal influence to our ontology gives us the resources to solve some traditional problems in the metaphysics of powers, causation, emergence, laws of nature, and possibly even normative ethics. What results, then, is not just an understanding of the reductive method, but an integrated metaphysical world view that is grounded in a novel ontology of power and influence.
Laws of Nature
Authors: Corry Richard
Published: September 2019

This chapter investigates how an ontology of power and influence might help us answer the question ‘What is it to be a law of nature?’ In particular, the chapter investigates how this ontology might help us develop the dispositional essentialist account of laws as it is presented by Alexander Bird. It is argued that Bird's derivation of laws from dispositions only works if we combine the view that some properties are powers in Bird's sense (they have an essential dispositional nature that is modally fixed) with the view that the relevant properties are powers in the sense developed in this book (they are dispositions to manifest causal influence).
Causal Models
Authors: Corry Richard
Published: September 2019

This chapter shows how the ontology of power and influence can be used to interpret and extend the causal modelling framework developed by Judea Pearl, Peter Spirtes, Clark Glymour, and Richard Scheines. In particular, it is argued that the standard causal modelling framework suffers from an important limitation in that it is not truly modular. A modification to the standard framework is presented that overcomes this limitation. In the modified framework, the basic relations explicitly represent basic causal powers and the influences that they manifest. These ‘causal influence models’ can be used to generate standard causal models, and so can do everything that the standard causal models can do. It is argued, however, that there are both theoretical and practical reasons for preferring causal influence models over standard causal models.
Metaphors of Confinement
Authors: Fludernik Monika
Published: September 2019

Metaphors of Confinement: The Prison in Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy focuses on a historical survey of our imaginings of the prison as expressed in carceral metaphors that occur in great numbers in texts about imprisonment from Antiquity to the present but are also used to describe many non-penal situations as confining or restrictive. These imaginings are argued to coalesce into a ‘carceral imaginary’ that determines the way we think about prisons, just as social debates about punishment and criminals feed into the way our carceral imaginary develops over time. The book juxtaposes literary and non-literary contexts and contrasts fictional and non-fictional representations of (im)prison(ment) and discussions about the prison as institution and experiential reality. It comments on present-day trends of punitivity and foregrounds the ethical dimensions of penal punishment. The main argument of the book concerns the continuity of carceral metaphors through the centuries despite historical developments that included major shifts in policy (like the invention of the penitentiary). The study looks at selected carceral metaphors, often from two complementary perspectives, such as the home as prison or the prison as home (Chapter 4) or the factory as prison and the prison as factory (Chapter 7). Within chapters, case studies of particularly relevant genres and texts employing these metaphors are presented, often from a historical perspective in which their development through several periods is analysed. The book examines not only English-language prose fiction but also poetry and drama from the Middle Ages to postcolonial, particularly African, literature.
Prisons of Femininity
Authors: Fludernik Monika
Published: September 2019

Chapter 9 focuses on female imprisonment and on women’s confinement in patriarchy. The chapter starts with a consideration of real-life female imprisonment and its reflection in one literary example (Alice Walker’s The Color Purple). This is followed by a discussion of the panopticon metaphor in Angela Carter and Sarah Waters, analysing these authors’ feminist and lesbian takes on Foucault. A third section concentrates on domesticity and the body in so far as they are perceived as metaphorically confining, contrasting Susan Glaspell’s Trifles with Nadeem Aslam’s novel Maps for Lost Lovers. A final section returns to Emily Dickinson and Glaspell, focusing on the predicament of the woman writer; it notes how the female artist can escape from the straitjacket of feminine decorum only by ending up in the role of another gynophobic stereotype: that of the hysteric or the madwoman.
An Introduction to Sustainable Materialism
Authors: Schlosberg David , Craven Luke
Published: September 2019

Here we introduce the types of food system, community energy, and sustainable fashion movements we will examine in this work, in particular those activists and organizations dedicated to reworking the flows of materials through environments, bodies, and communities. We lay out our reasoning for a focus on activism around everyday life and collective material practices, and detail the participatory methodology of the study. We also lay out the motivations we have found articulated by activists in these movements, including concerns about traditional political processes, justice, power, and sustainability, and describe how we use those as the frameworks for analysis we will apply in the following chapters.
Conclusion
Authors: Bergman Jay
Published: September 2019

