bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Introduction to Risk Management
Authors: Bandyopadhyay Arindam
Published: June 2022

This chapter gives an overview of the risk management subject and its importance in financial institutions. It provides a broad description of types of risks faced by the banking institutions. It introduces the reader to various types of risks and their interrelationships. The key drivers of credit, market, and operational risks are discussed in this overview. The concept of liquidity risk and interest rate risk in banking books and their nature are covered in this introductory chapter. The other important Pillar II risks like concentration risk, residual risk, reputation risks, and their indicators are included. We also discuss the role of statistical methods and its various applications in measuring and monitoring the core risks faced by FIs. How the Basel regulatory framework as well as internal risk culture can necessitate proper use of data and techniques to measure and manage risks are highlighted in this chapter.
Description of Data and Summary Statistics for Measurement of Risk
Authors: Bandyopadhyay Arindam
Published: June 2022

Quantitative risk analytical research is about measurements. Statistics and econometrics are the most widely used branch of mathematics in quantitative research. Various descriptive statistics are useful in risk analysis. The application of summary statistics, central tendency (mean, median mode), dispersions (such as standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis), and data distribution (percentile, Lorenz curve) in risk measurement has been demonstrated with examples in this chapter. The analysis of these metrics will enable a risk manager to get idea about the nature of risk inherent in the business. Information about of body and spread of the data series are essential in estimating frequency and severity of losses. This chapter addresses the problem-solving side of the risk analytical work to equip the risk manager to get idea of a data series and analyze it patterns to understand the nature of risk inherent in the asset portfolio and trace problems.
Matrix Algebra and their Application in Risk Prediction and Risk Monitoring
Authors: Bandyopadhyay Arindam
Published: June 2022

Matrix Algebra concept and its numerous application in the measurement of credit risk as well as market risk have been elaborated in this chapter. A matrix is a rectangular array of elements. The transition matrix derived from the concept of matrix algebra has numerous applications in predicting bond valuation, value at risk analysis, and loan portfolio monitoring. The Markov chain process is used by reputed rating agencies and also the best practiced banks to predict probabilities of rating migration including analysis of default risk. It also enables a bank to estimate PD for different horizons and derive loan level expected loss for risk provisioning. The estimated PD is also helpful to detect significant increase in credit risk and estimate unexpected loss. The variance–covariance matrix is used in solving multiple regression equations and to find out the regression coefficient. This chapter also explains its role in estimating total portfolio risk computation.
Monte Carlo Simulation Techniques and Value at Risk
Authors: Bandyopadhyay Arindam
Published: June 2022

In this chapter, the author has discussed value at risk and simulation techniques to analyse credit, market, and operational loss data. This chapter describes the Monte Carlo simulation’s detailed steps to derive internal loss estimates. Credit metrics method has been explained using market value distribution of assets. Steps in identifying proper frequency as well severity distributions and fitting them for loss prediction have been elaborated with numerous examples. The loss convolution method to combine frequency and severity distributions has been elaborated in detail using operational loss data of a bank. The simulation has been run using Excel-based @Risk software. The chapter explains why VaR has emerged as a natural measure for Economic (or internal) capital in banks. The back-testing method to set proper risk limits has also been elaborated.
Time-Series Forecasting Techniques for Banking Variables
Authors: Bandyopadhyay Arindam
Published: June 2022

A large proportion of economic data is in the form of time series. For forecasting financial variables, risk analysts need to understand trend, cyclicality, seasonality, and randomness of the series. This chapter explains trend forecasting method that will be useful for forecasting forward looking quarterly or annual gross non-performing assets, probability of default, exchange rate, and other key factors. The auto-regressive and moving average techniques are explained to predict key balance sheet value of Reserve Bank of India. Unit root test and role of ARIMA model have been explained with detailed steps to build forecasting models for exchange rate series. The same technique can be applied to predict future default rates as well. Next, multivariate time-series model has been constructed to link default rates with macroeconomic factors to derive stress testing scenarios. Time-series forecasting techniques have numerous applications in deriving early warning signals, loss provisioning model, and stress testing bank capital.
Confine and Control
Authors: Reid J. Nicholas
Published: June 2022

In Chapter 2 I discuss key terms denoting some form of detention in ancient Mesopotamia in relation to the socio-economic status of the various types of prisoners housed in these centers of detention. What will be demonstrated is that the overwhelming evidence suggests that most prisoners were not held because of “crimes.” This is not to suggest that imprisonment did not relate to disputes and “criminal” activity. Rather, imprisonment was utilized throughout the judicial process. But this intersection between “crime” and detention seems to be a practical extension of existing mechanisms (administrative bodies, guards, etc.), rather than a prison in the strict sense.
How to End up Imprisoned
Authors: Reid J. Nicholas
Published: June 2022

