This chapter focuses on the American Revolution of 1775–1783, which often appears as the first cause célèbre in the subsequent literature on the law of civil war. Studying closely the legal documents and case law during the revolution, it argues that the revolution of the thirteen colonies displayed a typical structure of transatlantic civil wars that was common with the early modern civil wars of Chapter 1 as well as the subsequent transatlantic revolutions. Its key features include the early emergence of an insurgent prize jurisdiction, the diplomatic disputes caused by the imperial counter-revolutionary responses, the question of foreign intervention, and ultimately the connection between sovereignty and state responsibility. It also links these phenomena with the rise of international arbitration as an essential technique of post-revolutionary settlements in the classical law of nations.

This chapter surveys developments related to the use of generative AI in courts in the United States. It discusses a range of current uses of generative AI by judges, lawyers, and ordinary citizens, and explains commonly cited concerns that these uses raise, such as worries about inaccuracy and bias, as well as newly emerging concerns. The chapter also surveys efforts to regulate these tools in the US, such as judicial bans and requirements of disclosure and certification.

Caste, Country Liquor and Company Raj

The year was 1710. The wardens of a European cemetery in Madras wrote to East India Company officials complaining about the nuisance they had to put up with owing to the coconut trees on the property. This was a peculiar complaint; we do not normally imagine coconut trees when we think about sources of public nuisance. The crux of the matter at hand was that the gates had to be kept open all the time so that a certain country liquor could be drawn and sold. Variously described as the homegrown beer or palm wine of the Madras Presidency, the miscreant in question was toddy, the word deriving from the Hindi tari. In this imperial account, the cemetery was rendered noisier than all the punch houses in Madras put together as basket makers, scavengers, buffalo keepers ‘and other Parriars (Paraiyars)’ converged there at night to drink toddy, whereupon inebriated ‘beggars and other vagabonds’ even proceeded to lie down in freshly dug graves. Company officials wrote to the governor recommending replanting the trees elsewhere to relieve the European community of their troubles. The offending coconut trees were promptly removed.

As Company officials increasingly found themselves thrust into the role of a governing body in the Presidency of Fort St George, they found themselves having to develop a coherent response to the issue of alcohol, which eventually became the precursor to the colonial state's alcohol policy. Observations of local drinking cultures that a broad cross-section of European society had contributed became the basis of their response, which evidenced a growing reliance on strategies constituting governmentality over time.

Pindar the thinker’ is not a common notion in his criticism; some stubborn prejudices may account for this state of affairs, as well as misleading modern connotations of the word thinker. He was in fact one of the great minds of his day, a sophos of the first rank. This chapter explores his thought in two spheres of activity – politics and religion – and seeks to identify his unique contribution to and outlook on these topics (which were closely interrelated in Greek life). Pindar’s lavish use of gnomai (maxims) affords a convenient guide to both because Greek thought often took gnomic form, and the interpretation and adaptation of traditional wisdom were the mark of the sophos. The paper also charts Pindar’s connections with writers we tend now to label the Greek philosophers.

The evolution of AI presents both challenges and opportunities for courts. To date, most discussion and examination of AI and courts has focused on decision-making tools, reflecting a broader trend in discourse around courts that unduly centres on courts’ adjudicatory functions. Yet courts perform a far wider set of functions and societal roles. This chapter examines the current and potential uses of AI, questions of suitability and ethics, and the challenges and opportunities that arise through this broader consideration of what it is courts actually do, beyond determining disputes. While AI may enhance access to justice, reduce costs, save time, and potentially improve the quality of justice, significant challenges arise, including the potential erosion of judicial respect, inaccuracy, and concerns for the separation of powers. Crucially, court users and the public ought to be more widely consulted in how AI is developed and deployed for courts to achieve better, fairer, and more effective justice.

I turn now to questions concerning killing in war. I first rehearse Thomas Aquinas’s treatment of the conditions that must be met for a just war. Aquinas clearly differs from me in his belief that those with public authority are morally entitled to intend death as part of what is required for them to carry out their responsibilities. I argue, however, that even St Thomas is more restrictive with regard to intentional killing than are some contemporary Thomists.

Although everything we know about Ignatius Sancho’s early life comes to us from a short biographical sketch written by the lawyer Joseph Jekyll (1754–1837) as a preface to Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho: An African (1782), much of this is unsubstantiated and some appears improbable, exaggerated, or even invented. This chapter accordingly offers a critical reassessment and attempts a historical reconstruction of Jekyll’s “Life of Ignatius Sancho.” It offers a possible version of events that may explain Jekyll’s account of Sancho’s childhood journey from Cartagena to London. It argues, however, that the challenge of verifying much of “The Life” remains insurmountable at present and we can better understand “The Life” as a rhetorical intervention in the early phase of the British abolition campaign rather than as an unproblematic record of historical events. Jekyll’s “Life” may offer the reader, this chapter concludes, a moral rather than a literal truth.

