bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Corporate Social Irresponsibility in Spite of Efforts to Act Responsibly
Authors: Rotundo Maria
Published: November 2019

Corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR) can occur even as organizations strive to be socially responsible. Research has sought to achieve a better understanding of CSiR, its antecedents and consequences, including its interrelationship with corporate social responsibility. This chapter reviews some of this work with a focus on its nature, measurement, and contextual antecedents. It reviews research on the roles of organizational climates, organizational culture, incentives, leadership, governance, and regulation; concluding with research and practical implications with a focus on these factors.
Existential Philosophy and Psychotherapy Ethics
Authors: Noyon Alexander , Heidenreich Thomas
Published: November 2019

This chapter introduces five central concepts of existential philosophy in order to deduce ethical principles for psychotherapy: phenomenology, authenticity, paradoxes, isolation, and freedom vs. destiny. Phenomenological perspectives are useful as a guideline for how to encounter and understand patients in terms of individuality and uniqueness. Existential communication as a means to search and face the truth of one’s existence is considered as a valid basis for an authentic life. Paradoxes that cannot be solved are characteristic for human existence and should be dealt with to turn resignation into active choices. Isolation is one of the “existentials” characterizing human life between two paradox poles: On the one hand we are deeply in need of relationships to other human beings; on the other hand we are thrown into the world alone and will always stay like this, no matter how close we get to another person. Further, addressing freedom and destiny as two extremes of one dimension can serve as a basis for orientation in life and also for dealing with the separation between responsibility and guilt.
Ethical Issues in Existential-Humanistic Psychotherapy
Authors: Krug Orah T. , Piwowarski Troy
Published: November 2019

A set of principles underlies Existential-Humanistic (E-H) therapy and guides the therapeutic change process. These principles uphold the ethical values of dignity of human beings and the sanctity of human connections. Moreover, their implementation, it is presumed, effectively transforms lives. The practice of E-H therapy presents ethical challenges for its practitioners because it relies not on a medical treatment model but rather on an existential-humanistic healing model. This model does not focus on diagnosing and treating symptoms. Instead, it supports an understanding of how each client is uniquely coping with his or her existence. Practicing therapy in this way may be more challenging ethically, precisely because there are no standardized protocols or treatment interventions to rely upon. In the first section of this chapter, four ethical principles of E-H therapy are paired with several potential ethical challenges arising from them. In subsequent sections, these principles and related challenges are explored more extensively, illuminated with relevant case vignettes.
Psychotherapy in Old Age: Ethical Issues
Authors: Hughes Julian C. , Cheston Richard
Published: November 2019

Old age brings challenges which affect the process and content of psychotherapy; not that older people should be thought of as being the same, for they are individual. There are particular cohort effects and contexts that might affect the ways in which older people react to stressors in old age. Cognitive impairment and dementia will sometimes be a consideration. Good psychotherapeutic approaches to older people tend to reflect good ethical approaches. These can be described by the main ethical theories: utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. But a better and more nuanced way is perhaps to use ethical approaches that stress narrative, communication, interpretation, and meaning, as well as care and relationships. These approaches seem more realistic: they accommodate the real situation for the person concerned, recognizing him or her as a situated and embodied agent. This chapter uses vignettes to highlight the usefulness of these nuanced approaches to ethical problems.
Community Banking Institutions
Authors: Kim Dasol , McKillop Donal
Published: November 2019

Changes in the regulatory environment and technological advances have dramatically changed the competitive landscape for community banking institutions. While only accounting for a fraction of the overall size of the banking industry, community banks are predominant in numbers around the world for a broad range of depository institution types, including commercial banks, savings banks, cooperative banks, and credit unions. The steep decline in the number of community banks in recent times has attracted concern from policymakers, regulators, and academics, and has raised questions on the potential consequences associated with the gradual disappearance of these institutions. What contributed to the growth and resilience of community banks over the past century? Can they remain competitively viable in the current environment? This chapter surveys the literature and provides an institutional overview to understand the continued evolution of these institutions.
Can We Improve the Impact of Microfinance?
Authors: Lensink Robert , Bulte Erwin
Published: November 2019