In Chapter 3 I consider how to end up imprisoned in early Mesopotamia. To do so, I discuss the so-called law codes of ancient Mesopotamia. This is followed by a discussion of the ways in which justice was administered in everyday life. The overall approach involved retributive and restitutive actions. While imprisonment was not the normal response to “crimes,” I discuss the attested infractions that led to imprisonment of one sort or another. The numerous ways by which a person could be imprisoned points to the multifunctional nature of prisons. This is expected as ancient Near Eastern space was typically multifunctional. Nevertheless, functionality is kept in view.
The King in the Cage
Authors: Reid J. Nicholas
Published: June 2022

Chapter 6 deals with the topic of purity in ancient Mesopotamia. Purity touched upon life from top to bottom. While there is not a codified discussion of purity from ancient Mesopotamia, the topic features prominently in the extant sources. When imprisonment is connected to the notion of reform or positive, personal change, it presents the prisoner’s suffering and the assertion of control over that person’s body as something that is in the end beneficial for the individual. This adds a further coercive element to the process of imprisonment. In Mesopotamia, the transformation that occurs through imprisonment includes the restoration of the relationship between the prisoner and their god, adding another religious dimension to imprisonment. This imprisonment is further presented as a merciful act, since the “crime” deserved a greater corporal punishment in the “Hymn to Nungal.” That is why the prison goddess’s house is a house of compassion.
Conclusion
Authors: Reid J. Nicholas
Published: June 2022

I reflect on imprisonment and how ideology must be disentangled from historical realities. The social-historical picture suggests imprisonment was a multifunctional practice that only occasionally intersected with the detention of criminals and almost never, if at all, related to the rehabilitation or punishment of criminals. Yet ideology came to be attached to imprisonment in literature and rituals that offers a very different vision of the goals of imprisonment at the dawn of history. I conclude this book with a discussion about the role history can play in helping to create change in social institutions.
Politics and Divinization in Augustan Poetry
Authors: Xinyue Bobby
Published: June 2022

This book offers a new interpretation of one of most prominent themes in Latin poetry, the divinization of Augustus, and argues that this theme functioned as a language of political science for the early Augustan poets as they tried to come to terms with Rome’s transformation from Republic to Principate. Examining an extensive body of texts ranging from Virgil’s Eclogues to Horace’s final book of the Odes (covering a period roughly from 43 bc to 13 bc), this study highlights the multifaceted metaphorical force of divinizing language, as well as the cultural complications of divinization. Through a series of close readings, this book challenges the view that poetic images of Augustus’ divinization merely reflect the poets’ attitude towards Augustus or their recognition of his power, and puts forward a new understanding of this motif as an evolving discourse through which the first generation of Augustan poets articulated, interrogated, and negotiated Rome’s shift towards authoritarianism.
Conquest and Immortality in Horace’s Odes
Authors: Xinyue Bobby
Published: June 2022

This chapter focuses on Horace’s discussions of Augustus’ divinization in the first three books of the Odes. It interprets them within the broader context of Roman imperialism and the Augustan regime’s attempt to control the political narrative of post-civil war Rome. This chapter offers a two-pronged argument. Firstly, it argues that Horace’s presentation of Augustus’ divinization draws attention to the extent to which the discourse of Rome’s remarkable transformation—from being mired in civil strife to pacifying the world again—has contributed to Augustan power. While the Odes on the whole present Augustus’ divine mission as mirroring the expansion of Roman imperial authority, the ways in which Horace renders ambiguous the distinctions between triumph and defeat, Roman and foreign, and self and other in many of his poems obliquely contest the regime’s ideological drive, especially its reinvention of civil war as foreign conflict. The second prong of the argument is that the issue of Augustus’ divinization is used by Horace as a proxy to discuss the incompatibility between Horatian lyric and Augustan panegyric—between creative authority and political allegiance. In the ‘Bacchic Odes’ (2.7, 2.19, 3.25) and the ‘Roman Odes’ (3.1–6) especially, Horace presents the topic of Augustus’ divinization as something that tests both the limits of his lyric poetry and his credentials as a nationalistic vates. In this way, Horace conveys that even his most panegyrical poems are underpinned by a tension between accepting regime’s self-mythologizing discourse and holding onto his artistic and ideological autonomy.
Risking It All in an Attempt to Become a National Author and Publisher
Authors: Gruesser John Cullen
Published: June 2022

