My aim, in this response to Peters’ timely and powerful work, is both to acknowledge its transformative force for legal studies and at the same time to introduce distinctions that may be of value in distinguishing discussions of the ‘theatricality’ of law from the emergence of a modern understanding of ‘theatre’ as the production of coherent and powerful fictions enacted by characters. The early modern period (1500–1650) is described, in chapter 5 of Peters’ study, as ‘the age of theatre’. If Peters shows how judicial proceedings draw on the performative aspects of rhetoric and theatre, my response aims to show how, in the ‘age of theatre’, theatre’s distinctive fictionality drew on the fiction-generating power of probable argument and inferential reasoning, as taught in legal rhetoric.

This chapter contends that awareness is the first step to any changes, and therefore, cultivating sustainability literacy is needed badly to understand the inescapable laws of thermodynamics that limit the growth pursued by the ‘development’ ideology. In such a way the Ulamas and Muslim leaders will be sufficiently-informed to devise the environmental Shariah that correctly situates human society within the context of Earth’s limited natural energy flows and resource stocks, and at the same time, comply with the will of God. Given these physical constraints of the planet, the currently dominant ethical framework and the endless rat-race of modern life have placed us in a riverbed of self-destruction. Technological fixes can temporarily improve conditions but they cannot move us out of this riverbed of unsustainability. Here is where Muslims need to redefine a genuinely Islamic development model and its parameters. An Islamic development paradigm should not aim at making humans possible to forget God and his own inner reality, and being stifled by the prison of their own creation. Unlike the dominant Eurocentric development paradigm, an Islamic development needs to have its own criteria of happiness index in which humans are free to roam around and choose objects at will.

Oil has seriously impacted the institutional development of the state in the Arabian Peninsula. More specifically, the sudden and unprecedented acquisition of massive oil revenues resulted in the freezing of the state’s formal and informal institutions, at the point at which petrodollars were injected into the state’s coffers. From then on, state leaders were able to deploy the state’s wealth to dictate the pace and direction of institutional change. Over time, any institutional change has been directed towards enhancing regime security, and the pace of change has been calculated and deliberately slow. Any political opening has been dictated by the logic of state power maximization (in relation to society). At the same time, partly to ensure its popular legitimacy and partly through the vision of its leaders, the state has deployed its massive wealth both to foster rapid economic and infrastructural development, and to enhance the living standards of its citizens. In other words, whereas oil may have stunted institutional development –– i.e., an institution’s curse –– it has been an economic blessing.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is used in criminal courtrooms to support judicial decision- making. Despite heavy criticism on opacity, complexity, non-contestability, or unfair discrimination, such uses have been favoured, given AI’s promises of efficiency, effectiveness, and accuracy in the overall decision-making process. Focusing on the use of AI-generated evidence, this chapter analyses various European frameworks on evidence and fair trial scheme, the data protection guarantees under the Law Enforcement Directive (LED) and the requirements for AI use by the judiciary set out by the AI Act. We assess whether and to what degree the use of AI in criminal courtrooms can respect fundamental European principles regarding human rights and defence rights.

Chapter 21 offers the first source-based historical analysis of the League of Nations’ attempt to codify international law between 1925 and 1930. Drawing on institutional archives and private papers, it demonstrates that codification was for the League Secretariat not merely a legal endeavour, but also a strategic tool to engage the United States – either as a League member or as part of the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ). Encouraged by important middlemen such as Manley O. Hudson and Arthur Sweetser, the initiative aimed to rekindle US legalist Republican support and counter alternative projects that could challenge the League’s role in international peace and cooperation. Beyond US–League relations, the chapter reveals persistent divisions over the aims and methods of codification, reflecting broader struggles within international legal circles. The failure of the project was not just an institutional setback for the League but also a symptom of the legal community’s inability to promote a shared agenda. Rather than an isolated episode, the codification effort was part of a longer trajectory, shaped by both disruptions and continuities. While it barely produced immediate results, it laid important groundwork for later developments in international law.

Chapter 5 addresses the German–Polish Convention of 15 May 1922, a legal instrument that was negotiated with the direct participation of the League Secretariat and whose aim was the smooth partition of the multi-ethnic industrial region of Upper Silesia. It shows that while this treaty provided opportunities for ‘peace through law’, it ultimately failed to meet this expectation. After providing an overview of the Convention’s drafting process and its key features, notably its reliance on international procedural avenues to guarantee individual rights, the chapter examines these guarantees and how they came into being. It then focusses on the role of the president of the Mixed Commission for Upper Silesia, Felix Calonder, a vocal proponent of ‘peace through law’. In his role as local guarantor of minority rights, Calonder developed a systematic case law that was unequalled before the advent of the international human rights law bodies after the Second World War and foreshadowed some of the principles adopted by them. It concludes by reflecting on the various limitations that this law shared with other attempts to use legal techniques to solve interstate conflicts of the interwar period.

