The chapter opens with comments on autobiographical writings by Petrarch, Augustine, Uriel da Costa, Franciscus Junius, Ludvig Freiherr von Holberg, Jan Amos Komenský, and Leibniz. There are seen as attempts to make sense of one’s own life circumstances, while aware that absolute knowledge of one’s own life is not possible. This is particularly salient when it comes to understanding one’s sufferings. Following this, there is a discussion of the concepts of public and fatherland, comparing contemporary times to olden times, primarily Greek and Roman antiquity. The public is understood as a kind of collective moral and legal arbiter, and language plays an important role in its existence. This is seen to be particularly important for what is called a public of the Hebrews. The contemporary public is that of Christianity, but also of commerce, schools, and universities. A fatherland is explained in terms of familial bond to a community and a link in the chain of humanity. This is followed by a discussion of Machiavelli, Hugo Grotius, and Leibniz.

Inter-Asian Law is starkly absent from constitutional accounts of reproductive rights in Asia. Instead, Asian jurisdictions tend to draw from the Global North, with the United States Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade occupying norm status. To explicate the potential of Inter-Asian Law in transforming reproductive rights, an act of imagination is required, suspending Roe as the central comparative frame and introducing alternate, hypothetical referents from Asia. This chapter conducts this task at two stages. First, it develops imagination as a method of comparative constitutional law. Second, applying the imaginative method, it hypothesizes what reproductive rights might look like if Nepal served as a referent for India and India as a referent for Bangladesh. In documenting explicit shifts in the constitutional construction of these rights, the chapter cements the place of Inter-Asian Law.

Chapter 3 both deepens and problematises the legal understanding of literature by attending to the making and perception of typefaces, particularly the Breitkopf Fraktur typeface in which Kant’s 1785 essay was set. Close reading a 2001 House of Lords decision, Newspaper Licensing Agency Ltd v Marks & Spencer Plc, allows us to see that literary copyright and published edition copyright, though pertaining to the respective labours of authors and publishers, nonetheless share an ‘originalist’ aesthetics of the book that affirms the myth of proprietary authorship. To dislodge copyright’s originalist aesthetics, I revisit and compare Fichte’s and Kant’s accounts of the printed book in late eighteenth-century Germany, which, in their own ways, anticipate and undermine the contemporary legal perspective. Unlike Fichte, Kant recognised the visual materiality of the book, including the perceptibility of its typeface and typesetting, which pointed to an historical domain of embodied interactions. Guided by Kant, I attend to two aspects of the material history of the Breikopf Fraktur typeface: the history of its production and the history of its perception. This material history of the typeface, which reveals the deep interactions between human actors and print technologies, acts as a counter-image to copyright’s originalist aesthetics.

The Introduction describes case method pedagogy from both a historical and theoretical perspective. It provides an author statement, and describes what cases are, what the benefits of the case method are for teachers, and outlines the organization of the casebook.

While it is important to trace Emerson’s main positions, one misses the living nature of his philosophy unless one also takes account of the motions, moods, and patterns within his essays, and the ways he dramatizes instability, spontaneity, and inconsistency. This emphasis is found in Goodman’s discussions of “History” in Chapter 1, “Friendship” in Chapter 3, “Nominalist and Realist” in Chapter 4, “Manners” in Chapter 6, “Experience” in Chapter 7, “Nature” in Chapter 9, and “Illusions” in Chapter 10. Chapter 2 distinguishes the sheer variety of skepticisms in Emerson’s thought, about the world and other minds, but also about mystical experiences that refuse “to be named” or are “ineffable.” It also attends to the differences between the “modern” tradition of skepticism as doubt, and skepticism as a form of life, with Emerson’s essay on Montaigne a key source for his idea of a “wise skepticism.”

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the United States Information Agency (USIA) printed tens of thousands of copies of a comic book called A Picture Story of the United States. Culminating in the mid-1970s, this chapter traces how and why U.S. information strategists came to embrace the women's movement as part of their larger promotion of the American way of life internationally. Echoing the disinterest in the burgeoning women's movement shown by most of the U.S. media, USIA limited its iage of women's activism until the early 1970s. It is clear that the tone and breadth of USIA's iage of women's rights made a significant shift from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s. Abandoning their original linkage of gender equality to communist duplicity, U.S. information experts came to embrace the women's movement as another chapter in America's ongoing narrative of expanding freedom and opportunity.

The transition to a low-carbon economy requires a transformative shift akin to past industrial revolutions. This shift involves three key changes: redirecting corporate investment toward green technologies, reallocating capital from carbon-intensive industries, and adjusting household consumption toward sustainable practices, potentially affecting productivity, growth, and well-being. The process will incur short-term economic costs as investment is redirected, leading to stranded assets and slowed productivity. Additionally, global disparities in transition policies may also distort competitiveness and reshape trade patterns. Despite these challenges, the long-term potential for green growth remains promising, as falling renewable energy costs suggest that sustainable growth could eventually surpass that of fossil fuel-based economies. However, during the transition, the focus on environmental investments may not immediately expand production capacity, resulting in temporary economic and social costs.