Sutton E. Griggs’s longest, most complex, costliest, and most widely distributed novel, The Hindered Hand (1905–6), had major ramifications for him and the National Baptist Convention. Delegates at the organization’s 1903 annual meeting called on him to write a response to Thomas Dixon’s The Leopard’s Spots. Erroneously assuming that he would receive financial support, Griggs sold stock in his publishing company and produced three versions of The Hindered Hand. In 1907, he opened a branch of Orion in Philadelphia and launched a movement to promote race literature. Griggs’s fourth novel addresses issues he spoke about publicly: police brutality, unequal justice, lynching, the harassment of black women, disenfranchisement, and Africa. It portrays scenes of mob violence; pits a nonviolent coprotagonist against a counterpart committed to armed revolt; features a biological warfare plot; and ends inconclusively with emigration to Africa presented as a possibility if conditions for African Americans do not improve.
State Capability in India
Authors: Somanathan T. V. , Natarajan Gulzar
Published: June 2022

This book seeks to assess state capability in India, identify weaknesses and their causes, and then propose measures to remedy them while recognizing political economy constraints. It examines the capability of public systems to design effective policies and implement them, with particular emphasis on India. Its focus is predominantly on the administrative contributors to state capability deficiencies. It straddles the fine line between analytical research scholarship and an ethnographic account of actors, processes, and institutions within different levels of government. Being participants and observers in the bureaucratic system, the authors describe reality without always seeking to locate it in the framework of existing academic literature.
Introduction
Authors: Somanathan T. V. , Natarajan Gulzar
Published: June 2022

This chapter lays down the structure and content summary of the book. It lays down the scope of the book’s examination of state capability weakness. It defines state capability as the ability of governments to get things done. The chapter points to the importance of state capability, especially in implementing public policies and programs that can help realize development outcomes. In this context, it draws the distinction between policy formulation and program implementation and briefly points to their respective deficiencies. It concludes by describing the scope of the book and also what it does not cover. Its discussion of state capability is confined to the capability of the executive branch of the government.
The Size of the Indian State
Authors: Somanathan T. V. , Natarajan Gulzar
Published: June 2022

This chapter questions the conventional wisdom about the ‘bloated’ Indian state and draws attention to the acute personnel deficiencies at many levels of administration at central, state, and local government levels. It draws on several examples from across government agencies at different levels to illustrate the generally thin nature of the state in India. It examines the reasons for the thin state, highlighting some of the less well-known practical incentives that encourage governments to limit hiring. It concludes with an examination of the possible solutions to addressing the thin state problem, while also highlighting the practical challenges associated.
A Practical Approach to Better Capability
Authors: Somanathan T. V. , Natarajan Gulzar
Published: June 2022

This concluding chapter offers some suggestions on pathways to initiate systemic change in development contexts. It discusses the idea of encouraging positive deviances that can trigger systemic transformations. It illustrates with examples of how anchor interventions can contribute to shifting the paradigm in entrenched systems. It also points to the need for big push or disruptive interventions in breaking out of entrenched bad equilibriums. It provides an illustrative example of how these ideas can be combined to improve student learning outcomes in public schools in India. It concludes by drawing attention to the need to manage expectations within public systems.
Shared Backgrounds and Cultural Pathways
Authors: Sandis Elizabeth
Published: June 2022

The story of drama at university begins with drama at school. Students were commonly recruited from Oxford and Cambridge to take up posts as schoolmasters, often at their old school, while their pupils were, in turn, trained for the chance to compete to become university men. How did the universities select their new entrants, and what qualities were they looking for? Chapter 1 shows how performative skills were central to success, in both the secondary and tertiary education systems, and suggests redefining the relationship between theatre and pedagogy as a cyclical pattern. Without continuities of culture between Oxford and Cambridge colleges and their feeder schools, drama would not have developed at the universities in the way that it did.
Young Male Bodies and a Community in Costume
Authors: Sandis Elizabeth
Published: June 2022

Who performed in plays at university and who were they performing for? Chapter 2 focuses on the actors and audiences and the relationship between them. I highlight two major factors which shape the drama, both of which are institutional: the all-male environment of the universities during this period, and their division into small, self-governing units—the colleges. This institutional structure creates the intimate nature of the college environment, where everybody knew everybody else. Those on the stage were playing for fellow members of the same community, and college membership was restricted to men. In Chapter 2 I demonstrate the impact which intramural, all-male culture had on the way that actors acted and audiences watched.
Epilogue
Authors: Sandis Elizabeth
Published: June 2022