Notwithstanding the inspiration, the legitimacy, and the fodder for political polemics France’s revolutions provided, the Bolsheviks would have been better off had they known nothing of the French Revolution, and of the revolutions in France that followed it in 1830, 1848, and 1871. The analogies they drew with these revolutions—even those they rejected to show how distinctive their own proletarian revolution would be—obfuscated and obscured more than they clarified. Indeed, the Bolsheviks’ unfortunate infatuation with French revolutions from 1789 to 1871 lends credence to James Bryce’s assertion in 1908 in The American Commonwealth that ‘the chief practical use of history is to deliver us from plausible historical analogies’.
Chinese-Language Discourse on Regime Change
Authors: Fung Courtney J.
Published: September 2019

Chapter 2 uses an original dataset of Chinese-language sources to understand Chinese views on the connection between regime change and intervention, and unpacks why China finds regime change so problematic. Unlike intervention, which may be permissible under specific conditions, regime change is systematically dismissed. China’s controversies over regime change fall into five categories: defining which actor has the authority to impose regime change; critiques about the aftermath of regime change; misgivings about how regime change affects China’s overseas interests, the role of the United Nations in executing regime change, and how regime change presents challenges to China’s core interests. Most importantly, Chinese writings reflect concerns regarding cases of regime change setting a precedent for actions against China. This chapter adds to an emerging literature that discusses the issue of regime change for China’s foreign policy behavior.
Meanings as Species
Authors: Richard Mark
Published: September 2019

One kind of meaning is constituted by what we need to grasp about usage to be competent participants in a community’s linguistic practices. This book proposes that this sort of meaning is primarily a matter of common knowledge about the presuppositions speakers make in using their language. It argues we should think of this as a population-level, process-like phenomenon. It’s population-level since what needs to be grasped is determined by a rough equilibrium of assumptions across speakers; it’s process-like since what needs to be grasped is a dynamic property of a practice: the competent speaker needs to track how what’s taken for granted about a community’s words fluctuates as the environment changes what is salient to all. The case for thinking of meaning in this way is a matter of its payoffs in theorizing about language. Thinking of meaning in this way reconciles Quine’s skepticism about an epistemically interesting sort of analyticity with the belief that everyday talk about meaning tracks something real, something about which we can and should theorize. It helps ground a sensible way of thinking about philosophical analysis and the role of our intuitions therein, and helps resolve a number of puzzles about relations between illocution and meaning. It helps ground a way of thinking about our practices of ascribing content to others. And it helps provide an understanding of ‘conceptual engineering’—as an attempt to add or subtract from interpretive common ground but not (necessarily) to shift reference—that makes such engineering look like a sensible, conceivably successful project.
The Issue Content of West European Party Politics
Authors: Green-Pedersen Christoffer
Published: September 2019

This chapter summarizes the main findings of the book and discusses its implications. The theoretical argument of the book presented in the issue incentive model is that the vote and office incentives of large, mainstream parties are the key to explaining how policy issues rise and decline on the party system agenda. Furthermore, the argument is that the vote and office incentives of large, mainstream parties depend on three factors, namely issue characteristics, issue ownership, and coalition considerations. Empirically, the book highlights the more complex party system agenda with the decline, but not disappearance, of macroeconomic issues as well as the rise in ‘new politics’ issues together with education and health care. Moreover, various ‘new politics’ issues have seen very different trajectories. Finally, the chapter lays out the implications of these findings for two larger debates within the study of West European party politics. One debate is about the role of niche parties and the consequences of their growth for the West European party system. The second debate is about the linkage between voters and political parties in contemporary Western societies. Discussing these implications also sheds light on the implication of more recent developments within West European party systems, namely the electoral decline of large, mainstream parties.
Exclusive Club Under Stress
Authors: Peters Dirk
Published: September 2019

This chapter traces how the seemingly united front against the G7 by rising powers and civil society actors broke apart in the early 2010s. While rising power criticism of the G7 waned after the first G20 summits, civil society organizations (CSOs) maintained their critical stance and extended it to the G20. The chapter argues that, from the beginning, contestation by the two sets of actors had focused on different issues. Opposition by rising powers was driven mainly by their own exclusion from the governance club. In contrast, many civil society actors rejected not only the exclusiveness of the G7 on a much more fundamental level but also the idea of liberal macroeconomic coordination as such (policy content). To demonstrate this, the chapter develops a framework for analysis, based on the introductory chapter to this volume. It, then, describes the G7 and its post-Cold War development and analyses the key institutional bones of contention for the BRICS states and for important non-state actors. The analysis shows that rising power governments always had been much closer to business actors and G7 members than to CSOs in their vision for macroeconomic governance. The upgrading of the G20 brought the divergence of positions between the BRICS and CSOs clearly to light as it satisfied the BRICS’ desire for inclusion and left CSOs alone with their more fundamental critique of liberal governance through small groups of powerful states.
Data Protection in the Clouds
Authors: Millard Christopher
Published: September 2019

