Few areas in social history have been studied as much as the ‘old poor law’, that sophisticated welfare system which developed in England from the reign of Elizabeth I. But on 19 May 1662 – as this book has shown – that system entered a new phase. A formal provision for parish ‘settlement’ had been enacted by parliament, which defined the capacity of poor people to claim relief or to face removal, and which continued to develop, affecting law, society, and state formation, and the lives of millions for centuries to come.

However important this ‘settlement’ law proved to be it was hardly the outcome of a well-considered legislative process. On the contrary. In the course of four days, from 15 to 19 May 1662, many of the act’s most important innovations were agreed. They included a property threshold for gaining parish settlement, which prevented most labouring migrants from acquiring parish belonging outright; a removal procedure; tasks and roles for the parish officers and the magistracy; an administrative overhaul for the northern counties; and even a new facility for penal transportation to ‘plantations’ overseas. The bill thus received the royal assent with many of its innovations rewritten, erased, inserted above the line, or literally stitched in, inscribed in different hands, on detached pieces of parchment, sewn to the main body of the roll with needle and thread.

This chapter draws out international laws applicable to ensure the navigational safety of submarines and to establish what laws apply when a submarine is ultimately lost at sea. The discussion is concerned with both military and private submarines during times of peace. To avoid collisions, submarines must account for surface traffic as well as submerged traffic and deploy appropriate signals and sounds. Submarines prompt distinct questions with regards to navigational safety. Where a submarine is in distress and ultimately sinks, consideration is further needed as to international law rules on search and rescue, as well as the law of wrecks and possible salvage. For submarines that have been lost at sea for a long time, safeguarding underwater cultural heritage may become a key consideration. When lost at sea, the relevant laws are comparable to other ships or warships but the difficulty rests in the interaction of those rules.

The use of submarines in World War II and the development of submarine technology into the Cold War had implications for different fields of international law. This chapter addresses the peace negotiations and agreements that were adopted after World War II, which concerned the decommissioning (to varying degrees) of submarines and efforts to revise the Montreux Treaty. International law developments were sometimes slow, as evident in responses to violations of the law of naval warfare. Equally, the chapter highlights the rise of nuclear technology in relation to submarines and the modest advances in international agreements on nuclear tests. Despite the growing strategic importance of submarines in the Cold War, their explicit regulation in the 1958 conference and treaties on the law of the sea was scant. Instead, international laws relating to the passage of warships and military activities on the high seas generally impacted international laws regulating submarine operations.

This chapter traces the legal development of trans rights advocacy away from a medical model towards one based on gender identity. This shift resulted in an expansion of both terminology and concepts to encompass a broader cohort of individuals than previously envisaged. This eventially led to attempts by activists to reform the law towards a self-identification model. Both the Scottish and the UK government proposed gender recognition reform. After consultation, the UK government abandoned the project, concerned about the impact on women’s rights, but the Scottish government pressed ahead, ultimately leading to a legal dispute when the UK government used a power within devolution law to prevent the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill from obtaiingn Royal Assent. This Chapter analyses the impact that self-identification of sex would have had on women’s sex-based equality rights and the resulting legal challenge brought to the lawfulness of the UK goverment blocking Scottish gender recognition reform.

Empirical legal studies in EU law routinely, if not inevitably, engage with text. From the decisions of national courts applying EU law, applicants’ case filings, to the Court’s own jurisprudence, these texts are an invaluable source of information for researchers seeking to understand the dynamics involved in the shaping of EU law and its broader societal impact. Distilling relevant information from legal texts, however, is anything but trivial. Intended to serve as a reference manual, the chapter offers detailed guidelines to researchers of both law and political science interested in employing a text-as-data approach to the study of EU law. To this end, we elaborate on how to conceptualise real-life phenomena in a way that renders them conducive to measurement, providing practical guidance on hand-coding and the use of deep learning classifiers. Further, we address potential challenges arising in the specific context of EU law. This includes limitations to access to relevant documents, as well as ensuring inter-coder reliability in data collection efforts that require specialised legal expertise.

Chapter 12 offers a provocative and jurisprudentially ambitious argument: that sovereign equality requires states to submit to international adjudication or arbitration even in ordinary legal disputes that do not involve overlapping sovereign rights or powers.

In Chapter 3, notions of kinship and family come to the fore. Once belonging had been articulated by the settlement laws, and moreover was seen to have been invested not only in individuals but in families, the question soon arose: who counted as ‘family’ for the purposes of the law? For example, when and under what circumstances would the status of ‘child’ expire? What would be the effects of marriage and remarriage? A study of legal sources helps distil the changing regulations – another unintended consequence of the settlement laws which affected millions, and echoes today. A case study concerning one woman illustrates the effects of the settlement laws on kinship and community relations. Local and regional samples suggest how the law was implemented in near and distant localities.

