bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Parliament at work
Authors: Egreteau Renaud
Published: April 2022

This chapter shows how an essentially workable legislative structure, even if flawed, operated on a day-to-day basis in the course of two post-authoritarian legislatures (2011–2016 and 2016–2021). It analyses the development, role, and impact of permanent parliamentary staff offices, interrogates the emergence of an effective sessional calendar, and explains the formation of parliamentary committee structures. Then, embracing both ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with legislators and legislative staff conducted across two legislatures, it investigates how everyday parliamentary life has (re)emerged in the 2010s and what it means for Myanmar’s attempts to develop a form of post-junta, democratic life. Efforts to institutionalize a parliament’s inner workings are key to its sustainability and effectiveness. Steps in that direction and the normalization of legislative business have been taken by both the USDP and NLD legislatures.
The military and the legislature
Authors: Egreteau Renaud
Published: April 2022

This chapter investigates the relationship between parliament and the armed forces under the peculiar framework of civil–military relations outlined by Myanmar’s 2008 Constitution. A quarter of all parliamentary seats is reserved to military-appointed representatives. As the analysis of military behaviour in the course of two post-junta legislatures demonstrates, army legislators have developed contrasting attitudes towards parliament and executive–legislative relations. During the USDP term, they have proved rather quiescent, performing a certain degree of pre-legislative scrutiny and raising the occasional parliamentary motion. Under the NLD’s tenure after 2016, however, the military bloc has not only comprised of more senior, top-rank officers; it has also increasingly opted for up-front theatrics and confrontational strategies in all chambers to show the army’s disapproval of the way legislative business has been conducted by the new ruling party.
In Search of Vulnerabilities Lost
Authors: Hussain Adeel
Published: April 2022

This chapter traces how the reception of the pamphlet Rangila Rasul contributed to the formation of a distinctly Muslim political subjectivity in colonial India. It shows that the increasing salience of print media at the beginning of the twentieth century challenged the aesthetic–religious authority or ‘aura’ of the Prophet. This process set the stage for a discourse on honour, purity, and insult that became so characteristic of the pre-partition political language. This chapter further reveals that blasphemy legislation, and the surrounding legislative and judicial debates led to a solidification of the Muslim subject as a category in law and carved deep fissures between Hindus and Muslims. The Prophet’s entrance into the legal sphere also allowed for other issues around sacred space and territoriality to take centre stage and stirred Muslim political thought towards questions of representation and nationhood.
Empirical Results
Authors: Baron Sam , Miller Kristie , Tallant Jonathan
Published: April 2022

In this chapter it is shown that time, in the folk sense, is not immune to error. That is, it is demonstrated that there are discoveries that one could make about the world that would lead people to deny that time exists. Along the way, it is argued that there is no single, univocal folk concept of time. The chapter begins by briefly revisiting some of the standard positions in the philosophy of time. This is then used as a framework for developing a suite of hypotheses about the folk concept of time. Empirical data from the Sydney time studies is then summarised with respect to these hypotheses and used to show that there is substantial conceptual variation among the folk with respect to their concepts of time. Finally, a range of discoveries is identified that would lead people to deny that time exists.
Study Methodology
Authors: Baron Sam , Miller Kristie , Tallant Jonathan
Published: April 2022

This chapter focuses on the background to the Sydney time studies, along with broad methodological issues that frame their development. The chapter begins with an overview of existing empirical work on folk concepts of time and explains why it is essential that the project move beyond this existing body of work. This established, the chapter then outlines some of the methodological difficulties that arise in any attempt to investigate the folk concept of time and explains how these difficulties can be overcome. The chapter closes by outlining a broad empirical strategy for investigating the folk concept of time.
Metaphysical Emergence
Authors: Baron Sam , Miller Kristie , Tallant Jonathan
Published: April 2022

Chapter Six focuses on the metaphysical, and weighty, emergence of spacetime from a more fundamental, non-spatiotemporal ontology. That spacetime must emerge in a metaphysical sense is challenged by considering a number of different ways of making the notion of metaphysical emergence more precise. Each option involves specifying emergence in terms of a particular metaphysical relation. The trouble is that the options are all spatial, temporal, or spatiotemporal notions (or tacitly rely on the same), and so without spacetime it is unclear that sense can be made of metaphysical emergence. Because standard ways of understanding metaphysical emergence appear to break down for spacetime, it is not so clear that spacetime must be emergent. At best, it seems that it might be emergent, but equally it might not be.
‘Of Related Blood’
Authors: Steinke Ronen
Published: April 2022