This chapter brings a legal perspective to bear on the topic of data protection on the contemporary Internet in which personal information is increasingly stored and processed in, and accessed from, “the cloud.” The reliance of ever more apps, websites, and services on cloud providers contrasts with earlier days of the Internet in which much more data was stored locally on personal computers. At a time when there is ever more use of cloud computing, this chapter illuminates the complexities over what information in cloud computing environments is protected as personal data, and who is responsible. Will data protection laws, such as those in the EU, protect us, or are there alternative approaches to providing effective protection for personal data in clouds? This chapter airs the question of whether a greater focus should be placed on localizing personal data, as advocated by the Internet pioneer, Tim Berners-Lee.
Looking Ahead at Internet Video and its Societal Impacts
Authors: Noam Eli
Published: September 2019

Media economics provides a basis for Eli Noam in setting out the logic behind a series of expectations he shares about how the transition from regular linear TV to online video will lead to major changes in culture, politics, and society. His perspective on the dramatic implications of this shift suggests comparisons with the fundamental changes brought about by the introduction of first-generation TV over seventy years ago, with both exciting advances and also disturbing problems. Noam is able to raise serious questions about new and enduring cultural, consumer-oriented, political, economic, educational, and other social implications of what might sound like a mere technical shift to a new style of video.
Coercion, Internalization, Decolonization
Authors: Lange Felix
Published: September 2019

The chapter discusses competing narratives of ‘rise’ and ‘decline’ of international law in the historical writings of international lawyers and historians. The author proposes a contextual approach to the history of international law which takes the terminology of the actors of the past seriously, but also leaves room for an assessment of functional equivalents. The author applies his contextual approach to the story of international law’s universalization. He claims that from the seventeenth century, European international law universalized via processes of forceful coercion by Western powers, internalization through non-Western states, and decolonization after the Second World War.
The BRICS as ‘Rising Powers’ and the Development of International Law
Authors: Rajput Aniruddha
Published: September 2019

This chapter analyses the influence of the BRICS countries as ‘rising powers’ on international law. It argues that a focus on these powers provides an appropriate index for the current development of international law. It studies the participation and influence of BRICS in the shaping of legal norms and institutions, thereby throwing light on their conceptualization of international law and the future of international law. It concludes that the activities of BRICS countries and other rising powers represent qualitative as well as quantitative progress. For the author, the current state of international law may appear to be in a state or crisis or stagnation, but has potential for rising.
Liberal or Not?
Authors: Zürn Michael
Published: September 2019

This chapter is a comment on Jean d’Aspremont’s suggestion that the very question of the rise and decline of international law is an expression of liberal thinking as predominant in international law and that the conception of non-state actors depends on liberal theory. While there is no doubt that both the question about the rise and decline of international law and the very concept of non-state actors is compatible with liberal theory, the chapter argues that the connection is much looser than assumed by d’Aspremont. In doing so, this chapter discusses different versions of liberal theory and then goes on to show that different social theories may have varying notions of the law, but most of them are definitely interested in the question of the rise or decline of law. Similarly, the relationship between the rise of international law and non-state actors is multifaceted and of potential interest for liberal, realist, and critical theory.
How Should the European Court of Human Rights Respond to Criticism?
Authors: Ulfstein Geir
Published: September 2019

This chapter is a comment on Angelika Nußberger’s chapter on the rule of human rights law in Europe in an ever more hostile environment. It argues that the Court, in its effective interpretation, should avoid interfering in issues that are not of such a gravity to merit international supervision. In its evolutive interpretation, the Court should also clarify its use of a European consensus and abandon its unfettered discretion in using international legal instruments for this purpose. This could alleviate uneasiness with respect to the ECtHR as an activist Court. Moreover, the Court should treat states equally with respect to benefitting from the margin of appreciation. However, it is also essential for the Court to ensure that deference to domestic decision-makers does not undermine effective implementation of the ECHR.
Is There a Compliance Trilemma in International Law?
Authors: Jachtenfuchs Markus
Published: September 2019

This chapter is a comment on Jeffrey L Dunoff’s discussion of the compliance trilemma. It emphasizes that one needs to continue studying fuzzy concepts even if they are difficult to measure. Moreover, it argues that the compliance trilemma is a parsimonious tool for understanding tensions in global governance but not an inescapable structural constraint in an anarchic international system. Its tensions can be mediated or overcome by the clever design of international agreements or institutions.
The Rule of International (Environmental) Law and Complex Problems
Authors: Brunnée Jutta
Published: September 2019