By surveying the latest literature, this chapter aims to contribute to the recent discussion on the successes and failures of microfinance. We argue that the question “does microfinance work?” is neither important nor informative. What matters is knowing when, and in which conditions, microfinance works—and for whom. We claim that the answers to these questions depend on the details of the microcredit contract as well as on the range of services that microfinance institutions provide (including non-financial ones). We point at two important reasons why the impact of several microcredit programs is lower than expected: (1) the rigidness of credit contracts, and (2) the human capital of end-users. As reforming contract terms and building human capital via business training and technical assistance are costly, we argue that perhaps subsidies are needed. We focus on studies dealing with end-users, and pay specific attention to the evolving discussion on group lending and the role of joint liability to reduce asymmetric information problems and improve repayment rates. We also discuss the literature focusing on the recent shift of several microfinance institutions to individual lending, and the related trend toward commercialization of microfinance.
Residential Mortgages
Authors: Lehnert Andreas , Martin Alex
Published: November 2019

This chapter provides an overview of residential mortgages. Mortgages are loans to households secured by real property. Mortgage banking has historically comprised three functions: origination (the extension of credit), servicing (payment collection), and funding (financing the loans). When extending credit, lenders consider property value, leverage, the borrower’s payment-to-income ratio and the history of repaying debt. Laws regulating the seizure of the home affect the equilibrium provision of credit. Households choose how much to borrow, between fixed- and adjustable-rate mortgages, and an amortization schedule. After origination, households may refinance or default. Recent evidence supports the view that household default is driven by liquidity constraints rather than strategic considerations. Investors value mortgages like any other fixed income security with embedded options. Bank capital regulations seek to align regulatory capital with economic capital. Mortgage credit risk varies widely across mortgage types and is highly correlated with house prices. In several jurisdictions, residential mortgage underwriting standards can now be adjusted over time by the authorities as part of these jurisdictions’ macroprudential policy framework.
Shadow Banking
Authors: Adrian Tobias , Ashcraft Adam B. , Breuer Peter , Cetorelli Nicola
Published: November 2019

Financial innovation has transformed intermediation from a process involving a single financial institution to a chain of transactions broken down among several institutions. Following the Great Financial Crisis, financial intermediation has shifted significantly from banks to non-banks, providing credit in the “shadows” of the regulated banking system. This chapter offers a definition of shadow banking and explanations for its existence, as well as providing an overview of attempts to measure its size. It explains how shadow banking differs from other forms of non-bank intermediation, in particular market-based finance, and discusses why regulators and academics should care about it. Further, the chapter reviews efforts to strengthen supervision and regulation and discusses some policy challenges on the horizon in the context of case studies.
The Roles of Banks in Financial Systems
Authors: Allen Franklin , Carletti Elena , Gu Xian
Published: November 2019

Banks perform various roles in the economy. First, they ameliorate the information problems between investors and borrowers by monitoring the latter and ensuring a proper use of the depositors’ funds. Second, they provide intertemporal smoothing of risk that cannot be diversified at a given point in time as well as insurance to depositors against unexpected consumption shocks. Because of the maturity mismatch between their assets and liabilities, however, banks are subject to the possibility of runs and systemic risk. Third, banks contribute to the growth of the economy. Fourth, they perform an important role in corporate governance. The relative importance of the different roles of banks varies substantially across countries and times but banks are always critical to the financial system.
Bank Bailouts and Bail-Ins
Authors: Roman Raluca A.
Published: November 2019

During the global financial crisis, governments bailed out banks when their failures threatened to undermine economic and financial stability. After the crisis, governments tried to end bailouts by raising capital requirements, increasing supervisory rules and oversight, and introducing bail-in provisions that require creditors and/or equity holders to assume losses and help recapitalize distressed banks. Some important policy questions are whether bailouts have been effective in meeting their primary goals and whether bail-ins as alternatives can be effective in reducing the need for bailouts and resolving financial institutions facing distress and failure going forward. This chapter surveys the recent literature and other evidence from the US and EU on bailouts and bail-ins to better understand their economic and social costs and benefits. We also discuss briefly other methods to deal with the resolution of distressed large financial institutions.
Competition in the Banking Sector
Authors: Degryse Hans , Morales-Acevedo Paola , Ongena Steven
Published: November 2019

This chapter merges recent findings from the empirical banking literature with conventional insights from work on banking competition and regulation. It first reviews and assesses the different methodological approaches pursued to address banking competition. While market structure indicators are easily computable, they may not be overly informative about the competitive conditions in banking markets. The literature now focuses on “non-market structure” indicators such as the Panzar-Rosse H-statistic, the (adjusted) Lerner index, or the Boone indicator. The chapter then structures the discussion on the empirical findings based upon a framework that finds its roots in the different theories of financial intermediation. Other approaches to infer banking competition are also discussed, in particular, the impact that regulation and information sharing between banks may have on banking competition.
Systemic Risk in Banking after the Great Financial Crisis
Authors: De Bandt Olivier , Hartmann Philipp
Published: November 2019

