This chapter probes the borders of the public supervisory jurisdiction by looking at a parallel private law supervisory jurisdiction under which the courts judicially review decisions by "domestic tribunals". This comparative exercise gives pause for reflection on the deeper conceptual and normative foundations of judicial review, especially for questions of amenability to review. In the modern administrative state, many apparently "public" functions are performed by private, profit-oriented or charitable bodies and the review of these bodies has been an important testing ground in which theories of judicial review have been formulated and defended. Stopping short of suggesting a grand, unified theory of all the supervisory jurisdictions, I argue that an appreciation of the deep, structural parallels helps us to understand the common law roots of judicial review and that office could provide some intellectual resources to advance the province of administrative law judicial review in a principled fashion.

This chapter provides an account of the Crown and its officials (and the relationship between them). This is the first of three chapters that provide fundamental building blocks for the judicial review of non-statutory executive powers. The Crown is an ambiguous term, which can specify the Queen, HM Government, and even the organised political community ('commonwealth') as a whole. Working through these ambiguities is essential in order to describe who is being reviewed (and why), and this entails working through some long-standing questions about the Crown's legal personality and relation to the person who is Monarch. Rejecting the idea that the Crown is a natural person (ostensibly because the Queen is a natural person) is the first step that leads, logically, to a theory of judicial review via a theory of office,official empowerment, and action in an official capacity.

This chapter present my own theory of judicial review, which I call a ‘common law ultra vires theory'. Based around the logic of ‘acting beyond one's powers', judicial review follows the narrow and broad limb. Although statutory provisions will be relevant and even dispositive where they exist, both of these limbs have roots in the common law supervisory jurisdiction of the judicial office to interpret and enforce the rules of competence and rules of conduct that empower and constrain executive officials. This theory of judicial review applies naturally and without distortion to statutory and non-statutory executive powers alike, and, within the latter category, no further distinctions need to be made between those powers associated with the Royal Prerogative and those that follow as a logical consequence of the Crown being a corporation with legal personality – or indeed any other basis of executive vires. Looking at recent UK Supreme Court jurisprudence for indirect but significant support, I argue that ‘justiciability'and ‘deference’ have a more limited role to play in the theory and practice of judicial review than first appears – even in the context of the ‘high’ prerogatives.

This paper traces the evolution of the meanings of the formative term dat, as it evolved in the history of Jewish culture throughout the ages. Its biblical meaning, derived from the Persian, is law, originally human law. In Judaism it was transformed into Divine law. This was basically the meaning it carried throughout the ages. With the advent of modernity, this old term started to acquire a radically new meaning, influenced by the appearance of the term ‘religion’ in Christianity, now applied to every so-called ‘religion’, including Judaism. My paper elaborates on the process by which the Hebrew term dat was transformed into ‘religion’ in modernity, and its implication concerning the changing meaning of Judaism.

Paul’s writing reflects a variety of attitudes towards Jewish ritual precepts, among them a denial of those precepts’ helpfulness on the path to religious perfection. Paul indeed upholds the unshaken authority of the hard-core moral commandments of the biblical law; yet he is skeptical about the Torah’s ability to enable one to follow its ordinances. Paul’s attitude seems to have been partly conditioned by his projected gentile addressees, whom he saw – in agreement with Hellenistic Jewish tendencies – as those whose path to redemption is not defined by the Torah as the exclusive source of divine law. However, as the paper argues, Paul also had in mind an additional, implicit audience – the Jews within the Jesus movement; his letters therefore were to speak to that audience too. Keeping in mind that “hidden Jewish setting” of Paul’s arguments, the paper outlines broader trajectories in Jewish tradition that evolved in similar directions. Even when not questioning the Torah as the foundation of covenant, these trajectories highlighted problematic aspects of the revealed law formulated in a set of written decrees. Paul thus is shown to be a witness to a broader skeptical tendency, while the solution he offers clearly represents the apostle’s “sectarian” conviction.

During the fourth century AD the Christian liturgical year reached its stability, mainly with regard to the Easter cycle. It remained in many ways distinct from the civil one, still tied to pagan characteristics. Nevertheless, especially after the Edict of Thessalonica (380 AD), roman imperial legislation started to use Christian Feasts, which then became reference point for the temporal organization of administrative and procedural activities.

Given this framework, the research aims to reconstruct how Christian feasts are used by Emperors in the administration of justice. Through the examination of a certain number of imperial constitutions (collected in the Theodosian Code and in the Justinian’s one), but also of the literary sources of the time, the article will analyse how the Emperors – also thanks to this new timing of justice – pursued going forward with the Christianization of a still deeply pagan society. Principal sources: C. 3,12,2(3); CTh. 2,8,1; CTh. 2,8,18; C. 3,12,9(11); CTh. 9,35,4; CTh. 9,35,5; CTh. 9.35.7; C. 3,12,8(10).

Realist and (liberal) institutionalist thinkers in international relations have long used rational choice assumptions to explain states’ behavior, but they only more recently entered into legal intricacies or specific legal questions, especially in the United States. By now, this has become a joint enterprise by international lawyers, economists, and rational-choice political scientists. Ever more empirical research is generated, informing also about the empirical validity hypotheses held by rationalist scholars. The research mostly stands on two pillars: the rational choice assumption and, following the traditional international law assumptions in the aftermath of the Westphalian peace, the treatment of the nation-state as a unitary actor, or what has been described as a “black box” state. Rational choice analysis has been used to conceptualize or reframe international law generally, including its sources.

From its inception, international law has been closely linked to philosophy and political theory, and over time competing theoretical approaches have emerged to explain international law’s nature, form, and efficacy. Even today, we associate the most authoritative names in the discipline – whether founders such as Grotius and Vattel or more modern figures ranging from Kelsen and Lauterpacht to contemporary writers such as Chimni, Chinkin, and Koskenniemi – with specific theoretical perspectives that engage foundational questions about international law’s purpose and content.

Every generation of scholars and practitioners reshapes international legal theory as it rethinks international law and its role in international affairs. Two decades ago, the American Journal of International Law (AJIL) published a “Symposium on Methods in International Law.”  The AJIL Symposium took place toward the end of the 1990s, during heady times for international law.