The chapter highlights the main features of climate change as a complex policy challenge. Drawing on the interactional account of international law it sets out the key traits of legality and the rule of law in the international context. It focuses primarily on how treaty-based law has evolved to grapple with complexity on the one hand, and meeting the demands of the rule of law on the other. The 2015 Paris Agreement, which was adopted under the auspices of the FCCC and employs an unprecedented range of legal ‘modes’, is taken as the key example. It is argued that the ‘hard’ vs ‘soft’ law distinction is not the most informative metric when it comes to exploring the trajectory of the international rule of law. Analytic attention is most fruitfully directed to the distinctive traits of legal norms and practices; traits that transcend traditional conceptions of formality and informality.
International Law, Informal Law-Making, and Global Governance in Times of Anti-Globalism and Populism
Authors: Wouters Jan
Published: September 2019

The chapter focuses on the impact of globalization on public international law in times of anti-globalism and populism, where globalization itself has increasingly become contested. It submits that traditional public international law has been dangerously unreceptive in capturing new transnational regulatory actors and normative dynamics, which makes it more vulnerable to anti-globalist and populist attacks. It looks into the corresponding rise and certain features of ‘informal international law-making’ and ‘global governance’, as they may offer some responses to, or at least some defences against, anti-globalist and populist politics. It also addresses the current challenges which traditional forms of international law-making, like treaties and customary international law, are currently going through. It concludes that public international law will have to adapt to both the challenges of globalization and anti-globalism, if it is to remain relevant in regulating international life in the twenty-first century.
Ensuring Access to Information: International Law’s Contribution to Global Justice
Authors: Benvenisti Eyal
Published: September 2019

This chapter examines the role of international law in promoting indirectly global (and domestic) distributive justice. The focus on institutions and processes at the global level is grounded on the assumption that questions about the just allocation and reallocation of resources are ultimately resolved through processes of public deliberation (including through the involvement of courts). The author argues that the key to approaching a more just allocation of resources is by addressing the democratic deficits that underlie the skewed distribution (or the lack of redistribution) of assets and opportunities. He suggests that international law can play a role in the political empowerment of weak constituencies (within and between states). In doing so, international law can indirectly shape the distribution and redistribution of resources, in a manner that is more dignified and preferable to handing charitable contributions.
A Theory of Legal Personhood
Authors: Kurki Visa AJ
Published: September 2019

Legal personhood is a foundational concept of Western legal thought. It has recently become highly topical, underpinning contemporary debates over the legal status of animals, corporations, foetuses, natural objects, and artificial intelligences. The notion is furthermore crucial in explaining the historical legal statuses of women and slaves. Rather than addressing who or what should be a legal person, this book examines the concept itself. The book consists of an Introduction and three parts. The Introduction presents the Western doctrine of legal personhood, the relevant terms and concepts, and the methodology employed in the book. Part I shows, first, how legal personhood came to be understood synonymously with the holding of legal rights and/or duties. It then subjects this understanding of legal personhood to a rigorous scrutiny, exposing numerous problems afflicting the view. Part II provides a completely new, general theory of legal personhood, arguing that legal personhood is best understood as a cluster property, consisting of distinct incidents. The final part applies the new theory to explain and structure the numerous debates surrounding legal personhood, explaining what is at stake in the animal legal personhood trials taking place in the US and elsewhere.
Collectivities as Legal Persons
Authors: Kurki Visa A.J.
Published: September 2019

This chapter examines corporate legal personhood as well as the legal status of collectivities in general. It exposes a number of problems the Orthodox View has as regards the rights and duties of collectivities. For instance, many constitutions and human rights documents recognize the rights of minorities, but minorities are regardless generally not taken to be corporations or legal persons. The chapter offers a different explanation of corporations. It applies social ontology to argue that even non-incorporated group agents can hold legal rights. Regardless, such groups are not legal persons. What distinguishes corporations from other groups is not that they hold rights, but rather that they are endowed with a significant number of the incidents of legal personhood: they can own property, sue, and so on. The chapter concludes by considering whether collectives that are not group agents could be legal persons.
Arab Telephone
Authors: Asseraf Arthur
Published: September 2019

The telegraph was introduced to connect Algeria to France. Yet the effects of the telegraph cables were double: they brought European Algerians closer to France at the same time as they brought Algerian Muslims closer to other Muslims around the world. Through the example of an incident in the town of Rébeval in Kabylia during the Greek–Ottoman War in 1897, we see how telegraphic news inserted itself into existing networks and allowed people in Algeria to connect their local problems with the rest of the Muslim world. As colonized Algerians were increasingly defined by French law as ‘Muslims’, they used this category to situate themselves within global events, leading to a ‘pan-Islamism’ from below. While French authorities remained convinced that this pan-Islamism was coming from outside, intermediaries employed by the French state were at the centre of this shift in the meaning of ‘Muslim’.
Non-Standard Exemptions and Zero Rates
Authors: Cnossen Sijbren
Published: September 2019