Following World War I, the regulation of submarines was manifested in several signature developments that are discussed in this chapter. Following disarmament requirements in the Treaty of Versailles, the major powers further sought to limit armaments, especially submarines, through the negotiation of the 1922 Submarine Treaty and the 1930 London Naval Treaty. These agreements purported to restrict the number of submarines and other naval vessels held by any one State, but were ultimately unsuccessful. Also in the inter-war period, agreement was sought on the regulation of the Turkish Straits, with restrictions imposed on Turkey’s control over these waters and stipulating what vessels were allowed passage and under what conditions. Finally, the 1930 Hague Codification Conference entailed detailed discussions over the rights of warships, submarines and other vessels in the territorial sea. While this conference did not lead to the adoption of a treaty, the work achieved influenced subsequent codification efforts.

The Court of Appeal in Higgs v Farmor’s School has provided a detailed analysis of the relationship between anti-discrimination and human rights standards in the workplace where employees manifest protected beliefs. Unfortunately, this analysis suffers from a central flaw by presuming that if manifestation of belief is protected under direct discrimination, it will always be unlawful for an employer to interfere. It is this presumption which prompted the Court of Appeal to defend the introduction of a justification test into what was previously a factual analysis of causation, by deeming less favourable treatment in response to ‘objectionable’ manifestations to have not been ‘because of’ the protected belief itself. This chapter argues that such an approach is unnecessary because it responds to a problem which does not exist. It is simply incorrect to presume that protection from direct discrimination necessarily implies that any interference with the manifestation of a protected belief is directly discriminatory. The ordinary application of the Equality Act is already coextensive with the protections afforded under the European Convention on Human Rights. Any interpretation needed under s.3 of the Human Rights Act is needed within the sphere of indirect discrimination, not direct discrimination.

There is a long history of persecution of the Yazidi minority in Iraq. Following the rise of ISIS in the early 2010s, however, their status as non-Muslims rendered them particularly vulnerable. According to ISIS’ interpretation of Islamic law, Yazidis were infidels. Men who refused to convert were to be killed, and women enslaved. Therefore, when ISIS launched a surprise attack on Sinjar, a region heavily populated by Yazidis, all those who could immediately fled. Tens of thousands of Yazidis became stranded and besieged on Mt Sinjar, in extremely hazardous conditions. At imminent risk of genocide, they desperately sought assistance. Within days, a multifaceted international response enabled the vast majority of them to survive and escape. A key focus of the chapter is the nature of that response. It considers what led to the provision of emergency humanitarian aid, to the US military strikes that prevented further ISIS attack, and to the opening of a route to safety. Through careful examination of these critical events, it identifies the factors that mitigated genocide. The chapter concludes by reflecting on what lessons can be learned from this case study of resilience.

The fifth chapter turns to war and peace. The role of England’s poor relief system in assisting war efforts has been suggested by scholars. This chapter argues that were it not for the development of settlement laws, one can only wonder whether the ‘fiscal-military state’ would have enjoyed such support. The chapter shows how the responsibilities of the parish officer expanded to assist the fiscal-military state, and the roles taken by the county administration. It also explains how the New Militia, established at the start of the Seven Years’ War, relied on the parish’s administrative apparatus and employed the settlement legislation in sophisticated ways. However, as time went by complexities arose. The greater the needs of recruitment and disbandment, the more the eighteenth-century state relied on the mechanisms of parish settlement; at the same time, military needs also led to partial suspension of the settlement laws.

How should scholars use the interviews they conducted for a research article or a book chapter? Is there a recommended style or format for presenting findings from qualitative research? Throughout the author’s ten years of interviews, these questions have seldom been raised. In every research process, there comes a point when authors turn to their data to begin writing about it, and yet this writing phase is rarely reflected upon in any meaningful way. This chapter offers some thoughts on the use of interviews in EU legal research. It first discusses expert interviews as a distinct category, particularly relevant to EU legal researchers. Expert interviews in EU legal scholarship typically address complex, embedded situations involving influential political and legal figures who are especially vulnerable to breaches of anonymity. These interviews are often part of research with significant policy relevance and implications beyond academia. The chapter then discusses how such expert interviews can be used. It provisionally explores three guiding principles: situatedness, transparency, and integrity for qualitative legal researchers writing both about and with interviews. It is fair to warn, however, that none of these principles offers quick fixes or guarantees of academic recognition or accolades.