In this chapter we present a comprehensive review of systemic risk in banking, as the primary ingredient for understanding financial crises that have severe adverse effects on the macroeconomy (such as the Great Depression or the recent Great Financial Crisis). The first part of the chapter develops a conceptual framework that distinguishes three main forms of systemic risk: contagion, aggregate shocks, and the endogenous build-up and unraveling of widespread financial imbalances (such as credit booms leading to debt overhangs). Ex ante (preventive) policies, notably macroprudential regulation and supervision, and ex post (crisis management and resolution) policies to contain systemic risks and financial crises are also discussed. The second and third parts of the chapter review the existing theoretical and empirical literature about systemic risk, using the previously described conceptual framework and making reference to features of the systemic crisis that started in the summer of 2007.
Banking in the United States
Authors: DeYoung Robert
Published: November 2019

The past forty years has witnessed a near total transformation of the US banking industry, as well as a near total disaster. The bank regulatory framework established during the Great Depression was dismantled, new technologies revolutionized how banks produce and distribute financial services, and dramatic increases in competition have pressured banks to operate more efficiently. The population of commercial banks has been halved by a wave of acquisitions and the largest banks have increased ten-fold in size. A strategic dichotomy has emerged, with small ‘community’ banks providing person-to-person retail and small business banking services, and large commercial banks providing high-volume retail banking services in domestic markets and corporate and investment banking services around the world. These changes have brought great efficiencies to the banking industry and its customers, but have also introduced new instabilities to the system. A decade of historically high profits was followed by large investment losses and government bailouts during the financial crisis of 2008–9. A partial re-regulation of the industry has followed, and both bankers and policymakers seek to balance market efficiencies with financial stability as this dynamic industry moves further into the twenty-first century.
Banking in Europe
Authors: Goddard John , Molyneux Philip , Wilson John O. S.
Published: November 2019

This chapter focuses on the evolution of the banking industry in the European Union since the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 to the present day. We provide an overview of developments in the regulation, financial integration, and the structure and performance of the European banking industry. A brief discussion of the global financial crises and their resultant impact on European banks together with coverage of the later Eurozone sovereign debt crisis is also presented, along with structural reforms, and the ongoing progress in creating a fully integrated banking and financial services industry throughout the Eurozone. A major challenge for the industry relates to restoring profitability back to pre-crises levels. At present, many banks remain encumbered by regulatory demands that, while helping their solvency, act as a drag on performance. Given the regulatory and economic environment under which European banks currently operate, their performance will be subdued for some time to come.
Corporate Complexity and Systemic Risk
Authors: Carmassi Jacopo , Herring Richard J.
Published: November 2019

This chapter updates and extends our earlier work on the corporate complexity of Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs). The first edition of this chapter, which appeared in the Oxford Handbook of Banking, first edition, was based on data in 2007, documented a notable degree of complexity among most G-SIBs, and warned complexity could pose insuperable obstacles if an institution needed to be resolved, an issue then largely neglected. The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy highlighted these issues, stimulating ambitious initiatives to rationalize the corporate structure of G-SIBs and enhance their resolvability. The second edition, based on data through May 2013, found only mixed evidence of progress in reducing corporate complexity, and noted that some institutions had grown still larger and more complex. In the current edition, published a decade after the crisis, our measures of corporate complexity remain high. Apart from some improvements in the US disclosures, the corporate structures of G-SIBs remain quite opaque. If regulators are to achieve their goal of bolstering confidence in resolution procedures and enhancing market discipline, transparency must be enhanced.
The Performance of Financial Institutions Modeling, Evidence, and some Policy Implications
Authors: Hughes Joseph P. , Mester Loretta J.
Published: November 2019

The unique capital structure of commercial banking—funding production with demandable debt that participates in the economy’s payments system—affects various aspects of banking. It shapes commercial banks’ comparative advantage in providing financial products and services to informationally opaque customers, their ability to diversify credit and liquidity risk, and how they are regulated, including the need to obtain a charter to operate, and explicit and implicit federal guarantees of bank liabilities to reduce the probability of bank runs. These aspects of banking affect a bank’s choice of risk versus expected return, which, in turn, affects bank performance. Banks have an incentive to reduce risk to protect their valuable charters in periods of financial distress but also an incentive to increase risk to exploit the cost-of-funds subsidy of mispriced deposit insurance. The balance of these contrasting incentives is tied to bank size. Measuring bank performance and its relationship to size requires untangling cost and profit from decisions about risk. This chapter gives an overview of two general empirical approaches to measuring bank performance and discusses some of the applications of these approaches found in the literature. One application explains how better diversification available at a larger scale of operations generates scale economies that are obscured by higher levels of risk-taking. Studies of commercial banking cost that ignore endogenous risk-taking find little evidence of scale economies at the largest banks, while those that control for this risk-taking find large-scale economies at the largest banks—evidence with important implications for regulation.
Borderlands in the Silver Mines of New Spain, 1540–1660
Authors: Murillo Dana Velasco
Published: November 2019