Chapter 10 provides a detailed review and analysis of the manifold non-standard exemptions and zero rates found around the African continent, which are most costly in terms of revenue forgone. One table lists the non-standard exemptions of unprocessed foodstuffs, agricultural inputs, medical supplies, utilities, print, fuel, and some other goods and services on a country-by-country basis. For each item, some indication is provided about the reach of each exemption or zero/lower rate. A second table does the same for the zero or positive but reduced rates on the same items. The chapter concludes with an overview of the VAT reforms in four countries—Benin, Kenya, Senegal, and Tanzania—that have eliminated most, if not all, non-standard exemptions and zero rates, a move that other African countries may wish to consider too.
Governments and Activities in the Public Interest
Authors: Cnossen Sijbren
Published: September 2019

Chapter 11 discusses the EU legacy of taxing public bodies, illustrated by the African experience. The EU’s out-of-scope approach is bedevilled by distortions arising from the self-supply bias, the investment disincentive, and, somewhat more remotely, unfair competition vis-à-vis the private sector. Outside Africa, countries with VAT have addressed these issues differently. Various EU countries and Canada, for example, have designed input tax refund mechanisms to eliminate the self-supply bias and the investment disincentive. Still other countries, such as New Zealand, tax governments and activities in the public interest in full and have thus come to terms with the unfair competition issue, too. A concluding section summarizes the characteristics and effects of the various approaches and attempts to formulate a recommendation for African countries.
Individual Atmospheres
Authors: Tullett William
Published: September 2019

The eighteenth century witnessed a number of changes in attitudes to the making and wearing of perfume. Growing unease about perfume’s ability to disguise medical or social disabilities contributed to an attack on its artificiality. The use of strong perfumes was increasingly condemned—not because of their animal ingredients or a fear that they were unhealthy, but because they were an intrusive affront to codes of politeness and mitigated against the ability get along in increasingly anonymous, tightly packed, social spaces. A case study of the eighteenth century’s ultimate perfume addict—the Macaroni—and the pleasure gardens in which he roamed, demonstrates the degree to which perfumery could be construed as an atmospheric aggression against new codes of privacy in public.
Conclusion
Authors: Tullett William
Published: September 2019

This conclusion restates and explains the broader arguments of the book. It argues for the importance of a new idea of ‘privacy in public’ which would go on to become a key part of the modern social imaginary, urban forms of governmentality, and sociable self-management. A number of changes are connected to this shift: a closer imbrication of the emotions and the senses; a more circumscribed idea of the body’s boundaries; a re-gendering of smell; a re-spatialization of odours; and a new focus on sensory idiosyncrasy. In many of these respects England was very different from France, on which influential work has already focused, during this period. The ideas in this book nuance recent visions of Britain’s modernity as a ‘society of [sensory] strangers’.
Putting Data Before Theory
Authors: Smith Gary , Cordes Jay
Published: September 2019

The traditional statistical analysis of data follows what has come to be known as the scientific method: collecting reliable data to test plausible theories. Data mining goes in the other direction, analyzing data without being motivated or encumbered by theories. The fundamental problem with data mining is simple: We think that data patterns are unusual and therefore meaningful. Patterns are, in fact, inevitable and therefore meaningless. This is why data mining is not usually knowledge discovery, but noise discovery. Finding correlations is easy. Good data scientists are not seduced by discovered patterns because they don’t put data before theory. They do not commit Texas Sharpshooter Fallacies or fall into the Feynman Trap.
Worshiping Math
Authors: Smith Gary , Cordes Jay
Published: September 2019

Data-mining tools, in general, tend to be mathematically sophisticated, yet often make implausible assumptions. For example, analysts often assume a normal distribution and disregard the fat tails that warn of “black swans.” Too often, the assumptions are hidden in the math and the people who use the tools are more impressed by the math than curious about the assumptions. Instead of being blinded by math, good data scientists use explanatory variables that make sense. Good data scientists use math, but do not worship it. They know that math is an invaluable tool, but it is not a substitute for common sense, wisdom, or expertise.
Torturing Data
Authors: Smith Gary , Cordes Jay
Published: September 2019