This chapter emphasizes how head nurses were in danger of losing their caps from so many Hitler salutes under the new hospital regime after the Brownshirt raid in 1933. It refers to uniformed doctors dressed up in white coats that were devoid of any technical expertise, which replaced the Jewish doctors that were taken as prisoners. It also mentions Dr. Mohamed Helmy’s memory on the bizarre treatment methods that the new staff introduced, which often put patients in mortal danger. The chapter cites Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, who explicitly welcomed the subjugation of Arab nations to the will of Europe in his book The Myth of the Twentieth Century. It discusses the Nuremberg Laws that was introduced by the Nazi government in 1935 that was meant to capture its murder victims and astonished Dr. Helmy at the extent to which Muslims were spared by the law.
A Daring Plan
Authors: Steinke Ronen
Published: April 2022

This chapter starts with a discussion of Anna’s defiance to wear a yellow badge that recognizes her as Jewish. It mentions the Gestapo that deported Jews from Berlin, including Anna who was ordered to get her passport stamped at the Romanian Consulate and leave Germany for Romania. It also talks about the Consular official that stamped Anna’s passport, who advised her not to travel to Romania under any circumstances as Jews were sent to camps in Poland instead. The chapter details how Anna turned to Dr. Mohamed Helmy to hide from the Gestapo and changed her identity into the Muslim Nadia, Dr. Helmy’s niece and assistant. It recounts the beginning of the Gestapo’s search for Anna after they were notified that the Jewish girl had gone away on 10 March 1942.
In the Lion’s Den
Authors: Steinke Ronen
Published: April 2022

This chapter mentions the Prinz Albrecht hotel that used to host lavish parties up to 1932 but has now gained the reputation of the building where SS chief Heinrich Himmler directed the extermination of Europe’s Jews. It describes Wilhelmstraße as the power centre of the Third Reich, where the key ministries installed itself and gathered since 1934. It also recounts the event when Dr. Mohamed Helmy, along with his Muslim assistant, was summoned by the SS to the Prinz Albrecht hotel and was tasked to provide medical care to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini. The chapter depicts Amin al-Husseini as a dangerous man for Jews as he compared Jews to disease-carrying insects during his anti-Semitic propaganda speeches. It details how the Nazis used the Grand Mufti to recruit Muslim volunteers in return for an ‘aryanized’ villa and a monthly allowance of 75,000 Reichsmarks.
An Overnight Conversion
Authors: Steinke Ronen
Published: April 2022

This chapter details Anna’s conversion to Islam on 10 June 1943, which is Dr. Mohamed Helmy’s plan to provide her a long-term escape route. It explains how the conversion included a certificate that prove that it had been obtained from the Islamic Central Institute, whose patron was the Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini and his well-known supporter, Adolf Hitler. It also points out that Helmy’s plan depended on being able to smuggle Nina past the Grand Mufti unnoticed as he was not informed that he was about to sponsor the conversion of a Jewish girl to the Islamic faith. The chapter mentions Kamal el-Din Galal, General Secretary of the Islamic Central Institute of Berlin, who supported Helmy’s plan by using stolen letterheads and stamps to create an official document of Anna’s Islamic conversion. It talks about how Galal did not share the Grand Mufti’s anti-Semitism, although he worked for him.
Time-as-Resource
Authors: Hernes Tor
Published: April 2022

Time-as-resource departs from the other three dimensions by representing the abstraction of time from actors’ worlds of practice or experience. The term ‘abstraction’ is used to underline that streams in the flow of time are translated into tangible entities, such as interest rates. Time-as-resource captures both clock time as measurement and time as a qualitative mechanism of social ordering. Any process of translating practices from one place to another passes via time-as-resource, which makes time-as-resource a vital ingredient in organizing. Time-as-resource is complex and involves both quantitative and qualitative elements. It is described as temporal templates, which work as repositories for the temporality of organizations, groups, teams, etc. Temporal templates act as a means of translation to and from local practice, which enables time-as-practice to travel between different contexts.
Themes of Interplay
Authors: Hernes Tor
Published: April 2022

There are multiple ways to conceptualize the interplay of the four dimensions, and rather than attempt to be exhaustive, this chapter discusses selected themes of interplay that can be explained in light of the framework. The framework aims to describe how organizational life fluctuates among moments of instantaneity, enduring continuity, and imagination of distant times, which requires that the four dimensions are analysed in terms of their mutual interplay. Interplay between the four dimensions is inevitably complex, therefore four selected themes of interplay are selected for illustration. They are analysed as two different modes of interplay. As transitional interplay dimensions connect sequentially. As simultaneous interplay they interact in parallel with one another.
Mattering of Time
Authors: Hernes Tor
Published: April 2022

When materiality has been considered in relation to time, it has been considered a measurement tool. The role of materiality as embodiment of time—how materiality ‘does time’—has been largely neglected in research until recently. Material temporality invites both the experience dimension and the events dimension. As actors interact over different types of materials in the present, they may envisage material aspects of distant past or future events. As recent works suggest, materiality has properties both for evoking the past and predicting the future. Materiality is also a means to predict the past and evoke the future.
Leading in Time
Authors: Hernes Tor
Published: April 2022