The present volume offers twelve new essays by leading scholars working from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives: theology, both systematic and historical; ancient history and early Christian history; and ancient and medieval philosophy. It is a fitting variety of approaches for a work that emphatically – and sometimes bewilderingly – is not just one thing. The Confessions is an autobiography, a prayer, a song; it is a treatise on God and his providential governance, both of one life and of the whole sweep of history; it is a meditation on Scripture. It is meant to inform, to perplex, but above all to “lift the human heart and mind to God” (retr. 2.6.1). Even the word confessio has multiple meanings: solemn avowal or acknowledgment, the offering of praise and thanksgiving, and the admitting of one’s own sins.

This introductory chapter starts by considering the distinction between doubt and denial, and why retaining doubt in science is needed to ensure claims are accurate. It then discusses neuroscience aims and claims, and how the insight obtained is directed at translations to practical use in artificial intelligence, neurology, psychiatry and wider translations to society; for example, education and cognitive enhancement. The chapter highlights the relevance of philosophy and history to science, aspects to which science students are seldom exposed. This includes discussion of science denial by popularist politicians and corporations who try and ignore or dismiss evidence that negates their views or products. These aspects are highlighted as being important to defend science and ensure that scientific claims are as accurate as possible, and that in an age of disinformation we all need to think critically, mirroring the workers’ educational movements of the late nineteenth century.

This chapter examines cases where cryptocurrency has been used by terrorist actors. At the same time, the chapter also examines the important role played by the private sector in ensuring that virtual assets are not misused. The chapter also takes a peek at the role of government regulation in the industry and where the private sector has concerns regarding an overly interventionist approach that could stifle a new technology.

Can neurotechnologies be used responsibly in the rehabilitation of convicted persons, respecting fundamental freedoms and rights? This is the question we have endeavoured to answer throughout this book. The human rights challenges generated by new and emerging neurotechnologies have been widely noted by scholars, ethics committees and human rights bodies. This has prompted a debate on how and to what extent human rights protect – and should protect – against unsolicited interference with our brains and minds. In a recent report on the impact, opportunities and challenges of neurotechnology in relation to human rights, the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee concluded that neurotechnologies can affect human rights in a “unique manner”. Therefore, developing an actionable human rights approach is of the “utmost importance”. Some of their concerns relate to the potential use of neurotechnology in the criminal justice system, holding that “most of the applications proposed are extremely problematic from a human rights perspective”. For example, they consider that “forceful extraction of information from detainees or offenders through the use of neurotechnology is prohibited”.

This chapter traces the changing contours of police corruption in Buenos Aires, Argentina during the short lifespan of the Metropolitan Police force (2008–2016) and, in doing so, illustrates the utility of a comparative historical, embedded approach. Based on in-depth interviews with dozens of police officers, public officials, technical experts, and activists, I argue that seemingly contradictory accounts of the Metropolitan Police as “surprisingly clean” and “deeply corrupt” were, to some degree, both true. On the one hand, rank-and-file officers rarely engaged in bribery, extortion, or irregular patrols, all of which remained ubiquitous in other police forces. This outcome was driven by the unique organizational characteristics of the new force but also by the structural configuration of the field, in which the nationally controlled Argentine Federal Police (PFA) remained the dominant player. At the same time, there were credible allegations of illicit revenue extraction, illegal surveillance, and ties to organized crime among Metropolitan Police leaders who – unlike PFA bosses – were tied to the Buenos Aires city government. Given this structural configuration, corruption generated novel political effects, contributing to the Buenos Aires mayor’s successful bid for the presidency.

Technology, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has enabled many people to work remotely. Some have moved to countries where they enjoy benefits such as a lower cost of living, more leisurely lifestyle, and, in some cases, greater political stability. These are the digital nomads, and they raise fascinating tax questions, chief among them whether states should tax citizens wherever they reside or whether and under what circumstances they should tax non-citizen residents. This question is important because those most able to move are the highest-skilled and wealthiest. This chapter will approach the question from a historical and policy perspective and explore the relevance of connecting factors, such as membership in a political community, as a legitimate basis for taxation even of nonresident citizens. It will also explore potential abuses by mobile taxpayers seeking to escape their legitimate share of the national tax burden.

Up until the age of thirty-four, Robert spent his life in Zwickau and Leipzig, proximate municipalities in Saxony with utterly different commercial and cultural offerings in the first half of the nineteenth century. This chapter outlines the development of Zwickau and Leipzig up to ca. 1850 and Robert’s life and work in them. Born in Zwickau in 1810, Robert spent his childhood and youth here; he also received his first musical training in this town. After graduating from high school in 1828, he went to Leipzig to study law. From the confines of provincial Zwickau, he had come to a major city. While he initially looked forward to living there, he soon felt uncomfortable. Despite the significance of Leipzig and the opportunities it offered, Robert’s aversion to the city endured for a long time. Later, however, he viewed it as his ‘home’, the centre of his life.