Chapter 2 reconstitutes Cuban and US history with sexuality at the center beginning in 1970s, including the sexual revolution in the US, HIV/AIDS, and the development of progressive sex ed in Cuba. It chronicles the downfall of the Soviet Union and its impact on the Cuban economy, which in turn affected the sexual economy. The meaning of homosexuality evolved in both the US and Cuba, at least in part in relation to geopolitics.

This first substantive chapter introduces readers to Truth Commissions as an institution and their relationship with international law; the core problem examined in the book, and the overall argument; the main debates in scholarship and practice, which frame the book’s intervention; and the book’s methodological approach and contribution. The chapter begins with an overview of Truth Commissions, their contemporary role, and historical transformation. The discussion focuses on how the jurisprudential tradition of ‘jurisdictional thought’ offers a way of examining how Truth Commissions have ‘authorized’ their accounts of violent events as the truth by drawing on different dimensions of international law. The chapter explains how the book approaches the analysis of Truth Commissions through the study of their representations of truth and authority. This involves setting out the book’s theoretical orientation, which includes the jurisprudence of jurisdictional thought, law and humanities scholarship, and the theory and history of international law; and explaining the importance of the author’s in-country visits and archival research.

Chapter 3 discusses the arrival of same-sex marriage in Cuba along with aspects of Cuban law and discourse that may have contributed to its arrival. It engages with the details of Cuban law, including the constitution, the Family Code, and economic law, including property, self-employment, and foreign capital investment.

To investigate the micro-level interdependence between technological advancements and institutional diversity in IPR within business corporations, this chapter integrates the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework with the Institutional Complementarities (IC) approach. The former recognizes the importance of informal rules and community characteristics in knowledge governance, while the latter reveals inefficiencies arising from the interdependent nature of knowledge ownership and creation. The combined GKC–IC framework reveals the interplay between the characteristics of knowledge as a shared resource and the formal and informal rules governing its production. This offers insights into how corporations can be understood as knowledge commons within today’s environment that is increasingly shaped by the extensive use of IPR in governing knowledge assets. The chapter shows that the interdependence dynamics between IPR and technology excludes knowledge workers from accessing and utilizing the knowledge they produce, leading to the gradual deterioration of their skills and expertise. This vicious cycle further erodes the institutional diversity of corporate knowledge governance in favour of IPR-based governance mechanisms.

Building on the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework, this chapter examines how processes of knowledge production, transmission, and utilization give rise to various collective action problems and how firms address these problems. Drawing on stakeholder theory in management studies, the chapter distinguishes three governance models – the hub-and-spoke model, the lead role governance model, and the shared governance model – each offering different solutions to these challenges. A case study of the famous Czech firm Bat’a Enterprises in the early twentieth century demonstrates the practical application of the lead role governance model, which grants employees high autonomy while maintaining management’s central role in strategic decisions. Through profit-sharing schemes, decentralized workshops, and internal education, Bat’a effectively aligned individual incentives with the firm’s goals, mitigating collective action problems and fostering innovation. By analyzing Bat’a’s success, this chapter contributes to the understanding of knowledge governance in firms and underscores the connections with the GKC framework and Ostrom’s design principles.

If we take commons to be a kind of institutional arrangement enabling community governance of shared resources, the challenge involved in taking the corporation-as-commons idea forward is to specify what we mean by corporation in this context. We also need to determine who shares the corporation and identify the rules and practices that enable its provision, production, and reproduction in relevant action arenas. This chapter is an attempt to chart this course. Drawing on insights from the literature on the firm, it argues that the firm’s most critical resource is its "corporate mask," a special kind of institutional resource provided by the legal system that enables the firm’s members to operate as a singular actor in the legal and commercial spheres. But the corporate mask is not merely a legal construct – the social recognition of the firm as a corporate actor, a reliable business partner, a reputable producer of goods or services, and so on matter a great deal as well. The corporate mask is a legal and epistemic focal point shared by insiders and third parties with whom the firm contracts and more generally interacts in a network of adjacent action situations.

What is the employment law at international organizations? The answer – international administrative law – implements treaty-based employment at all international organizations, including the United Nations, International Labour Organization and the World Bank. It governs an encounter between the status of the international civil service, administrative authority at international organizations and the jurisprudence of international administrative tribunals. For the first time, the universal legal basis of international administrative law is concisely and clearly introduced, tracking the employee lifecycle, from selection, through remuneration, performance management and integrity to ending service. Drawing on the judgments of multiple administrative tribunals, a clear and useable interpretative framework of interconnected legal principles and legal duties is established. Intended for all staff at international organizations, Member State representatives, legal practitioners and scholars, this book serves as the basis for a shared understanding of international administrative law, equal to the enormity of the endeavours entrusted to the international civil service.

This chapter begins by introducing selection – the appointment, promotion and reassignment of international officials – as an administrative decision exercising discretionary authority, that is inherent to securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity necessitated by the treaty-basis of international organizations. Second, the legal principles of selection are identified, namely: (1) Absent abuse of discretion, deference is due selecting managers; (2) Vacancy announcements must be adhered to, but may be revoked; and (3) Selection defects must be manifest, to be contestable. Third, two attendant legal duties of selection are considered, as follows: (1) Selection must be competency-based; and (2) All candidates are entitled to consideration, but not selection. Fourth, non-competitive selection – through direct selection and reassignment – is examined. Fifth, the classification of positions that underpins the objectivity of selection is considered. Sixth, and in conclusion, the employment law of selection at international organizations is restated.

This chapter examines the relationship between human rights and Chile’s 1990-1991 National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, and the way this relationship continues to shape state-society relations in the aftermath of Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973-1990). The argument is two-fold. First, the Truth Commission draws on the language of human rights to authorize its account as the ‘major’ truth. Second, in doing so, the Truth Commission displaces from public life ‘minor’ truths, specifically the experiences of state-violence by Indigenous communities (Mapuche people) and women (Arpilleristas). The argument is based on an analysis of the representation of truth and authority embodied in Chile’s Museum of Memory and Human Rights. The chapter shows how the Museum gives continuity to the work of the Truth Commission by giving it a material (spatial and experiential) form. While the Truth Commission and the Museum remain two distinct institutions, in visiting the Museo/Truth Commission it becomes apparent how human rights authorizes the Truth Commission’s account, and how the Museo gives it continuity in public life.

The Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework draws attention to the content, quality, and consequences of the production, the institutionalized (community) governance, and the sharing of knowledge. In the domain of corporate governance, the key knowledge in question concerns the rules, mechanisms, and infrastructures that enable corporations to be governed. But how do actors understand what is going on and what is at stake in the field of corporate governance? Drawing on the sociological theory of Strategic Action Fields (SAF), this chapter provides an account of how different imaginaries of corporate status, architecture, governance, and purpose are actively created and promoted by different kinds of disciplinary specialists, standard setters, and practitioners. The chapter shows how the knowledge claims made by these epistemic communities up the 1960s and from the 1970s onwards underpin two competing social norms of corporate governance, which were expressed in different configurations of position, boundary, choice, aggregation, information, payoff, and scope rules.