Arrival at university brought with it the expectation that a youth was on the road towards his ‘coming of age’, as a scholar, a man, and a ‘university man’ specifically. Scholars used the writing and performing of plays to demonstrate that they had the key skills by which all academics were judged: fluency in the Latin language, confidence in public speaking, and rhetorical efficacy. Here in the Epilogue we review the concepts of ‘adolescence’ and ‘adulthood’ and note the frequency with which coming-of-age themes recur on the college stage; playmaking is a part of the growing-up process and the college stage reveals who is still a work-in-progress and who is ripe and blossoming. As argued throughout the book, it was primarily on a college level that students lived, worked, and proved themselves to the community; therefore, a true understanding of ‘university drama’ at Oxford and Cambridge depends on our understanding of the individual histories of college drama. The Epilogue ends by drawing attention to some exciting recent discoveries which demonstrate how the corpus of Oxford and Cambridge drama is growing and evolving.
Introduction: A New Approach to the Meaning of Constitutional Texts
Authors: Neves Marcelo
Published: June 2022

This short introductory note aims to outline the central argument that guides this book and present the basic structure of its content. First, it is pointed out that the focus of the argument is concentrated on the fact that certain constitutional texts have a meaning contrary to their legal concretization. Emphasis is directed to their hypertrophically political-symbolic function to the detriment of their normative-legal force. Based on this argumentative core, the structure of the book is presented in four chapters: starting from the symbolic legislation (Chapter 1) to the symbolic constitutionalization (Chapter 2), followed by the characterization of the latter as allopoiesis of law (Chapter 3) and, finally, by the consideration of the tendency to a worldwide dissemination of the symbolic constitutionalization in the context of a ‘peripheralization of the center’ (Chapter 4).
to Symbolic Constitutionalization, Opening Up a Debate
Authors: Neves Marcelo
Published: June 2022

Chapter 2 opens up a debate about symbolic constitutionalization. The first step is to expound a systems-theory concept of the constitution as a structural coupling between the political and legal systems, but above all as a mechanism for the operational autonomy of law in modern society. The strategy here is to start strictly with this conceptual model of the constitution in order to question its empirical adequacy in cases of symbolic constitutionalization. Correspondingly, the chapter analyzes the problem of normative concretization of the constitutional text. With these theoretical premises, it sets out several aspects of the relationship between legal-normative inefficacy and the strong politico-symbolic function of the constitution in many states of the world society. In this context, there is a confrontation of the concept of symbolic constitutionalization with Karl Loewenstein’s classification of constitutions and with the notions of ritualistic constitutions, programmatic constitutional norms, communicative action, mass loyalty, and gag rules.
Symbolic Constitutionalization as Allopoiesis of the Legal System
Authors: Neves Marcelo
Published: June 2022

Chapter 3 deals with symbolic constitutionalization as a form of allopoiesis of law. This entails questioning the notion of law as an autopoietic system of modern (overcomplex) society, pointing to the allopoiesis of law in various contexts of world society. The issue is related to the superimposition of the political system on the legal system and to the lack or limits of the consistent self-reference and adequate external reference of law. In this regard, the semiotic implications of this state of affairs are taken into consideration. After addressing these theoretical aspects, symbolic constitutionalization is characterized as a typical problem of peripheral modernity: the coexistence of social overcomplexity with the legal system’s lack of operational autonomy is linked specifically to hypertrophy of the politico-symbolic function of the constitutional text at the expense of its normative legal efficacy. The chapter ends with a brief example of symbolic constitutionalization in the Brazilian experience.
Quantum Measurements
Authors: Flarend Alice , Hilborn Bob
Published: June 2022

Measurements of quantum states are a key feature of QIS and QC. Polarized light, optical polarization devices, and light detectors illustrate how we describe quantum measurements and how the results of measurements are related to the properties of the quantum states describing the photon qubits. The key distinction between quantum physics and classical physics is that the results of individual quantum measurements cannot be predicted; quantum mechanics gives us only the probabilities of observing each of the possible measurement outcomes. The famous Born rule expresses the probability interpretation of quantum states. Those states carry all the information about the probabilities of all possible measurements on the corresponding qubit. In particular, the probabilities are proportional to the squares of the amplitudes of the basis states appearing in the overall quantum state. Bob points out that state preparation and state measurement are two sides of the same coin.
Putting a Spin on Spin
Authors: Flarend Alice , Hilborn Bob
Published: June 2022

This chapter provides a brief introduction to the terminology and basic concepts of quantum spin systems, which are widely used in QIS and QC. The quantum spin of an elementary particle is an example of a qubit and can be visually represented as a spinning top. The vector direction of spin in state space, however, is different from the direction in physical space. Quantum spin-1/2 systems have two orthogonal states: spin-up and spin-down. The distinction between state space angles and physical space angles is emphasized. Because spin is a qubit, the quantum gates from Chapter 6 can be applied to spin-1/2 quantum states with predictable results.
Your Basis, My Basis
Authors: Flarend Alice , Hilborn Bob
Published: June 2022