Human agency has traditionally been associated with free choice. In a time view, time as trajectory represents agency, as actors may choose to foreground some parts of their past or future and background others. A temporal view of leadership or leading points towards how leaders are able to narrative the connection between past and future and convert that narrative into actions in the present. This involves combining continuity and change and avoiding dichotomy between them. It also involves the leader as symbol of past achievements and future challenges. Most accounts of change assume that continuity signifies carrying on with current practices, making change an obvious antithesis to continuity. But if we consider continuity as joining together practices from different epochs, continuity becomes an active process, which effectively becomes a process of change. This is a form of continuity not in opposition to but part and parcel of change. While this form of continuity is not often mentioned explicitly when leaders effect change, many leaders are acutely aware of the importance of leveraging the potential for change by creating a sense of continuity.
Women in EU Multilevel Administration
Authors: Heidbreder Eva G.
Published: April 2022

The European Union does not have an integrated, hierarchically ordered public administration (PA) but is governed by a multilevel administrative system. Formally independent national PAs are the main executors of EU policies and, in order to effectively realize EU policies, they have to interact across vertical and horizontal levels of the governance system. Thus, EU integration has substantially changed the functional demands on national administrations when it comes to EU policy execution. This chapter therefore asks if EU integration has caused changes in the positioning of women in national PAs. To answer the question, specific functional demands of EU multilevel administration are theoretically linked to images feminist PA theory formulates in contrast to the dominant principles of modern PAs. The observation that feminist PA images fit the specific functional demands of multilevel administration leads to the expectation that women’s leadership is more likely in EU policy coordination than in classic modern PAs. In a plausibility test based on original data from a central administrative coordination network and the two lead ministries in German EU policy coordination, the expectation is shown to bear fruitful insights for future research.
Anselm's Argument
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: April 2022

Anselm stated the first modal “ontological” argument for a perfect being’s existence. The argument’s key premise is that necessarily, if anything is a perfect being, it necessarily exists. The modalities here are what we now call metaphysical, broadly logical, or absolute. Anselm’s modal metaphysics is based on power and prevention. Despite this, it is adequate to these modal concepts. Anselm’s Argument defends all premises of Anselm’s argument but the claim that possibly there is a perfect being. In particular, it blocks all extant objections to the key premise. It also provides two arguments for it. One contends that existing necessarily is equivalent to lacking three “less-makers,” and so a perfect being would exist necessarily. The other contends that there is no viable way fully to explicate a perfect being’s contingency. In some possible worlds with no perfect being, a perfect being would possibly exist. But there is (the book argues) no adequate metaphysical account of what would make a perfect being possible in those worlds.
Introduction
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: April 2022

The Introduction presents the claims that God exists necessarily and that a perfect being exists necessarily. It provides a short history of what has motivated those claims, and also provides reasons to motivate current interest in them. It introduces the kind of necessity which Anselm had in mind in making these claims. It explicates it in two ways, one of which involves the idea of a possible world. It also provides a road-map for the rest of the book.
The Metaphysics
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: April 2022

Chapter 1 sets out Anselm’s modal metaphysics. It discusses the way he bases necessity on compulsion or prevention, and possibility on power. It shows the role the distinction between powers had intrinsically and powers had extrinsically plays in Anselm’s views. It shows how the distinction between “primed” powers and others factors in. It shows that his metaphysics delivers the modal logic S4. It introduces his distinction between “proper” and “improper” speech, and applies it to modal sentences.
Hume
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: April 2022

Chapter 6 discusses Hume’s argument that nothing could exist necessarily. That argument premises that any necessary proposition has a contradictory negation and that whatever exists can be conceived not to exist. The chapter argues that both claims are false. Counter-examples to the first come from metaphysical theories, identity-statements, color-exclusion, and cases of supervenience. The second needs disambiguating, as “conceivable” can mean “imaginable” or “cannot be known to be false a priori.” The principle turns out to be false on both readings. Finally, the chapter rejects Richard Swinburne’s recent attempt to update Hume’s argument.
Swinburne
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: April 2022

Chapter 8 considers further objections to divine or perfect being necessity by Richard Swinburne. One of these calls on intuitions that claims like “no-one is perfectly good” are absolutely possible. The chapter suggests that further reflection undermines these intuitions, at least in theists. Another of Swinburne’s arguments claims that God’s non-existence entails no contradiction, and so we should take it to be possible unless there are defeating arguments that suggest that it does. The chapter replies that non-contradiction does not suffice for genuine possibility, per earlier arguments, and that Swinburne’s attempts to clear away defeaters fail.
Imagining Nothing
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: April 2022