Researchers seeking fame and funding may be tempted to go on fishing expeditions (p-hacking) or to torture the data to find novel, provocative results that will be picked up by the popular media. Provocative findings are provocative because they are novel and unexpected, and they are often novel and unexpected because they are simply not true. The publication effect (or the file drawer effect) keeps the failures hidden and have created a replication crisis. Research that gets reported in the popular media is often wrong—which fools people and undermines the credibility of scientific research.
Being Surprised by Regression Toward the Mean
Authors: Smith Gary , Cordes Jay
Published: September 2019

We are predisposed to discount the role of luck in our lives—to believe that successes are earned and failures deserved. We misinterpret the temporary as permanent and invent theories to explain noise. We overreact when the unexpected happens, and are too quick to make the unexpected the new expected. The key to understanding regression toward the mean is to look behind the data—to recognize that when we see something remarkable, luck was most likely involved and, so, the underlying phenomenon is not as remarkable as it seems. Not to be confused with the gambler’s fallacy where good luck is followed by bad luck, regression toward the mean states that extremely good luck is generally followed by less extreme luck. The Sports Illustrated jinx is nothing more than this. Whenever there is uncertainty, people often make flawed decisions due to an insufficient appreciation of regression toward the mean.
A Basic Framework for the English Urban Sector
Authors: Hartrich Eliza
Published: September 2019

What features of the English polity facilitated links between towns and promoted collective urban influence on national politics? Firstly, this chapter traces the ways in which charters and law courts moulded the relationships that townspeople had with the Crown, aristocratic landholders, and (crucially) one another. Secondly, it considers the inter-urban links generated by domestic and international trade, as well as the role in shaping royal policy that townspeople assumed through their mercantile activities. Thirdly, it examines parliament as a venue for interaction between residents of different towns and as a vehicle for the formation of collective goals. Lastly, the chapter explores the role of towns themselves as spaces for the dissemination of political messages.
The Urban Sector and the Beginning of the Wars of the Roses, 1450–61
Authors: Hartrich Eliza
Published: September 2019

Typically, periods of political crisis in medieval England—such as the Barons’ War of the 1250s and 1260s or the troubles of Edward II’s reign—brought towns and their residents to the forefront of national politics, but the early years of the Wars of the Roses proved a notable exception to this rule. The first section of this chapter demonstrates that weakened links between towns, combined with the local dominance of mercantile elites in 1435–50, meant that the urban sector had neither the means nor the will to influence the brewing conflict between the duke of York and the monarchy in 1450–5. The second section, however, shows that the late 1450s saw a return to urban collective action and a ‘politicization’ of townspeople. The re-emergence of a ‘politicized’ urban sector in the Wars of the Roses proved to be a crucial factor in breaking the political stalemate of the 1450s.
Conclusion
Authors: Hartrich Eliza
Published: September 2019

By studying the urban political sector—a framework within which towns and the people who lived in them could pool their collective resources to influence national politics, and in which the internal governance and political experiences of different individual towns could influence those of others within the sector—it becomes possible to write a history of late medieval English politics that is not focused exclusively on aristocratic landholders. An urban sector model allows for the political might of smaller towns in a centralized monarchy (such as was the case in fifteenth-century England) to be compared more profitably to that exercised by the more celebrated towns and urban leagues of Northern Italy and Flanders. Also, this book’s emphasis on frequent fluctuations in the nature of the English urban sector, rather than long-term trajectories, serves to question evolutionary narratives concerning the transition from the ‘medieval’ to ‘early modern’ English town.
Enterprise Transformation
Authors: Rouse William B.
Published: September 2019

This chapter focuses on the topic of enterprise transformation. Successful adoption of the model-based approaches presented in this book can be helped or hindered by the nature of the enterprise using them. It is very difficult to successfully innovate when new offerings obsolete the current offerings. Enterprise transformation is driven by experienced and/or anticipated value deficiencies. The ends, means, and scope of transformation influence the difficulties, costs, and time required for fundamental change. Overall strategy choices include predicting better, learning faster, and acting faster; returns on investments in these areas depend on market conditions. Successful transformation initiatives usually require competencies in vision, leadership, strategy, planning, culture, collaboration, and teamwork.
Expertise in the Miracles Debate
Authors: DeWitt Anne
Published: September 2019

This chapter analyses debates about miracles at the Metaphysical Society, arguing that members claimed authority to speak on this topic by positioning themselves as experts in their disciplines. The essay begins with debates about miracles in the public sphere of the 1860s and 1870s, showing how these debates raised questions about who was qualified to speak on the subject. These questions were taken up in a series of papers at the Society. As speakers focused on witnesses to alleged miracles and what kind of testimony could be relied on, they asserted their own reliability on the basis of their disciplinary training. These assertions cut across the different positions on miracles taken by the Society’s members and across the disciplines they represented. Still, these commonalities do not show that the Society’s members were unified as participants in elite culture, since they presented competing claims about what constituted expertise and who possessed it.
Catholics and the Metaphysical Basis of Science
Authors: Lightman Bernard
Published: September 2019