This chapter introduces important symbolic manipulations of quantum states—in particular, changing the basis states used to describe a quantum state. The inner product between state vectors plays a crucial role in those manipulations. That process is critical in extracting information from quantum states and appears in almost every quantum algorithm. Alice and Bob use a simple do-it-at-home experiment with polarized light and polarizing materials to illustrate how changing basis states explains what otherwise seems like a mysterious effect. To illustrate how these basic quantum principles can be applied to important information science situations, they introduce quantum encryption methods and how quantum physics principles allow them to detect if someone is eavesdropping on their communications channel. The methods Bob and Alice introduce, though relatively simple mathematically, enable them to estimate the probability that they will be able to detect the presence of an eavesdropper, a critical issue in cryptography.
RSA Encryption and the Shor Factoring Algorithm
Authors: Flarend Alice , Hilborn Bob
Published: June 2022

This chapter is the most formidable in the book, but it provides a deep and complete understanding of the classic Shor factoring algorithm. Alice and Bob set the context for the algorithm by explaining how the difficulty of factoring large numbers plays a critical role in securing encrypted communications channels, using RSA encryption as an example. The Shor algorithm, if implemented on a sufficiently large quantum computer, could defeat those encryption schemes by finding those factors relatively quickly, a task that would take years or more on even the fastest classical supercomputers. Alice and Bob lead us through some number theory to establish the connection between factoring and finding the period of a periodic function. They then show how the clever use of quantum algorithms—this is Shor’s main contribution—leads to a fast way to find the required period using quantum Fourier transforms.
Fundamental Quantum Issues
Authors: Flarend Alice , Hilborn Bob
Published: June 2022

This chapter steps back and examines several fundamental quantum issues. Although not strictly needed for QIS and QC, these issues help the reader understand why quantum computing provides capabilities that go far beyond those of classical computers. Alice and Bob lead look at a specific instantiation of Bell’s theorem and why, nearly 60 years after its publication, it continues to roil discussions about the foundations of quantum mechanics and the implications for what we can say about the physical nature of the world. Equally controversial, at the foundational level, is the problem of describing quantum measurements and their probabilistic results. Alice and Bob show that entanglement issues lie at the core of many of the debates about measurement and that correlations among measurement outcomes can reveal entanglement. They also explain why Planck’s constant, a critical parameter in quantum mechanics, plays only a limited role in quantum information science.
Combat, Body Disposal, and War Memory
Authors: Zambernardi Lorenzo
Published: June 2022

Chapter 1 sets the enquiry within the framework of the existing literature concerning death and, in particular, death in war. The chapter is divided into three main sections. First, it presents a brief overview of the growing scholarship on death, with the dual goal of showing what a focus on the meaning of death entails and how it differs from the prevalent approach employed by international-relations scholars. Second, relying on the analytic lenses provided by Ernst Kantorowicz’s concept of the king’s two bodies, the chapter discusses how attitudes towards soldiers’ lives and deaths can be recovered from a study of soldiers’ employment in war, body disposal, and commemorative practices. Thirdly, the chapter concludes by sketching an explanation of the changes in the meaning of soldier deaths discussed in the book and evaluates the existing explanations to the changes outlined in the volume.
Bare Death
Authors: Zambernardi Lorenzo
Published: June 2022

Chapter 2 investigates the meaning of soldier deaths in early modern Europe. This first episode of the story, until the middle of the nineteenth century, is relatively uncomplicated: soldier deaths were considered natural occurrences that aroused no political or ethical sentiments. The main military tactics of the period will be outlined, emphasizing that the main purpose of battlefield tactics was to overpower enemy forces regardless of human costs. Considerations concerning casualties certainly played a role in warfare, but solely in terms of combat power. In addition, the chapter shows that in this historical period a soldier’s death was regarded as a purely physical event, without any political or social effects: it was nothing but bare death. This attitude is clearly visible in disposal and commemorative functions. Before the mid-nineteenth century, in fact, the corpses of the war dead were unceremoniously interred either in unmarked burials or, most often, in shallow mass graves. Likewise, in that period the contribution of the common soldier in war was not part of commemorative practices.
Irrecoverable Death
Authors: Zambernardi Lorenzo
Published: June 2022

Chapter 4 focuses on the second and latest radical change in the social meaning of soldiers’ individuality, which emerged fully after the Second World War. In that period the glorification of death in war lost its social attractiveness and turned into the aversion to death typical of the present age. While a soldier’s death maintained its social importance, its meaning was gradually reversed from glorification of death in war to aversion. As a result, death lost its sacrificial connotation, and the preservation of soldiers’ lives became an end in itself. These changes in the social bodies of soldiers, far from being merely ritualistic and cosmetic, profoundly affected how western states wage war. For, as the cold war proceeded, western societies became gradually more sensitive to friendly casualties, and their military authorities adopted a set of practices intended to reduce their human losses.
Epilogue: The Further Erosion of Western Military Power
Authors: Zambernardi Lorenzo
Published: June 2022