Chapter 10 argues that imagination cannot provide evidence that there could have been nothing concrete. It discusses both ordinary sensory imagination and a sort of imagination open only to those who have had mystical experience. It first describes sensory imagination, then talks about the degrees of support it might provide for possibility claims. It then argues that sensory imagination provides none of these degrees of support. One main conclusion is that we cannot really imagine there being nothing concrete. Instead, we actually operate by convention. We accept certain other things we can imagine as counting as imagining this, when they actually do not manage it. Because visual imagination often visualizes objects against a sort of backdrop, the chapter discusses the concreteness of space(time), as the backdrop might represent empty space(time). The chapter argues that a substantival space(time) would probably count as concrete. Finally, it contends that mystical experience could not add anything that helps to our imaginative resources, and considers the relevance of sensory models to there being nothing concrete.
Thinking of Nothing
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: April 2022

Chapter 11 considers four candidate sources of evidence for the claim that 1. There could have been nothing concrete. One tactic in assessing possibility claims is to see whether any relevant necessity rules them out. Ruling that out, in (1)’s case, would require an independent argument that (1). So this tactic cannot add to the reasons that (1) which that argument would give us. Another move rests on asserting unrestricted recombination of states of affairs, or of existential states of affairs—i.e. that in either range, if state of affairs S1 is possible, and so is S2, then the state of affairs S1 and S2 is possible. Both principles turn out false. Another move rests on the principle that if a state of affairs S2 is enough like a state of affairs S1 in the right ways, then the more confident we are that S1 is possible, and the more like S1 in those ways S2 is, the more confident we should be that S2 is possible, ceteris paribus. The chapter argues that subtraction arguments cannot incline us more toward (1). Conceiving (1) involves understanding its consequences. The chapter argues that conceiving is at best a wash as evidence for (1), and might actually tilt against it. For it can involve tracing the consequences of (1) for the ontology of modality, and these (it suggests) motivate rejecting (1). Finally, the chapter suggests that modal intuition too is at best a wash for (1), and broader intuitive considerations weigh against it.
Five More Objections
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: April 2022

Chapter 12 considers five more objections to the claim that a perfect being would exist necessarily. One is Findlay’s classic argument that nothing could be both God and necessary, due to the implications of a certain sort of conventionalism. The chapter shows that this argument generalizes into one not so obviously indebted to that view. But even that version of it fails. Another pair suggest that a concrete necessary being would be a modal anomaly, and that this counts against such a thing being possible. The chapter suggests that the anomaly can be mitigated. Finally, the chapter considers a challenge from the possibility of evil a perfect being would not permit. It suggests denying the possibility, and suggests why that move might be more attractive than it seems at first.
Perfect Being Contingency?
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: April 2022

Chapter 13 begins a four-chapter argument against the claim that a perfect being would exist contingently. Were that true, there would be a possible world with no perfect being. The chapter argues that in at least some such worlds, a perfect being would be possible. It then begins the longer argument, which is that there is no acceptable ontological account of what would make it possible in such a world. This chapter considers ways to use concreta in that world to provide a perfect being’s possibility—conventionalism, conceptualism, “powers” theories, and other strategies. It contends that these all “cost” too much. It also argues that a perfect being would have aseity as an essential property. It points out various ways to understand that attribute, and shows how they rule out ways to account for a perfect being’s possibility.
Essence Options
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: April 2022

Chapter 14 continues the exploration of consequences of the claim that a perfect being exists contingently. It considers ways a perfect being’s essence might provide its possibility in worlds in which it does not exist. It argues that this essence would exist necessarily. It then argues that if a perfect being exists contingently, its essence is a more fundamental reality than it is. For one thing, if its essence is necessary and the perfect being contingent, the essence can exist without the perfect being. But the perfect being cannot exist without its essence. Further, the essence must help explain the perfect being’s existing, but the perfect being (it turns out) cannot explain its. On most views, the essence would also explain much else about the perfect being, but not vice versa. The chapter argues this inter alia by considering ways to understand the exemplification relation between the two. It also rejects various ways for there to be mutual explanation between the two, and discusses an analogue of the Euthyphro dilemma. Nothing should be more basic in reality than a perfect being. In particular, if a perfect being would exist a se, nothing more basic should be contributing to its existence. So, whatever may be true of other essences, a perfect being’s essence cannot be necessary if the perfect being is contingent. But if there is such a thing as its essence, the chapter argues, it exists necessarily. So the perfect being does too.
Envoi
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: April 2022

Chapter 18 provides a brief summary of the book’s main contentions.
Introduction: the ‘Problematic’ of Custom in the Natural Law and ius gentium Tradition
Authors: Iurlaro Francesca
Published: April 2022