What prompted Arendt’s investigations of moral and legal judgment was the trial of Adolf Eichmann for crimes of the Holocaust. Her controversial view is that Eichmann represented the “banality of evil,” by which she means “the phenomenon of evil deeds, committed on a gigantic scale, which could not be traced to any particularity of wickedness, pathology, or ideological conviction in the doer, whose only personal distinction was a perhaps extraordinary shallowness.” This chapter explains what Arendt means by “banality of evil” and why it led to confusions. It reviews the evidence by which she supported her thesis of Eichmann’s banality. The chapter points out several large and challenging philosophical questions the thesis raises. The chapter’s final section connects her concept of the banality of evil to her reflections on kitsch in aesthetics, as well as to Kant’s “maxims of common human understanding.” Kant’s theory of aesthetic judgment turns out to be central to Arendt’s approach to moral judgment.

A tort is a special kind of wrongdoing. ‘Tort’ is a legal term that describes a particular category of interpersonal wrongdoing dealt with by the civil justice system. The law of torts covers a wide range of different types of misconduct, including many torts with well-known names like ‘assault’, ‘battery’, ‘trespass to land’, ‘defamation’ and ‘negligence’. The task of defining the word ‘tort’ is notoriously difficult, given that more than 70 torts are known to the common law world, each with a different focus and a distinctive set of elements to protect different personal interests.

Curiously, there does not appear to be any shared identifying characteristic nor any unified set of interests that the law of torts seeks to protect to the exclusion of any other area of the law. The search for a clear definition is further complicated by the constant state of development of the law of torts. Some torts are outdated and no longer recognised in Australia, while others that have existed in other common law jurisdictions for many years have not yet been widely accepted here.

Religious codes possess social control effects that can potentially change the behaviour of their adherents towards becoming pro-environment. In the case of Islam, Muslim-majority states since the time of the Prophet Muhammad have implemented Islamic environmental law to this effect. Unfortunately, accounts of its implementation today in the legal literature are scant, thereby requiring fresh insights that consider changes in the application of Islamic law in modern states. Generally, this article observes that the implementation of Islamic environmental law today takes two forms: first, implementation through constitutions; and, second, implementation through non-binding religio-legal instruments. Focusing on the second form, application in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia is analysed and evaluated. In these three Southeast Asian states non-binding religious rulings (fatwa) and mosque sermons (khutbah) have been used to implement Islamic environmental law. There are two key factors which contribute to ensuring that these non-binding instruments achieve their social control objectives: first, local legal and political contexts shaped by religion-state relations that help their implementation and legitimation; and, second, the pursuit of post-fatwa/khutbah follow-up action by religious authorities to put Islamic environmental law into actual practice.

A hima is a reserved pasture, where trees and grazing lands are protected from indiscriminate harvest on a temporary or permanent basis. It existed in the Middle East before Islam; it was treated as a private reserve for powerful chieftains who were said to have used it as a tool of oppression. With the emergence of Islam, its function changed; it became a property dedicated to the well-being of the whole community around it. Tribes had their own himas with the permission of the state, and acted as self-government in the absence of state control. This institution flourished through the first half of the 20th century, when major political, economical, and social changes took place in the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. The paper reviews the changes that have taken place in Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen with regard to the himā. Modern researchers and consultants of governments in the region still recommend using this traditional institution, because they believe that its revival and extension for land improvement based on cultural principles would be successful; it would not require the introduction of alien social institutions or values. This paper recommends some modifications required to adopt this traditional system in the current societies of the region.

The principle of popular sovereignty allows for only democracy as a form of government. But democracy produces the political factions that can corrupt government unless constrained. Beginning with the corrupting influence of factions in the state governments after the Revolution, the chapter discusses the Framers’ understanding of why human nature leads to factions.

This chapter offers a historical and legal reinterpretation of the minority protection clauses of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, with a particular focus on their implications for the Kurds living in Turkey. While the treaty is often cited as excluding the Kurds from formal minority status, on the one hand, this chapter argues that Articles 38 and 39 of Lausanne nevertheless extended certain rights and protections to all inhabitants of Turkey, including the Kurds. Drawing on the treaty’s drafting history, diplomatic correspondence, and international jurisprudence this article demonstrates that Turkey’s subsequent denial of Kurdish rights therefore constitutes a breach of its treaty obligations. On the other hand, it further explores how Ankara, through military leverage, strategic ambiguity, and political assurances, succeeded in “de-internationalising” Kurdish claims, effectively shielding its domestic policies from external scrutiny. The article concludes by highlighting the shared responsibility of the Allied Powers and the League of Nations in allowing these violations to go unchallenged, and calls for renewed scholarly attention to Lausanne’s unfulfilled Kurdish question.