Chapter 5 is intended to show that sensitivity to the war dead does not merely shape how military force is exercised; it has also diminished the utility of war as an instrument of foreign policy. The chapter will suggest that the values that western societies currently attach to individual soldiers are jeopardizing the Clausewitzian relationship between military means and political ends. The key argument in this final chapter is rather simple. Since one of the most important means of war (that is, soldiers) cannot be used and sacrificed as freely as it used to be, war is becoming less and less useful as an instrument of foreign policy, especially in what Rupert Smith defined as conflicts ‘amongst the people’—that is, unconventional armed confrontations where the ultimate political objective is not to coerce individuals to submission but rather to create the conditions for a long-lasting political order.
Humanism Goes to Hell
Authors: Copenhaver Brian P.
Published: June 2022

The ‘Harrowing of Hell’ was an article of the Christian creed, and when Jesus went down to Hell, his body was still buried. But Christians thought of Hell as a place—or a place containing many places. How could Christ, without a body, be in a place, any place at all? The person who took this trip to the underworld was God—a pure spirit, eternal, and changeless. But God had taken on a human body, as Jesus, in order to save other embodied humans. Yet Pico knew that human bodies were material and imperfect—changing, suffering, and dying. Then how could a changeless God be both perfect and embodied? To understand the dogma of incarnation—the embodiment of God—in a philosophical way, the inquiring prince needed a theory of divine embodiment. But the version that he proposed offended the authorities, and they ruled that his ideas were heretical.
What’s In a Word?
Authors: Copenhaver Brian P.
Published: June 2022

To express his theories and defend them in his Apology, Pico used techniques and terminology of scholastic theology as taught by three dozen medieval authorities—both obscure and eminent. Their philosophical vocabulary was specialized, even arcane, but Pico had to master it, and he did. What he learned about logic, metaphysics, and semantics is impressive in complexity and depth but not at all the usual story about his thinking. An indispensable part of the scholastic language that Pico acquired—with life or death consequences for him—was the medieval terminology of ‘suppo- words.’ He inherited these technical terms from a tradition ten centuries old, and venerable age was part of their value for him. These suppo- words were Pico’s tools throughout the Apology: the intricate terminology is a portal to his way of doing philosophy and utterly unlike the language of humanism.
Is Heresy Willful? Pico’s Q8
Authors: Copenhaver Brian P.
Published: June 2022

Pico’s defense required him to move from the metaphysics of divine embodiment and the semantics of suppo- words to the ethics of belief—to the moral environment of his views about articles of faith, like the eucharist and incarnation, and of denunciations of his views by opponents. The papal agents who condemned the prince thought that some beliefs, as articles of faith, were necessary for salvation. Pico agreed—in principle. But as a practical matter, he had to defend himself in a heresy trial. By the standards of his time and place—Italy in the late fifteenth century—who made the better case about faith and belief: Pico or his assailants? To construct his defense, Pico relied on Robert Holcot, a well-known philosopher who had taken radical positions on these issues of belief and freedom.
Wrapped and Stacked
Authors: Allen Jason Grant
Published: June 2022

This chapter builds on the observation that a ‘smart contract’ with no accompanying text is a digital document that purports to record contractual promises in language which is both intelligible to human beings and (ultimately) executable by machines. The formalization of contracting language that this entails is equally important, or perhaps more important than, the automation of contractual performance. This invites a broader inquiry, extending beyond the blockchain context, into the nature of contracts as legal objects created by words and documents. In most cases, smart contracts will actually be ‘wrapped’ in paper (ie, a conventional written contract) and nested in a national legal system. Borrowing from the idiom of computer science, this chapter introduces the term ‘contract stack’ to highlight the complex nature of contracts as legal objects incorporating different ‘layers’, including speech acts by the parties (in both natural and formal languages), default and mandatory rules of law, and, increasingly, ‘encoded’ computable elements. Understanding the interactions within this contract stack is essential to the development of contract law doctrines appropriate to ‘smart’ contracts.
End-to-End Smart Legal Contracts
Authors: Vos Geoffrey
Published: June 2022