From the sixteenth century onward, mining towns in New Spain produced more than silver; they also led to the creation of new colonial communities and societies. The founding of mining towns outside of central Mexico served as catalysts for northern exploration, becoming and creating new borderlands in their wake. This chapter considers how mining towns constituted both geographical and social borderlands. It focuses on the roles and experience of indigenous, Spanish, African, and ethnically mixed descent individuals (castas) in Mexico’s northern silver mining district from 1540 to 1660. The colonization of the mining borderlands created new economic, social, and ethnic patterns shaped by population scarcity and instability, the labor needs of production, the incentives of the money economy, the lifeways and practices of indigenous populations, imbalanced sex ratios, and under-developed colonial institutions. Ultimately, the chapter argues that mining towns remained borderlands, sites of fluid cultural exchanges and social boundaries.
The Royal Road of the Interior in New Spain
Authors: Seijas Tatiana
Published: November 2019

The chapter focuses on the royal road of the interior that linked Central Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley to highlight the indigenous origins of its pathways and to showcase the economic and political agency exerted by native peoples. Native communities located on the royal road and its vicinity had unique access to commercial opportunities. Indigenous artisans traveled to and along the road to find a market for their products. Farmers similarly relied on a steady stream of travelers seeking food and shelter to buy their surplus corn and other products to make some gains. Indian guides found paying customers who required their services to find their way from one stop along the road to the next settlement. The historiography on royal roads in New Spain has primarily focused on their connection to the Spanish colonial economy. This chapter aims to shift the narrative by illustrating how a number of indigenous communities used the routes for their own purposes.
Franciscan Mysticism on the Northern Frontier of New Spain
Authors: Sheridan Prieto Cecilia
Published: November 2019

Starting with an analysis of an imagined “mystic frontier,” this chapter analyzes various cases of mysticism in Spain and the Americas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that form part of the frontier imaginary and represent the transformation of spaces into social landscapes. This chapter posits that female mystics were a definitive factor in the attempts to renovate the Franciscan missionary frontier in northern New Spain. The dream of converting infidels and the symbolic territoriality of the “cross” could be used to consolidate missionary power in areas defined as frontiers because of their proximity to nomadic Indians. In particular, this chapter will analyze the case of the Spanish nun María de Jesús de Agreda (Spain, 1602) along with Francisca de los Ángeles, a lay sister of the Third Order of Franciscans who had the protection of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro and fray Antonio Margil de Jesús.
Converting the Pacific
Authors: Bayne Brandon
Published: November 2019

As an early modern enterprise, the Society of Jesus established networks that relayed information from far-flung missionaries back to superiors in metropolitan centers. At the same time, Jesuits linked to colleagues serving in other locales by sharing letters, maps, and devotional objects that helped forge a worldwide, imagined community. Through these informal means, Jesuits in New Spain developed particularly strong ties to Asia as the colonization of the Philippines and establishment of the Manila Galleons turned their viceroyalty into a transpacific contact zone. Beginning with a sixteenth-century debate over forceful conversion, this chapter traces confrontations and comparisons engendered by this communication. It tracks religious devotion to Japanese martyrs in the Americas to better understand the function of hagiography in colonial contexts. Martyrs also factored into transpacific competition and cooperation, leading Jesuits in Mexico, China, and Spain to connect their personal sacrifices to the larger effort to convert the Pacific.
The Pacific Borderlands of the Spanish Empire
Authors: Tracy Goode Catherine
Published: November 2019

This chapter explores the economic relationship between the Spanish colonies in the Americas and the Asian markets at the center of the early modern world economy. Pointing to the importance of political and family networks that existed within the Pacific borderlands, it investigates how Spanish merchants and bureaucrats supplied the sought-after silver to Asian markets in exchange for varied luxury goods like textiles, spices, porcelains, and furniture. The Manila Galleon functioned as the conduit, moving goods, people, and knowledge through the Pacific borderlands. These relationships across the Pacific, which were built on commerce but extended to political and cultural exchange, demonstrate that Spanish colonies that were far beyond the control of a European power benefitted from their direct access to the Asian economy across the Pacific.
Indigenous Trade in Caribbean Central America, 1700s–1800s
Authors: Boza Alejandra , Solórzano Fonseca Juan Carlos
Published: November 2019