During the 1870s, the decade during which the majority of the meetings of the Metaphysical Society took place, Catholics were grappling with the new environment created by the growing conservatism of their Church. The Catholic members of the Society such as Henry Manning, William Ward, and St. George Mivart adopted dissimilar strategies for dealing with Rome’s conservative turn. In their papers all three were eager to demonstrate that Catholicism was in no way antagonistic to science while they attempted to undermine the metaphysical basis of scientific naturalism. But whereas Manning defended Catholicism by emphasizing the debt of contemporary science to scholastic philosophy, Ward believed that scientific naturalism had to be confronted on its own terms using more modern philosophical weapons. Both Manning and Ward were staunch defenders of ultramontane conservatism, which advocated supreme papal authority. Since Mivart was a liberal Catholic, as well as a highly regarded scientist who accepted a version of evolutionary theory, it is not surprising that he differed from both Manning and Ward in his approach to critiquing scientific naturalism. Mivart not only argued that science must be conceived of as being within the framework of theism, he also drew attention to the emptiness of Huxley’s and Tyndall’s conception of religion as a matter of emotion. This chapter will discuss how these differences in strategy between Catholic religious figures and intellectuals played out within the meetings of the Metaphysical Society.
Baker and Milsom Sources of English Legal History
Authors: Baker John
Published: September 2019

This book contains selected cases, statutes, and a few other texts, relating to the history of English private law between 1194 and 1750. (Cases after 1750 are mostly available in the English Reports.) It may be used as a companion to the textbooks written by the compilers, but the purpose is different from that of a textbook. The original materials are here allowed to speak for themselves, without commentary. Most of them are reports of cases, which show how the common law evolved through argument. The losing arguments help to explain those which prevailed, and it is often instructive to know what was not argued. Most of the reports were written in law French, but they are here given in English translation, corrected or augmented from manuscripts, together with notes from the enrolled Latin records. Much of this material is not available in English translation elsewhere. The second impression (2019) contains corrections and additions.
Tenure: services and incidents
Authors: Baker John
Published: September 2019

The law of real property began in the context of feudal tenure. This chapter contains thirteenth-century materials relating to the services and incidents due from a tenant to a lord under the ‘feudal system’, ending with three pieces of legislation intended to protect the economic interests of lords from diminution or avoidance.
Copyhold
Authors: Baker John
Published: September 2019

The principal purpose of this chapter is to show how the tenant by copy of court roll evolved from a manorial tenant in villeinage, with no protection against his lord at common law, into a landowner with a property right enforceable in the central courts. The means was the action of ejectment, which rested on a lease of the copyholder’s possessory interest. This was settled in the King’s Bench by the 1570s, though the Common Pleas did not at first acquiesce. The copyholder’s estate was governed by the custom of the manor of which the land was held, and this gave rise to difficulties over its legal qualities, particularly with regard to entailed copyhold.
Detinue
Authors: Baker John
Published: September 2019

This chapter is concerned with the writ of detinue, which was very similar to, and in some cases had the same wording as, the writ of debt. It lay for specific chattels detained from someone with a better right to them, and the pleadings in the reported cases show the various kinds of claim which could be brought within the same formula. Detinue on a bailment rested on a direct transaction between the parties, but detinue could also be based solely on property, where a defendant had obtained possession of goods formerly in the plaintiff’s possession but without acquiring title from him. The principal species of the proprietary form was detinue sur trover (‘on a finding’), the ‘finding’ being open to fiction. The scope for special pleading in detinue was limited; but it came to be established that the liability of a bailee was stricter than that of a finder.
Account
Authors: Baker John
Published: September 2019

The writ of account was designed to make the defendant render an account of moneys received from or on behalf of the plaintiff. Only when the existence and exact extent of any indebtedness was established by audit could the plaintiff recover the debt as a liquidated sum. The cases in this chapter show how the action was extended from actions against bailiffs to reach non-contractual receivers of money. The bailiff actions were based on contract, the latter on quasi-contract (or restitution); but the action did not extend to the receipt of money by wrongdoers. There was much discussion of the defences which could be pleaded to the action, by way of denying accountability, as opposed to those which could only be pleaded before the auditors.
Trespass
Authors: Baker John
Published: September 2019