Customary international law emerged as a fundamental legal category capable of transitioning the naturalness of reason into the historicity of a specific political and cultural context. The emphasis on the normative aspects of custom allows the problematizing of the idea of ‘state practice’, which is traditionally associated with custom. This introduction will suggest that the very notion of ‘state practice’ (i.e. the idea of inferring the existence of binding customary rules from generalized patterns of behaviour) was relatively undertheorized until the late 17th century. To prove this, the introduction seeks to retrace a narrative of custom as a process of historicization of natural law, focusing on a selection of authors who have navigated the dichotomy between natural law and history. These European authors of the ius gentium tradition ‘invented’ the customary law of nations through the language of history and myth-making, internalized its cultural values, and, eventually, abandoned such values.
The Problematic of Custom in Roman and Canon Law
Authors: Iurlaro Francesca
Published: April 2022

This chapter offers an overview of the concept of custom in the Roman and canon law tradition to introduce some problematic aspects in the theorization of custom. While this chapter has no pretensions of exhaustiveness, as an accurate analysis of the Roman and medieval account of custom would inevitably fall outside the scope of this book, it mainly aims to set the stage for the early modern reprisal of the concept. Two aspects appear crucial for this reprisal: custom’s ability to navigate the dynamic between universal principles and the necessities of local communities; and second, custom’s controversial relationship with ius gentium.
‘Like Beginners in Arabic’. Custom and Reason in Francisco de Vitoria’s Doctrine of ius gentium
Authors: Iurlaro Francesca
Published: April 2022

This chapter focuses on Francisco de Vitoria’s account of ius gentium as customary. According to the Spanish theologian, ius gentium can be, to a certain extent, considered consensual, in that it refers to a universal consensus based on human reason and natural law, to which even the ignorant and non-Christians are subject. However, relying on this doctrine of universal consensus might not be enough, Vitoria says, in cases in which ius gentium cannot be derived from natural law. In such cases, ius gentium seems to share a resemblance with custom. Vitoria (as well as Domingo de Soto and Domingo Báñez after him) discuss the customary nature of ius gentium when discussing the treatment of prisoners of war. Against the background of debates on natural slavery, they start to justify the enslavement of non-Christian prisoners of war as a custom under the law of nations.
Obligation through Agreement, Agreement on Obligation
Authors: Iurlaro Francesca
Published: April 2022

Francisco Suárez argues that ius gentium differs from civil law precisely because it is customary. While bad customs are inherently incapable of perpetuating themselves, customs oriented towards moral good present a self-legitimating quality that defines the customary nature of ius gentium. The question of what moral good should be at the very heart of ius gentium is addressed by Suárez through the notion of communitas perfecta. Its teleological orientation towards divine good acts as a foundational criterion in the absence of a legislator: it is the fulfilment of the same goal (achievement of common good in compliance with divine providence) that pulls the community together. However, most importantly, ius gentium depends on the capability of human beings to agree with each other. Indeed, it is his theory of obligation that provides Suárez with a criterion for the identification of human customs, which would otherwise be mere repetitions of similar acts, but with no legal value.
A Turn Inward: the Europeanization of Customary ius gentium
Authors: Iurlaro Francesca
Published: April 2022

From the late 17th century, the progressive loss of the imaginative potential of classical antiquity generated the anxiety that custom was ineffective – that a given custom was based on an example from Roman history was no sufficient reason to expect its future observance from other sovereigns. As the present gained prominence over the past and its stories, natural law principles were constantly negotiated with contemporary practices. This is when custom emerged as an independent source of the law of nations, together with treaties. Not only were collections of treaties useful repositories to identify emerging customs, based on the interests and inclinations of the sovereigns that concluded them, but the language itself of treaty-making became a powerful means to think about customs as if they were treaties and, thus, to consider customary rules as effectively binding as treaties.
Vattel’s Doctrine of the Customary Law of Nations
Authors: Iurlaro Francesca
Published: April 2022

This chapter focuses on Emer de Vattel’s analysis of customary ius gentium. Relying and expanding on Wolffian philosophy, Emer de Vattel clarifies the relationship between natural law and positive law, by insisting on the fact that, as a source of law, custom is both compliant with natural law and effective as positive law. Furthermore, another important element is Vattel’s insistence on the added value that nations annex to custom, which would otherwise be nothing but a mere usus, carrying no legal meaning or obliging force whatsoever. On the contrary, Vattel manages to bind the persuasive force of custom into compliance with natural law and, ultimately, with the pursuit of self-interest. Finally, Vattel’s concept of custom calls into question the idea of an international legal order where normative principles coexist with practical considerations of expediency.
Coda
Authors: Wendorf Richard
Published: April 2022

This section of the book describes the principal features of the emerging modern book in English. The size of paper increased but there was a movement towards smaller formats as the octavo became the most popular choice for booksellers (publishers). The standardization of these formats went hand in hand with a cleaner, more neoclassically designed page as well as the relative elegance associated with the abandonment of excessive capitalization. Texts printed in the second half of the eighteenth century abandoned the long “s,” standardized the ways in which quotations were marked, continued to employ catchwords much of the time, included title-pages that were much simplified, were less likely to employ printers’ ornaments, and began to display some variety in the design of their typefaces, especially in the work of John Baskerville.
Printers, Readers, and Writers
Authors: Wendorf Richard
Published: April 2022