This chapter traces the dense web of indigenous trade that crisscrossed Mosquitia, Talamanca, and Darién during the latter part of the colonial period. Most studies have focused on European actors’ geopolitical and economic interests in these regions. Here we concentrate on indigenous populations and their trading networks. Exchange brought together Indians from villages under Spanish control, Indians that remained independent, and a variety of European colonials It also helped cement alliances between some Indians and non-Spanish European powers, and affected Spanish colonizing strategies while increasing the Indians’ ability to retain their independence. Indians played a major role in connecting the Spanish mainland with the non-Spanish commercial hubs that emerged in the Caribbean islands.
Impact on the Spanish Empire of the Russian Incursion into the North Pacific, 1741–1821
Authors: Ortega Soto Martha
Published: November 2019

In the early eighteenth century, the imprecise northwest frontier of the Spanish Empire in America was scarcely explored. At the end of the Seven Years’ War the Spanish Crown implemented reforms to extend its control over peripheral areas like northwestern New Spain. The presence of Russian hunters and entrepreneurs in the Aleutian Islands and small enclaves along the Pacific coast unveiled during this War was considered by the Spanish Crown as an invasion. Meanwhile, the imperial Russian government approved the foundation of the Russian-American Company to consolidate a colonization project in the Americas. This chapter reflects on how both imperial governments understood the limits of their empires in North America, examining the relations that each of them established with the Native American peoples in order to profit from their workforce and local knowledge. It explores Native American responses to Russian and Spanish presence and how these influenced indigenous interethnic relations.
Inter-Ethnic War in Sonora
Authors: Bustos José Marcos Medina , Bay Ignacio Almada
Published: November 2019

Among other forms of interaction with Native American Indians, Hispanic society adopted strategies that set in motion processes of transculturation, such as the recruitment of native auxiliary troops. Although inter-ethnic violence in the borderlands has been studied, knowledge about indigenous leaderships, particularly the military positions granted by the Spaniards and the national states to control native societies, is limited. This chapter addresses this subject and focuses on the office of captain general, a characteristic native post in the frontier zones. This research studies the space occupied largely by the present Mexican state of Sonora, where the office functioned for a long period and had visible agency.
The Construction of a Frontier Space
Authors: Jordán Pilar García , Mombiola Anna Guiteras
Published: November 2019

This chapter examines the most significant aspects of constructing the frontier in the north of Bolivia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We particularly focus on the impact of state policies on ethnolinguistic groups in the department of Beni and on the Guarayos in the department of Santa Cruz, as well as on the inter-ethnic relations that developed between these groups and the rest of Bolivian society. We first analyze the strategies, activities, and institutions of indigenous Benianos with respect to the exercise of their constitutional rights in both the sociopolitical realm, as expressed through local government, and the socioeconomic realm, centered on land ownership. We then analyze the establishment of Franciscan missions among the Guarayos as a basic tool employed by Bolivian governments as a “civilizing vanguard” with the theoretic aim of transforming “savages” into “citizens.”
Indigenous Histories in Colonial Brazil
Authors: Monteiro John M.
Published: November 2019

This chapter provides a critical analysis of the concept of ethnogenesis with new perspectives on the processes of conquest and colonization from native American voices, albeit filtered through colonial sources. A growing body of ethnohistorical literature has laid to rest the idea that the impact of contact, conquest, and European expansion can be summed up in the decimation of indigenous societies. One of the key notions prominent in these new perspectives, “ethnogenesis” has been reconfigured in an attempt to capture the articulation between endogenous patterns of change and the exogenous forces introduced by European expansion. In this sense the ethnohistorical mosaic of fixed ethnic groups that covers the post-contact map of Brazil stands in stark contrast to a constantly shifting precolonial configuration that can best be described as a kaleidoscope. This chapter argues further that an intrinsic relation exists between the ethnic and social classifications imposed by the colonial order and the formation of ethnic identities.
The Indian Garrison Colonies of New Spain and Central America
Authors: McEnroe Sean F.
Published: November 2019