This chapter presents a number of questions that frame the present volume. It asks how ‘smart’ contracts (broadly defined) might move from technologically feasible aspiration to legal and commercial reality. It suggests that a firm legal (particularly private law) foundation is needed for smart contracts before regulation is considered. Uses for ‘end-to-end’ smart contracts without cryptoassets should be considered, suggesting the importance of encoded contracts outside of distributed ledger systems. A streamlined built-in dispute resolution system would give investors and mainstream markets the confidence needed to allow the use of smart contracts to grow. Lawyers need to make a persuasive case so that they and coders can come together to develop the potential that smart contracts offer to the economies and financial communities of the future.
Smart Contracts and Dispute Resolution
Authors: Estcourt Justice Stephen
Published: June 2022

This chapter explores the evolving landscape of ‘online dispute resolution’. Elaborating on the features of private, blockchain-based dispute resolution mechanisms, customer preference, and the demands of the rule of law, it looks to recent developments in the United Kingdom as one approach to resolving the apparent tension between (state) justice systems and parallel dispute resolution systems that are often transnational by design. These questions about dispute resolution shed light back on the core question in this volume: what is the legal effect of code, in all the circumstances, and how do we describe the dynamics of interaction between the legal system and novel, technology-enabled actions?
Smart Contracts
Authors: De Molina Rius Alfonso Delgado
Published: June 2022

This chapter sets out a conceptual, semantic and economic framework for the analysis of ‘smart contracts’, with a focus on blockchain-based smart contracts. It seeks to achieve this by tackling three interrelated areas. First, it delineates smart contracts’ defining attributes and places them within the taxonomy of (‘legal’) contracts. In doing so, it examines smart contracts’ history, highlighting a number of entrenched misconceptions. Second, the article compares conventional contracting (ie, within a contract law system) and smart contracts through the lens of new institutional economics. In particular, it considers settings in which each of these contracting methods, or combinations of both, can facilitate the exchange of value by reducing transaction costs. Third, it evaluates smart contract designs comprised of different combinations of code and natural language. As part of this, it highlights a number of trade-offs arising from these designs and considers the impact of pseudonymity on transaction costs. In recognition of the emerging field’s multidisciplinary underpinnings, the discussion throughout the chapter is supported by legal, economic, and technical insights.
The Mathematization of Legal Writing
Authors: Ma Megan
Published: June 2022

This chapter explores smart contracts in their broader historical context. The use of statistics and the so-called ‘mathematization’ of law is not new: from Aristotle to Descartes to Leibniz, the common denominator was that mathematical precision should be applied across all disciplines. Currently, ‘computable contracts’—and more broadly, computable law—are making a powerful return. Contracts may be represented as computer data with terms made ‘machine-readable’ through a process of conversion. Conditions of agreements are not explained but listed as structured data records. However, despite the capacity to express contracts in a computable form, there is no means for interpretation. Rather, the interpretation of contractual obligations is perceived as irrelevant. Should digital data inscription and processing be considered a form of legal writing? If so, would it change the character of law? This chapter explores the significance of medium in contract drafting. In particular, it explores the translation of text to numbers by unpacking several formal programming languages currently proposed or used in computable contracts. In identifying the logic of these languages, it tackles methods of legal writing. By analysing the components of both legal and programming language, we can develop a richer dialogue on the sociological implications of translating law to algorithmic form. Further, it would be interesting to consider what contextual understanding may need to exist to ‘interpret’ contractual language.
Smart Contract ‘Drafting’ and the Homogenization of Languages
Authors: Fina Siegfried , (Huang Ying) Irene Ng
Published: June 2022

Language has always been a critical and fundamental aspect in traditional contract crafting. However, with the advent of smart contracts, where contracts are coded in a programming language and for automated execution, the growth and use of smart contracts may lead towards the homogenization of languages: not just in the form of natural language as programming languages are in the English language, but also in the standardization of the programming language used for smart contracts. This chapter thus aims to discuss how the drafting and use of smart contracts may eventually lead to the homogenization of natural languages and the choice of programming language in contract drafting. It will also raise the issues of such homogenization, such as the potential erosion of non-English or less often used languages, the loss of the monopoly for lawyers as their language expertise becomes less important and how the homogenization of languages can affect technological developments in the use of artificial intelligence in contract drafting.
Lawyer Meets Developer
Authors: Maslin Madeleine , Butler Joshua
Published: June 2022

This chapter investigates how those in working in law and technology can and should work together to develop superior legal technologies, particularly in the context of legally binding smart contracts. It looks at contemporary models of interdisciplinary collaboration—including global consortia and strategic partnerships between law firms and technology companies—and considers how existing strategies to build legal technology could be applied to the challenge of developing distributed ledger solutions such as smart legal contracts. Working in tandem, lawyers and developers can build, deploy and scale smart legal contracts more efficiently; leveraging their expertise to break new ground, without diluting their core competencies. This approach will enhance the way lawyers work and democratize access to their services, while improving return on technology investment. By contrast, working in silos, these stakeholders risk misunderstanding part of the problem they are trying to solve. This chapter concludes by considering how lawyers can further stimulate the uptake of smart legal contracts by applying their skill-set to the development and adoption of international standards that are crucial for the sustainable growth and quality management of emerging legal technologies.
Not Up To The Job
Authors: Golding Gabrielle , Giancaspro Mark
Published: June 2022