This chapter is concerned with the writ of trespass vi et armis, available for wrongs committed ‘with force and arms and against the king’s peace’. The first part explores the meaning of this phrase, and reveals how in some cases it may have been extended by fiction. The second part shows what defences could be raised by special pleading. Justifications could be specially pleaded, but the few attempts to plead lack of fault failed because the absence of fault was not a justification. In 1466 it was held, after earlier uncertainty, that intention was irrelevant. However, the cases do not suggest that liability was strict. Unavoidable accident was a defence in principle, though it amounted to Not Guilty and was therefore a matter entirely for the jury. Attempts to frame special pleas of accident all failed, but the discussions which they occasioned throw light on what the underlying law was thought to be.
Assumpsit for nonfeasance
Authors: Baker John
Published: September 2019

Among the writs of assumpsit issued in the fourteenth century were some alleging a mere failure to do what was promised (nonfeasance), the harm being economic rather than physical. The cases in this chapter show how the availability of such actions was controversial for nearly a century. Assumpsit for misfeasance had been allowed without dispute, because the misfeasance would have been a tort even without the undertaking. But assumpsit for nonfeasance rested wholly on a contractual agreement and arguably required written evidence of the agreement, if not a different writ (covenant). During the fifteenth century the action was established, after much debate, by deploying the concepts of bargain, reliance, and deceit. It enabled contracts to be enforced although there was no sealed agreement, as was required in the action of covenant. The turning point was Doige’s Case (1442), in which damages were recovered against a defaulting vendor of land.
Actions on the case for nuisance
Authors: Baker John
Published: September 2019

This chapter shows how actions on the case were used both to supplant the assize of nuisance and to provide remedies for types of nuisance not within the assize. The King’s Bench allowed case to overlap with the assize, but this was opposed by the Common Pleas until 1601, when the King’s Bench view prevailed. The assize was chiefly concerned with easements and profits. But there were new difficulties over the extent to which neighbours had to put up with disagreeable activities and processes which disturbed their comfort. These were discussed in a case of 1569 concerning ancient lights in London, and in a leading case of 1629 concerning the use of sea-coal by a London brewery. The 1629 case seems to have resulted in judicial deadlock, but the judges agreed on the principle of ‘necessity’, meaning that activities which were desirable in the public interest should be protected.
Making Do? Musical Participation in an Early-Tudor College
Authors: Williamson Magnus
Published: September 2019

This chapter addresses Corpus Christi College’s trilingual library. By 1545, trilingualism in different forms and to greater or lesser degree had become manifest in several places in continental Europe. In England, the same trends were already visible at St. John’s College, Cambridge, where John Fisher had insisted on lectures not only in Greek but also in Hebrew, the latter supererogatory. In Oxford, Laurence Humphrey in about 1566 established a public Hebrew lectureship at Magdalen College. As Hebrew grammars, dictionaries, and concordances poured from the printing presses, the majority intended for a Christian readership, Hebrew literacy grew. The chapter then looks at the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew manuscripts in Corpus Christi College’s trilingual library.
Corpus Christi College and the Early Reformation
Authors: Rex Richard
Published: September 2019

This chapter discusses the experience of the first scholars of Corpus Christi College beyond Corpus. As Bishop Richard Fox had hoped, Corpus Christi College in its first years became a place not only of learning but of sociability and hospitality, where lasting friendships were made. Leaving the cloisters of the College for the City and the court, the young scholars found households where humanist learning was already valued as well as networks of the like-minded who shared books and conversation. Beyond the College, the scholars often retained connections with each other and the College. As chaplains, secretaries, physicians, and tutors, they served the commonwealth. However, in the fractured world which Henry VIII’s ‘Great Matter‘ and Break with Rome had made, living in service of both God and the commonwealth became more difficult; their choices became harder and consciences were tested.
Closing Remarks I
Authors: Heal Felicity
Published: September 2019

This chapter shows that Corpus Christi College stood at the beginning of a new cycle in the story of Oxford, one in which other founders modelled their work on the forward-looking plan devised by Bishop Richard Fox, and the success, or even the survival, of the academy in difficult times owed much to the efficacy of collegiate institutions. Fox did indeed establish his society on strong foundations, with statutes that enabled its ‘busy bees‘ to survive and thrive, even if their extreme precision appeared to leave little space for subsequent adaptation. Corpus was crucially the product of its founder’s vision and so it is unusually important to establish what Richard Fox wished to achieve. In its first generations, Corpus Christi was envisaged as designed to produce ‘pious humanists‘ or, perhaps ‘ecclesiastical humanists‘.