This chapter begins the process of explaining why changes in typographical conventions took place in the second half of the eighteenth century. Dozens of writers produced rules or suggestions about how capitalization and italics should be used—and they are discussed in full. These include grammars, rhetorics, encyclopedias, and printing manuals. These are generally conservative in nature and lag behind actual printing practice at the time. Was there also a transformation in the nature of the reading public at this time? There are many signs that although reading aloud continued in a variety of ways and places (social reading), silent reading was also prevalent; there was also a movement from intensive to extensive reading habits. Samuel Johnson and Benjamin Franklin are key sources in tracing these changes, as are the key exponents of the elocutionary movement. Did individual writers change their own practice of writing as well? An extended analysis of the private correspondence of major writers demonstrates that many did abandon the capital later in their careers. This is also borne out in the correspondence of the 10th Earl of Huntingdon, which includes letters from dozens of different writers, and in the Larpent Collection of Dramatic Plays at the Huntington Library, which includes scribal copies of plays submitted to the Examiner of Plays.
Introduction
Authors: Stone Peters Julie
Published: April 2022

On June 18, 1571, over four thousand spectators gathered in Tothill Fields, Westminster for an extraordinary event: a trial by battle.1 All around the field (or “lists”) were scaffolds “for people to stande and beholde” (1152). Trial by battle was long obsolete: the last in England had been in 1456 (a nasty fight involving penis and nose biting). Perhaps this one would be equally riveting. Following tradition, the litigants would not themselves take the field. Instead, “champions” would represent them. After a public ceremony of casting down the “Gauntlet[s]” (1151), the champions were “sworn…to perform the battle” (fol. 301b), and the fight was on. The contrast between the two champions added further spice to the spectacle. The defendant’s champion, George Thorne, was “a bigge, broade, strong set fellowe.” The plaintiffs’ champion, fencing master Henry Nayler, was, on the contrary, very “slender” and certainly “not…tall.” But he was handsome: altogether “a proper…man” (1151). It would be lithe skill plus sex appeal against brute force, David against Goliath. Moreover, Nayler had something even more important than skill and sex appeal: exceptional theatrical flair. This he had gained in part from performing regularly as a “prize player” in public fencing matches in the London theatres....
The Roman Advocate as Actor
Authors: Stone Peters Julie
Published: April 2022

This chapter focuses on Cicero and Quintilian, who produced an elaborate, extensive, and overwhelmingly influential poetics of courtroom performance. Briefly situating them in the legal cultures of late republican and imperial Rome, the chapter then looks closely at staging devices in several of Cicero’s speeches, examines both theorists’ pedagogic programs, and explores the ethical problems with which they wrestled. Advising advocates to learn from actors, Cicero and Quintilian offer detailed accounts of the techniques one can employ to identify with one’s clients’ anguish and communicate its reality in court. At the same time, they raise critical questions about the integrity of practiced empathy, the doubtful value of highlighting one’s own representational frame, and the ethics of instrumentalizing suffering in the name of justice. Ultimately, the ability to access another’s emotional truth while mastering it is, for them, a model for the kind of highly skilled empathetic identification that is essential to justice.
Courtroom Oratory, Forensic Delivery, and the Wayward Body in Medieval Rhetorical Theory
Authors: Stone Peters Julie
Published: April 2022

This chapter examines representations of courtroom oratory, delivery, and the speaker’s body in medieval rhetorical theory. It contests the view that medieval theorists paid little attention to judicial oratory and that they largely ignored delivery. After looking at rhetorical treatises, procedural manuals, guides to legal deportment, satiric portraits of the lawyer-as-robed-vulture (etc.), the chapter turns to the work of four rhetorical theorists who rewrite (and upend) ancient rhetorical theory: Alcuin of York, Boncompagno da Signa, Guilhem Molinier, and Jean de Jandun. Each offers an animated account of embodied legal expression, a richly detailed evocation of the medieval courtroom, and a distinctive theory of the pleader’s body. In their work, law appears not as a set of rules or the sovereign’s fiat but as visceral, intimate bodily experience. Here, the body may appear as a divine instrument. Or, alternatively, it may appear as a material thing with a life of its own: indecorous, prone to accident, hopelessly leaky, sublimely obscene.
Performing Law in the Age of Theatre (c.1500–1650)
Authors: Stone Peters Julie
Published: April 2022