Ever since the earliest Arabic writings on medicine we meet treatises on widespread illnesses or crowd diseases, including epidemics. Some of those works discuss the causes and treatment; others deal with the treatment only. This paper is limited to the works that deal with environmental pollution as a cause of such illnesses. They cover subjects like air and water contamination, solid waste mishandling and environmental assessments of certain localities. The treatises reviewed are those written by (1) al-Kindi, (2) Qusta b. Luqa, (3) alRazi, (4) Ibn al-Jazzar, (5) al-Tamimi, (6) Abu Sahl al-Masihi, (7) Ibn Sina, (8) Ali b. Ridwan, (9) Ibn Jumay’, (10) Ya’qub al-Isra’ili, (11) Abdullatif alBaghdadi, (12) Ibn al-Quff and (13) Ibn al-Nafis. Studying the contents of each work shows which authors were merely copying the Greek theory of humours and miasma, and which made genuine contributions to the field. The period covered in the paper is up to the end of the thirteenth century A.D. This is because the Black Death took place in the fourteenth century, and encouraged several authors of that time to write about epidemics and plagues. Other contemporary researchers have studied these later works.

This chapter discusses the importance of the audience in research on forensic performance. “Forensic performance” is taken here to include the dramaturgical techniques that inform Erving Goffman’s account of “the presentation of self in everyday life,” extending not only to ways of affirming one’s own position but also to ways of portraying the various figures or propositions in a legal dispute. These practices include the use of speech, gesture, and ritual to convey arguments, embody or criticize legal authority, and impersonate a party, witness, or any other participant in an actual or imagined scenario. The audience includes those in the courtroom and imagined observers in the larger public. The chapter begins by examining criticisms of forensic performance in the early modern period and then turns to the use of cross-examination in the nineteenth century. Finally, the discussion considers judges’ behavior, particularly when they encourage the audience to laugh in response to their questions. By doing so, judges merge the role of an impartial interlocutor attending to policy questions and the role of an individual to whom the law might apply.

The present chapter attempts a comparative analysis of three different legal systems and their approaches to environmental law, contributing to the extensive literature on this area of law in numerous areas of the world such as the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. However, that literature appears to have had little coverage of the treatment of environmental law in Islamic law, one of the three main global legal systems together with common and civil law. The bold spread of Islamic tendency in the Middle East that followed the so-called “Arab Spring” assures major changes in the political and economic sphere, including environmental and natural resource levels. Environmental threats are very pressing all over the world, as the Earth needs to be protected through the adoption of universally applicable legal rules and the right to a healthy environment needs to be elaborated on in international instruments. Man’s position in the universe is premised on two principles: the stewardship of man which means that man is not only a creature but also God’s khalifa (steward) on earth.

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are used in court to analyse legal data, cite case law, evaluate and generate evidence, or support judges with prediction. As technological advancements enter the courtroom, assessing their impact on core judicial values is crucial. This chapter asks whether AI undermines procedural fairness in judicial decision-making. To address this question, it first presents procedural fairness as a normative concept studied across different disciplines. It shows why procedural fairness matters and what values fair procedures aim to foster. Drawing on case studies and scholarly work, it then illustrates how AI systems may impair these values. It then investigates how regulatory attempts and ethical frameworks for AI in judicial systems aim to address the resulting issues by analysing fundamental principles of technology regulation. The main argument of the chapter is that AI regulation must be complemented by specific procedural rules tailored to the judicial domain. In the age of AI, fair procedures should realise participation, increase trust, preserve neutrality, and provide mechanisms to detect errors in AI systems.

This chapter brings the book to a close by advancing an understanding of languaging as a relational, embodied, and political practice. Rather than treating language as a neutral vehicle for transmitting information, the chapter emphasises how languaging is deeply entwined with questions of identity, belonging, and power. It is shown to be simultaneously playful and precarious, resistant and creative, continually challenging static and purified notions of language. The chapter further develops the notion of pedagogical languaging as a way of reframing education in response to the radical cultural and communicative reconfigurations of the twenty-first century. Pedagogy, it argues, must move beyond the delivery of standardised curricula to become the intentional design of spaces where learners mobilise their full semiotic repertoires such as linguistic, embodied, cultural, and digital in dynamic, relational, and multimodal meaning-making.

This chapter speaks of Sancho’s meaning to me as a Black Briton. It is also about his general place in the pantheon of Black British figures. I write about belonging and Sancho because it is at the heart of the reason to study a life such as his. Knowing about this Black Briton and his eighteenth-century world can impact on Black lives lived in the UK today. Sancho’s legacy is his engagement with the world of his time and the mirror of that engagement in ours. Artistic, political, and domestic history is interwoven with personal views on a figure who made his compromises and his accommodations in a world not designed for him or people like him. My chapter seeks to unearth a little talked about and less known subject, which is Britain’s deep and exceptionally involved participation in the human trafficking of millions of Black people from the continent of Africa. I conclude with highlighting the positive, contemporary manifestations of interest in Sancho and his world.