What is monastic law for? This chapter explores the goals of monastic law, beyond its concerns with regulation and governance. Drawing on ethnographic, archival and survey research, it examines the various ‘nonpositivist’ aims pursued by monastic jurists: preserving unity and unanimity (sāmaggi) among monks; maintaining discretion and protecting reputations; avoiding (further) conflict and identifying the root causes of strife; minimising judicial prejudice by eliminating the mental defilements (kilesa) that give rise to them; restoring offenders to the community by applying therapeutic sanctions; aligning the conduct of monks with the concerns of local laity and temple donors; and, most importantly, shortening saṃsāra and hastening nirvana. This chapter highlights the intertwining of positivist and nonpositivist elements in monastic law, shining light on a legal order that not only enforces standards of conduct but also impacts karma, saṃsāra and the path to nirvana.

This chapter contributes to existing literature on the sea by rendering dangerous maritime spatialities as productive and dynamic in how they are lived, worked and navigated. The place of the sea in modern International Relations can no longer be dismissed as a void between terrestrial land but instead should be considered a vibrant, evolving and busy series of political spaces, places and territories. As an essential reconceptualisation of insecurity at sea, this chapter considers the fluidity and volume of the sea against the mobility and agency of seafarers aboard the merchant vessels that bring us 90 per cent of everything. The first part of the chapter addresses the sea as a place represented in epistemological tools such as maps, practical guides and instruments that localise specific feelings of anxiety and unease to designated maritime territories. The second part of the chapter unpacks the first-hand experiences of seafarers as they have transited the aptly named High Risk Area and drawn on navigational tools to deter and manoeuvre in the face of modern-day Somali-based piracy. These examinations reveal that the binary of safety and insecurity that navigational tools produce at sea underpin spaces, places and territories at sea as temporary, made and unmade through the navigational practices of the seafarer and the tools they are given and shape.

This chapter lays out the overall rationale for the book, elucidates some of its key aspects and situates the book in relation to a scholarly field of feminist jurisprudence in India. It introduces the established convention of diversity in the field of Indian feminist jurisprudence, which this book joins with and expands. The chapter offers an illustration of the field by introducing the body of literature that the book is drawing from and contributing to and foregrounds that there are different voices in the field each of which speaks from a different locus both within and outside Indian legal academia. Simultaneously, the chapter explains the relevance of caste and how it hierarchically organises the field of intellectual labour in India.

Chapter 2 begins by addressing some vital preliminary legal issues, including the status of armed groups as international legal persons and the binding force of international law on such actors. The chapter argues that the concept of international legal personhood is best understood as a descriptive term rather than a prerequisite for entities to incur international legal obligations. It further explains that IHL, international human rights law (IHRL) and international criminal law (ICL) contain relevant obligations governing the conduct of trials and passing of penal sentences during NIAC. It demonstrates that whereas the direct application of IHL to armed groups as distinct collective entities is today widely accepted, the direct application of IHRL – despite strong normative arguments in favour – remains disputed and underdeveloped. Finally, this chapter aims to define entities referred to as ‘armed groups’, and clarifies who exactly is bound by the obligations applicable to them.

Understanding how the sea has been constructed and ordered throughout the centuries requires us not only to evoke and critique changing notions of space and time but demands a broader and deeper dive into underlying conceptions of order, such as race and gender. The aim of this chapter is to explore if and how conceptions of gender and race have operated – and still operate – to normalise the relationship of domination of ‘the white man’ over the sea.Challenging the traditional Western/Anglo-American representations of the sea as wild, unruly and seductive; qualities diametrically opposed to the orderliness and structure of idealised masculinity, and in need of subjugation to a male order, as well as the vast, dark mysterious and endless space surrounding known (European) lands, is important, as the gendering and racialisation of the sea has led to forgetting and normalisation. This is forgetting of the many different ways in which gender and race have been intertwined with ocean life, and normalisation of an idealised Westernised and masculine approach to the sea.Our exploration comes in three parts. In the first part, we briefly discuss the traditional, masculinised and Eurocentric view of the ocean as expressed in Western discourse over the last centuries. We then discuss the literature locating women and race and deconstructing hegemonic white masculinity in and around the oceans, as it has developed over the last four decades. Finally, we suggest avenues of research for International Relations, building on and pursuing further the insights from neighbouring disciplines.

Chapter 5 focuses on the regulation of social media platforms and platform architecture, with changes in EU perceptions regarding the reliability of these platforms and the values of their owners. It examines the shift from economically motivated self-regulatory regimes in these sectors based in logics of efficiency to a digital sovereignty-motivated move to a logic of security in regulation. It identifies the explicit linkage between economic and security concerns, particularly as it relates to disinformation and political advertising, with the promotion of co-regulatory regimes with significant levels of oversight provided by the Commission. It explores the approach to regulatory export adopted in these initiatives, with an emphasis on control of platforms regardless of where they are based, so long as they offer services in the EU.

Review and analysis of property law under the Civil Code. Discussion of such property rights as ownership (possession, use and disposal) and its acquisition, usufructuary rights (right to use land, right of habitation, and easement), and security interests. Analysis of the legal mechanisms for prescribing and protecting private property rights and remaining issues.

When the European polities started looking overseas in earnest in the late fifteenth century, the Iberian powers were able to secure papal sanction for a global duopoly. The Treaty of Tordesillas gave Spain and Portugal exclusive rights to half of the world each. A century later, both the duopoly and the religious order of Europe had been upended. A key practice in this upending was that of privateering. Privateering played a crucial part both in the survival of Protestantism in Europe and in the spread of the European-dominated state system, accounting for how polities beyond the Iberian ones went overseas and how they came to settle around the world.Understanding privateering opens up the door to making sense of the challenge posed by the sea to different European polities, how they managed to overcome the obstacles posed by the sea, and how the sea became a political fibre, structuring the reach of their political authority. By challenging traditional dichotomies of public and private, sea and land, state and empire, trade and war, engaging with privateering is a clear-cut example of a rethinking of international relations with the sea.We approach the topic in four steps. Starting with a brief overview of what privateering consisted of and how it was practised and regulated, we then discuss the continental context of confessional divides and how they impacted the policies of Protestant states. The main part of the chapter is concerned with the three cases of protestant privateering: Huguenot, English and Dutch.

A analytical review of the notable features of the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics, judicial reforms, and major issues facing the Chinese legal system.

The chapter provides the conceptual background with regard to transitional justice, outlining the origins, development, and dynamics of the concept and the field. The chapter looks at characteristics that define the approaches that are currently dominant in research and practice. It then turns to the question of how transitional justice gains ground and is appropriated and reconfigured in different contexts, before ending with a discussion of frictional encounters in internationalised processes of change. These aspects provide the crucial background for understanding how and what kind of transitional justice was introduced in Tunisia.