This chapter explores the renewed early modern identification of law with theatre and the legal cultures that helped give rise to it. In the sixteenth century, as trial venues expanded, a new breed of lawyers seemed to take their inspiration from the theatres springing up throughout Europe. Many humanists, drawing on intensified antitheatrical discourses, denounced the lawyer’s use of “Histrionical-Rhetorical Gesticulation.” But others celebrated the courtroom as a “great & magnificent theatre,” investing the trope of courtroom as theatre with a multitude of meanings. The first manuals dedicated specifically to delivery appeared, along with a newly encyclopedic-anatomical science of nonverbal communication. Applied to courtroom performance critique, these offered new tools for the analysis of visible, audible, embodied meaning, inspiring the scrutiny of legal actors’ gestures, expressions, and intonations. Together, these phenomena contributed to practices of critical court-watching, the rise of the celebrity lawyer, and a full-blown culture of the trial as mass entertainment.
Legal Performance Education in Early Modern England
Authors: Stone Peters Julie
Published: April 2022

This chapter examines legal performance education in early modern England. Looking at both the Inns of Court and the universities, it explores the tutoring, books, and above all the exercises that trained young men in the art of acting like a lawyer. Often excruciatingly difficult but also sometimes uproariously funny, the exercises bore a distinct resemblance to the revels that satirized them, which themselves bore an uncanny resemblance to the real practice of law. As the chapter argues, if moots and disputations trained future lawyers in crucial skills, they also trained them in impersonation, dissimulation, and make-believe: training that shaped not only their identity as lawyers but their sense of the fundamental meaning of the profession of law.
Epilogue
Authors: Stone Peters Julie
Published: April 2022

The history I have traced did not, of course, end abruptly in or around the year 1678. In fact—as theatres proliferated and the modern entertainment industry began to emerge, proffering a set of new tropes for performance—one could argue that it had only just begun. When the novelist Frances Burney was asked how she had “been entertained” at the trial of Warren Hastings in 1788, she cried: “‘Entertained[!]…you ask after my amusement as if I were at an opera or a comedy” but “it is quite too serious and too horrible for entertainment.”...
The Transformation of British Welfare Policy
Authors: O'Grady Tom
Published: April 2022

The UK’s most recent round of welfare reforms since 2010 have had far-reaching effects, leading to greater poverty, homelessness, indebtedness and foodbank use. But until well into the 2010s they were very popular with the public, who increasingly felt that welfare claimants did not deserve help. These changes were not matched in other European countries experiencing similar economic and social trends. Focusing on policies that provide relief from unemployment, poverty and disability, in this book Tom O’Grady sets out to answer two questions: why has Britain reformed its welfare system so radically? And why, until recently, were the reforms so popular with the public? He traces the evolution of British welfare policy, politics, discourse and public opinion since the 1980s, arguing that from the 1990s a long-term change in discourse from both politicians and the media caused the British public to turn against welfare by 2010. That, combined with the financial crisis, left the system uniquely vulnerable to cuts. He explores the roots of public opinion on the welfare system and the motives of politicians who have revolutionised the system, and how they talk about it. This an account of how, in the eyes of the public, deserving recipients of help came to be seen as scroungers; of when and why politicians and the media vilified them; of political parties whose discourse and policies were transformed, almost overnight; and of Britain’s journey from providing welfare as generously as the average European country in the 1970s to becoming an outlier today.
What Has Changed?
Authors: O'Grady Tom
Published: April 2022

Chapter 2 lays out in more detail what has happened to public opinion towards welfare and its users in the UK since the 1980s, as well as how welfare policies have evolved. It contextualizes the British changes as part of a welfare-to-work agenda that has proven popular around the world, comparing welfare provision in the UK to other similar countries over time, providing a brief historical account of reforms that have taken place in the UK, and describing reforms in other countries, especially Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Although all of them have enacted reforms, none have gone as far as the UK and they diverged particularly in the post-2010 period.
“Hold on for the Next Supply”
Authors: Wicks Robert J.
Published: April 2022

One of the greatest gifts people can enjoy and share with others is a sense of one’s own inner peace, but people can’t share what they don’t have. This book offers a succinct list of essential elements for effectively mentoring oneself—especially during difficult times. They are designed to help shape the right attitude (clarity balanced with kindness) toward improving self-exploration and enhancing personal understanding. Following this, 50 brief lessons and illustrative stories are offered with the belief that it is not the amount of darkness in the world or people that is crucial; it is how people stand in that darkness (having a healthy perspective) that makes all the difference. The main topics include unlearning, preventing loss of emotional energy, self-forgiveness, toxic compassion, detachment, posttraumatic growth, the four types of friends needed in a strong interpersonal network, and inhabiting and modeling unpopular strengths. Underlying the contents and philosophy of the book is that vulnerability cannot, and should not, be ignored, avoided, or escaped. Instead, it needs to be psychologically inhabited with a spirit of humility because when one takes knowledge and adds humility, one gets wisdom. And, when one takes this very wisdom and adds it to compassion—including self-compassion—one gets the love that is at the heart of a rich and caring life.
Five Simple Steps to Prevent Loss of Emotional Energy
Authors: Wicks Robert J.
Published: April 2022