This chapter examines Spanish-indigenous co-colonization projects in northern Mexico and Central America. From the early sixteenth century, Nahuas, Otomis, Zapotecs, and Mixtecs helped to extend the Spanish colonial system south into Maya lands, and north into the Gran Chichimeca. The parallel history of these widely separated frontiers was shaped by early colonial compacts that linked the Indian settlers’ political status to their military service. Late imperial administrative reforms often affected both frontiers simultaneously, especially when new models of taxation, military service, or labor organization threatened older understandings of settler privilege. The communities most successful in defending their status were those whose continuing military service remained vital to the empire. In northern New Spain, Nahua settlers remained key contributors to regional defense long after their Central American counterparts. Consequently, their settler privileges lasted longer and had more enduring political effects.
Indigenous Autonomy and the Blurring of Spanish Sovereignty in the Calchaquí Valley, Sixteenth to Seventeenth Century
Authors: Giudicelli Christophe
Published: November 2019

For over a century after the Spanish-Creole agents founded the chaotic Province of Tucumán, on the far south fringe of the viceroyalty of Peru, the indigenous societies known as Diaguitas and Calchaquís succeeded in maintaining their political and territorial autonomy. The intermontane valleys today known as Calchaquí Valleys acted as a kind of black hole in which colonial hegemony dissolved and the power apparatus failed to effectively submit these Indian groups, despite their early formal incorporation as encomienda workers. Moreover, since it successfully maintained itself out of the reach of the colonial sphere, the Calchaquí Valley exercised a certain power of attraction for individuals breaking with the new order. The ability for incorporation and adoption that Diaguita societies showed throughout the period, fed in turn the permanent renewal of the methods of resistance. Besides blurring colonial authority, the cases studied herein drew a singular politically autonomous order that continuously reintroduced elements from both sides of an extremely porous border.
Law and Narrative
Authors: Bartor Assnat
Published: November 2019

The relationship between law and narrative in the Bible is a wide topic that touches on various research domains concerning ancient Near Eastern literature in general and the Bible in particular. It deals with the common combination between literary genres, with the unique model of the Pentateuch and its rhetorical, historiographical, national, and theological roles. It also relates to the intensive presence throughout biblical literature of legal issues as well as tendentious references to the laws of the Pentateuch and enables an acquaintance with the poetics of biblical laws. The “Law and Literature” school, one of the most influential contemporary schools in the study of the law, together with the framework of biblical studies and of biblical law, constitutes a methodological framework for a narrative reading of the pentateuchal laws and for the examination of the variety of connections existing between biblical law and biblical narrative.
Litigation
Authors: Davies Eryl Wynn
Published: November 2019

The chapter examines the Old Testament evidence concerning the nature of the trial procedure in ancient Israel. Although the evidence is limited in comparison with the abundance of material available in the ancient Near East, the laws in the Pentateuch and the narratives in the Old Testament do provide indirect evidence for the way in which the judicial system operated in Israel and Judah. The elders played a prominent role in trials at a local level, and it is probable that the main qualification for eldership was possession of landed property. Appeal against arbitrary decisions by the local assemblies could be made directly to the king, though, in practice, this responsibility was probably delegated to his officials. In cases where there were no witnesses present the matter could be directed to God for a verdict by means of a “trial by ordeal.”
The Law and the Prophets
Authors: Cook Stephen L.
Published: November 2019

Recent research is overturning the view of modernist scholarship since Wellhausen that written, priestly legislation arose subsequent to pre-exilic prophecy. It now appears that the tradition of revealed law in Israel antedates even eighth-century prophets like Hosea. Not only oral traditions of divine law but also bodies of written priestly law are pre-exilic in origin. These corpuses, including codes within Deuteronomy and H (the texts of the Holiness School), informed prophets such as Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Ideal distinctions, such as those of Max Weber, between priestly lawgivers and charismatic prophets are unhelpful in understanding these priestly prophets and they obstruct progress in investigating the legislative dimensions of Prophecy and the prophetic dimensions of the Torah. The key hermeneutical question of the core theological place of law and prophecy within Scripture is still debated, but a picture is emerging of the pair as conversation partners set in dialogic equilibrium by canonical shaping.
The Law in the Late Second Temple Period
Authors: Collins John J.
Published: November 2019

The Torah of Moses was recognized as the ancestral law of Judah from the time of Ezra. Its status was revoked briefly by Antiochus Epiphanes. In the Hasmonean era there was a turn to intensive halakhic discussion, attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This was a factor in the rise of sectarianism. The papyri from the early second century ce take a flexible attitude to laws, drawing on Jewish or Roman law as seemed advantageous. The literature from the Hellenistic Diaspora treats the law broadly as a summary of Jewish tradition. Despite some claims that the law functioned as a civic law in the Diaspora, there are only a few instances in the papyri where Jews base appeals on Jewish law, and we do not know what the judges decided in those cases.
Ancient Near Eastern Treaties/Loyalty Oaths and Biblical Law
Authors: Morrow William S.
Published: November 2019