This chapter makes a case against the use of smart contracts in the context of employment. It discusses the general operation of smart contracts, followed by a consideration of their potential use in employment. With that information as a lens through which to view the remainder of the chapter, four key suggestions are then made as to why smart contracts are not suited to instances of employment. The first is that smart contracts cannot account for an employer’s exercise of the managerial prerogative, which is inherent to employment. Secondly, smart contracts are unsuited to allowing for employers to exercise various types of discretions that tend to be contained under employment contracts, which, in turn, has the potential to unfairly prejudice employees. Thirdly, a smart employment contract is unable to allow an employer to performance manage, discipline and potentially dismiss employees for misconduct, or even to allow employees to respond to such circumstances—all of which are concepts of a strongly subjective nature. Finally, smart contracts are unable to accommodate for certain changes that are cognizant in instances of employment and inherent in the employee’s interests; they are inflexible and contain functional vulnerabilities that would generate unprecedented and unnecessary structural change in workplaces. Put simply, smart contracts are not up to the job of supplanting the existing means of generating a contractual relationship between an employer and employee.
The Legal Consequences of Automated Mistake
Authors: Gleeson Simon
Published: June 2022

When the law seeks to determine whether a mistaken contract should be invalidated, it looks at the state of mind of the parties at the time of the contract. However, where a contract is arrived at by algorithms dealing directly with each other, the parties have no states of mind to be considered. This raises the question of what the policy of the law should be when, by error, such algorithms enter into contracts which no reasonable human being would have entered into had he been aware of them. The current state of the law seems to be that no remedy is or should be available. This is unfortunate, since it is a flagrant breach of the general principle that the consequences of a contract should not differ because it is concluded electronically rather than verbally or in writing. This chapter argues that, if the approaches to mistake currently applied provide no remedy in the context of electronic contracts, new approaches need to be developed to provide such remedies.
Are You There, God? It’s Me, the Theist
Authors: Griffioen Amber L.
Published: June 2022

The idea of “nonbelieving prayer” might sound odd, maybe even paradoxical, a closer examination of the functions of prayer and how religious participants actually engage in it tells a different story. After developing a working definition of prayer, this chapter examines a few types and functions of prayer and argues that they can be performed non-doxastically. In fact, such a stance might even be more epistemically and theologically virtuous than that which would accompany full belief in the kind of God who could be the recipient of such manifestations of human prayer.
Prayer as Complaint
Authors: Crisp Oliver D.
Published: June 2022

Recent philosophical-theological discussion of prayer has focused mainly on analyses of intercessory prayer or impetration, understood in terms of a two-way contingency: (Very roughly) a person asks God to bring about something he otherwise would bring about. However, this is not the only form of prayer. This chapter focuses on prayer as complaint, arguing for two claims. The first is that prayer as complaint is not antithetical to impetration: The two sorts of prayer sit side by side within the biblical tradition without embarrassment. This second, related, claim is that the reason for this lack of embarrassment on the part of biblical authors is that they understand intercessory prayer rather differently from how many recent philosophical theologians do, as alignment with the divine will, rather than a putative attempt to change God’s will.
Hyphenated Citizenship
Authors: Roy Anupama
Published: June 2022

This chapter traces the institutional, juridical, and documentary practices associated with the preparation of the NRC in Assam. It maps the debates on the NRC in the political domain, the arduous contests over legal delineation of categories such as ‘original inhabitants’ and ‘married migrated women’ in the Gauhati High Court and the Supreme Court of India, and the specific cases in which these contests played out. The citizenship amendment act of 2003 and the rules framed under it gave the Central government the responsibility to establish and maintain a National Register of Indian Citizens and issue national identity cards. This required the government to carry out ‘house-to-house enumeration’ and collect particulars of individuals and families, including their citizenship status. Making an exception to this procedure, the NRC in Assam was prepared by inviting applications from all residents with particulars relating to each family and individual, including their citizenship status, which was based on NRC 1951, and the electoral rolls up to the midnight of 24 March 1971. By tracing the pedigree of Indian citizenship to an Assamese legacy, the citizenship act opened up the possibility of a hyphenated citizenship for Assam, hitherto alien to the legal vocabulary of citizenship in India. In an inversion of the relationship between documents and citizenship, the evidentiary paradigm invoked in the preparation of the NRC in Assam listed legacy documents that would under specified conditions become proof of citizenship.