One of the greatest gifts people can enjoy and share with others is a sense of one’s own inner peace, but people can’t share what they don’t have. This book offers a succinct list of essential elements for effectively mentoring oneself—especially during difficult times. They are designed to help shape the right attitude (clarity balanced with kindness) toward improving self-exploration and enhancing personal understanding. Following this, 50 brief lessons and illustrative stories are offered with the belief that it is not the amount of darkness in the world or people that is crucial; it is how people stand in that darkness (having a healthy perspective) that makes all the difference. The main topics include unlearning, preventing loss of emotional energy, self-forgiveness, toxic compassion, detachment, posttraumatic growth, the four types of friends needed in a strong interpersonal network, and inhabiting and modeling unpopular strengths. Underlying the contents and philosophy of the book is that vulnerability cannot, and should not, be ignored, avoided, or escaped. Instead, it needs to be psychologically inhabited with a spirit of humility because when one takes knowledge and adds humility, one gets wisdom. And, when one takes this very wisdom and adds it to compassion—including self-compassion—one gets the love that is at the heart of a rich and caring life.
Taking the Little and Big Detours in Life
Authors: Wicks Robert J.
Published: April 2022

One of the greatest gifts people can enjoy and share with others is a sense of one’s own inner peace, but people can’t share what they don’t have. This book offers a succinct list of essential elements for effectively mentoring oneself—especially during difficult times. They are designed to help shape the right attitude (clarity balanced with kindness) toward improving self-exploration and enhancing personal understanding. Following this, 50 brief lessons and illustrative stories are offered with the belief that it is not the amount of darkness in the world or people that is crucial; it is how people stand in that darkness (having a healthy perspective) that makes all the difference. The main topics include unlearning, preventing loss of emotional energy, self-forgiveness, toxic compassion, detachment, posttraumatic growth, the four types of friends needed in a strong interpersonal network, and inhabiting and modeling unpopular strengths. Underlying the contents and philosophy of the book is that vulnerability cannot, and should not, be ignored, avoided, or escaped. Instead, it needs to be psychologically inhabited with a spirit of humility because when one takes knowledge and adds humility, one gets wisdom. And, when one takes this very wisdom and adds it to compassion—including self-compassion—one gets the love that is at the heart of a rich and caring life.
Feeling Lost and Making Stupid Mistakes
Authors: Wicks Robert J.
Published: April 2022

One of the greatest gifts people can enjoy and share with others is a sense of one’s own inner peace, but people can’t share what they don’t have. This book offers a succinct list of essential elements for effectively mentoring oneself—especially during difficult times. They are designed to help shape the right attitude (clarity balanced with kindness) toward improving self-exploration and enhancing personal understanding. Following this, 50 brief lessons and illustrative stories are offered with the belief that it is not the amount of darkness in the world or people that is crucial; it is how people stand in that darkness (having a healthy perspective) that makes all the difference. The main topics include unlearning, preventing loss of emotional energy, self-forgiveness, toxic compassion, detachment, posttraumatic growth, the four types of friends needed in a strong interpersonal network, and inhabiting and modeling unpopular strengths. Underlying the contents and philosophy of the book is that vulnerability cannot, and should not, be ignored, avoided, or escaped. Instead, it needs to be psychologically inhabited with a spirit of humility because when one takes knowledge and adds humility, one gets wisdom. And, when one takes this very wisdom and adds it to compassion—including self-compassion—one gets the love that is at the heart of a rich and caring life.
Pacing and Timing
Authors: Wicks Robert J.
Published: April 2022

One of the greatest gifts people can enjoy and share with others is a sense of one’s own inner peace, but people can’t share what they don’t have. This book offers a succinct list of essential elements for effectively mentoring oneself—especially during difficult times. They are designed to help shape the right attitude (clarity balanced with kindness) toward improving self-exploration and enhancing personal understanding. Following this, 50 brief lessons and illustrative stories are offered with the belief that it is not the amount of darkness in the world or people that is crucial; it is how people stand in that darkness (having a healthy perspective) that makes all the difference. The main topics include unlearning, preventing loss of emotional energy, self-forgiveness, toxic compassion, detachment, posttraumatic growth, the four types of friends needed in a strong interpersonal network, and inhabiting and modeling unpopular strengths. Underlying the contents and philosophy of the book is that vulnerability cannot, and should not, be ignored, avoided, or escaped. Instead, it needs to be psychologically inhabited with a spirit of humility because when one takes knowledge and adds humility, one gets wisdom. And, when one takes this very wisdom and adds it to compassion—including self-compassion—one gets the love that is at the heart of a rich and caring life.