The chapter surveys evidence from West Asian and Mesopotamian sources, focusing on texts written in Akkadian, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Hittite. Although modern scholarship distinguishes international treaties from domestic loyalty oaths, the difference is not recognized in ancient Near Eastern documents. Both types of agreements are discussed under five headings: relationships between treaties and other legal documents; the concept of the vassal treaty; forms; ratification; and covenants with gods. Each heading points to areas of ongoing research and discussion. These include the administration of oaths; difficulties in identifying vassal treaties; origin and development of treaty forms; and motivations for producing treaty documents. Among issues relevant to biblical studies are links between treaties and dynastic promises; categorization of biblical treaty texts; the role of sacrifice; and connections between covenants and vows.
Introduction
Authors: Barmash Pamela
Published: November 2019

The introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law advocates for the study of both the law of the Hebrew Bible in its historical and literary context as well as the history of its interpretation in emerging Jewish and Christian communities. It explains that biblical law encompasses both civil/criminal law and ritual law and justifies their inclusion in a single volume. The introduction offers a survey of the organization of the Oxford Handbook of Biblical, showing how the volume offers a reappraisal of comprehensive issues in the study of biblical law in the light of the re-evaluation of the social, religious, and political context and ideology of the legal texts of the Hebrew Bible and the employment of methodologies from the fields of law and literature, gender studies, anthropology, and political theory.
Women, Children, Slaves, and Foreigners
Authors: Lipka Hilary
Published: November 2019

This chapter examines the treatment of women, children, slaves, and foreigners in biblical law, focusing on a few topics related to each of these groups that highlight some methodological issues and current debates within the field. Topics covered include the adultery and rape laws, deviant behavior by children and its punishment, the slavery manumission laws, the case of the daughter sold into slavery in Exodus 21:7–11, and the identity and status of the ger in biblical law. Some of the issues discussed in the context of these topics are the relationship between the content of the legal collections and law as it was actually practiced in ancient Israel and the relative dating of each of the legal collections and the relationship between them.
Ancient Near Eastern Law Collections and Legal Forms and Institutions
Authors: Skaist Aaron
Published: November 2019

Comparative studies between biblical law and the ancient Near Eastern collections of laws began after the publication of the Laws of Hammurabi in 1902. Biblical law appears to have a relationship to cuneiform law. Literary dependence of one text on another text presupposes that the borrower and the source had direct contact with each other. When and where did the ancient Israelites have such contact with the Laws of Hammurabi? Two periods and places have been proposed that ostensibly fit the situation. Neither of the two examples often referred to by scholars as examples of the relationship of the Covenant Code to the laws of Hammurabi can be considered a translation of the Laws of Hammurabi by the Covenant Code. Although the protases are quite similar, they are not identical; and the apodoses which contain the penalties are different. A logical conclusion is that the penalties appearing in the Covenant Code reflect Israelite conceptions.
Automated Writing Assistance
Authors: Dale Robert
Published: November 2019

The ability to communicate in writing is an essential skill in modern society. But ability in writing varies considerably; and no matter what their existing level of competence, most writers would acknowledge that what they write could often be improved. Given that the output of the writing process is natural language, it seems plausible that natural language processing techniques might be used to analyse this output and to suggest ways to improve it. In various guises, this has indeed been an application of NLP at least since the 1960s. In this chapter, we survey the different kinds of assistance to authors that NLP makes possible; we describe what can be done today, and explore what might be possible in the future.
Spoken Language Dialogue Systems
Authors: Dale Robert
Published: November 2019

A spoken language dialogue system is a computational system which engages in multi-turn dialogic interaction with human users using speech as the means of communication. Any system which does this requires many of the capabilities of other natural language processing applications, encompassing both language understanding and language generation; but the nature of spoken language dialogue means that it also poses a number of additional challenges not faced by other applications. This chapter discusses a number of key issues that need to be addressed when attempting to build systems that can engage in natural dialogue, and provides an overview of existing research in these areas.
Petitions, Parliament and Political Culture: Petitioning the House of Commons, 1780–1918*
Authors: Huzzey Richard , Miller Henry
Published: November 2019

This article analyses nearly one million petitions received by the House of Commons to reveal a culture of petitioning that recast the political culture of modern Britain and Ireland. It argues, first, that petitions provided a much more regular and continuous form of interaction between people and Parliament than elections. Second, petitioning–meaning the practices associated with the drafting, signing and presentation of petitions–enabled a vibrant, performative public politics. Third, petitions and petitioning were relatively open, inclusive forms of political participation since all British subjects enjoyed the formal right to petition. We examine the role of formidable campaigns of mass mobilisation, but also humble appeals of marginalised individuals. Our data has significant implications for our understanding of the nationalisation, organisation, and popularisation of politics in this period. We argue that attention to petitions helps us to decentre parliamentary elections as the principal connection between local and national politics. Indeed, petitioners responded to the shifting boundaries between the central and devolved state in deciding to which authorities they would direct petitions. Petitioning campaigns pioneered the mass, organised, national movements that would gradually emerge as the hallmark of stronger political parties. This did not undermine petitioning. However, the consequent growth of disciplined parties strengthened executive power, at the expense of parliamentary government, redirected petitions from the Commons. Furthermore, the continuing expansion of petitioning alongside extensions of the franchise suggests that petitions did not function as an ersatz ballot. Rather, petitions and debates between parliamentarians and petitioners over the meaning of growing lists of signatories suggest that petitioning catalysed a range of other forms of participation and hence forged an ever more popular politics.
Species Natures: A Critique of Neo-Aristotelian Ethics
Authors: Lewens Tim
Published: November 2019

This paper examines the neo-Aristotelian account of species natures as ‘life-forms’, which we owe to Philippa Foot, Michael Thompson and their defenders. I begin by developing two problems for their view: a problem of underdetermination and a problem generated by psychological work on ‘folk essentialism’. I move on to consider their important transcendental argument, which suggests that claims about life-forms are presupposed by all efforts to describe the organic world. In response, I sketch a neo-Kantian projectivist position, which agrees that life-forms are presupposed in these contexts, while denying that such life-forms are real. This position makes a better sense of the phenomena cited in support of the neo-Aristotelian view, while avoiding the problems raised for that view in the first half of this paper.
Rheumatoid arthritis and risk of spontaneous abortion: a Danish nationwide cohort study
Authors: Nathan Nina O , Mørch Lina S , Wu Chun S , Olsen Jørn , Hetland Merete L , Li Jiong , Rom Ane L
Published: November 2019

Objectives

To investigate the influence of RA or preclinical RA on the risk of spontaneous abortion (SA) while taking age and duration of RA into consideration.

Methods

By linkage of data from Danish national registries, we established a nationwide cohort of pregnancies in Denmark from 1 January 1977 to 31 December 2014. We used multiple logistic regression to estimate; odds ratios (OR) for SA in women with RA or preclinical RA, compared with women without, and OR for SA by maternal age in women with RA or preclinical RA.

Results

A total of 2 612 529 pregnancies were included. Women aged <35 years diagnosed with RA <5 years before pregnancy had an increased risk of SA (OR = 1.25 95% CI: 1.07, 1.48), compared with women without RA aged <35. Women at the same age diagnosed with RA ≥5 years before pregnancy had an OR of 1.14 (0.96–1.34), compared with women without. Among women with RA aged ≥35 years and women with preclinical RA at time of pregnancy, no increased risk of SA was found. The risk of SA increased by maternal age in both women with RA, preclinical RA and in women without.

Conclusion

Among women aged <35 years, the risk of SA was higher in women with RA compared with women without. After the age of 35 years, the risk of SA was no different from that among women without RA, even though the risk of SA increased with increasing age.
How boundary objects help to perform roles of science arbiter, honest broker, and issue advocate
Authors: Sarkki Simo , Heikkinen Hannu I , Komu Teresa , Partanen Mari , Vanhanen Karoliina , Lépy Élise
Published: November 2019

We examine roles and knowledge by which researchers can enhance connections between science, policy, and society. We arranged a participatory scenario workshop with representatives from environmental administration to discuss how different land-use governance arrangements link to sustainability of reindeer herding in northern Finland. We used fast track scenarios as boundary objects that aimed to bring reindeer herders’ problem definitions to be discussed with administrators. First, we performed the role of science arbiter by using our previous research with reindeer herders as the starting point for the discussions. Next, we discussed and elaborated diverse future alternatives via the role of honest broker. Finally, we were interpreted as issue advocates because the scenario exercise reduced the scope of preferable policy options for administrators. Performing these boundary-spanning roles in the same process, but each, in turn, enables researchers to offer views on sustainability via scenarios that break easily acceptable conventions.