This introduction briefly glances at Pindar’s poetry and its later reception so as to set the scene for the volume that follows. Before outlining the shape of the book and its chapters, it surveys the recent history of Pindaric criticism so as to provide the reader with a sense of its wider intellectual context.

References to Ignatius Sancho’s wife, children, and family life are interweaved throughout his letters. Sancho often wrote to his friends, briefly updating them on his family’s well-being and activities. When these brief references are collated and analyzed, an underrepresented perspective of Sancho’s family as a middling Black family emerges, where the Sanchos each embody the ideal representation of husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, and children. These references to the Sancho family in the Letters help make the Sancho family one of eighteenth-century London’s most well-documented Black families. More importantly, the family’s representation in the Letters answers essential questions about how the Black family were perceived in society and the role class, race, and gender play in shaping childhood, parental relationships, and family life. This chapter details the representations of Blackness, fatherhood, motherhood, and childhood observed in the Sancho family.

The right to water is a central theme in Islamic thought, emphasizing its status as a divine gift and a communal resource integral to human dignity, environmental stewardship, and social justice. This study explores the manifestation of this principle within Islamic-Iranian cities, examining both historical and contemporary perspectives on water management, conservation, and urban development. Grounded in Islamic teachings, including the Quran, Hadith, and Sharia law, the paper highlights key principles such as equity, sustainability, and the balance between human and environmental needs. The architectural and urban planning traditions of Islamic-Iranian cities, characterized by sophisticated water systems like qanats, cisterns, and public fountains, reflect the integration of faith, culture, and practicality in addressing water scarcity. By analyzing Islamic environmental theory and the framework of integrated water resource management, this study underscores the role of water as a cornerstone of sustainable urban living, advocating for the preservation of water resources as a moral and ecological obligation for future generations.

The study of law suggests that its performances, largely through the format of trials, take place behind the closed doors of courtrooms. Little of the exterior would seem to intrude upon its routines and, vice versa, little of what might constitute law’s performativity occurs outside of its bounded architectural habitat. Yet this has not always been the case. Numerous examples of outdoor performances provide a rich study into the siting of legal performance. The argument presented in this chapter is that it was initially the outside that provided the primary stage and staging of law. Asserting the presence of law across the various and remote parts of the realm required performances of its majesty on the very surface of the earth. It required acts heralding, inscribing and publicising common law as the law of the land and so it was the land that had to become the physical platform and the scene of its delivery. The evolution of common law depended upon the rudiments of landscape, on the plotting of the countryside, and on the elemental matter of the earth. Such features formed a stage on which the emergence of common law not only took place but was very much performed.

Locating Prohibition's Origins in Colonial India

India is the only country in the world to have prohibition written into its national constitution as an ideal. Article 47 of the Constitution of India establishes that ‘the state shall undertake rules to bring about prohibition of the consumption, except for medicinal purposes, of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injurious to health’. Although the state is obligated to implement the policy, there is no compulsion to do so within a stipulated time frame, which makes it a Directive Principle of State Policy – an ideal. As much a national ideal as an instrument of state power, prohibition's fate has been entwined with the rise and fall of state governments since the country's independence.

Prohibition has also spawned its own political economy in India, with a broad spectrum of political parties professing commitment – though usually short-lived – to its enforcement. The specific circumstances of its introduction have varied across the country, as have the policy's trajectories and outcomes. Local cultures, economic circumstances and the demands of state governance have directly contributed to these differences. Besides Gujarat, which has enforced prohibition since 1947 despite a series of hooch-related tragedies and other controversies, Bihar, Mizoram and Nagaland are all ‘dry’ states at the time of this book's writing. Alcohol is all but banned in the union territory of Lakshadweep, although prohibition has been greatly contested in recent years. The association between prohibition and M. K. Gandhi has been the strongest in Gujarat, whereas evangelical Christianity paved the way for the policy's introduction in Nagaland. Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Manipur and Haryana have all tried prohibition on for size at various times since independence, only to suspend it as better suited for implementation at an unspecified time in the distant future. Crippling fiscal deficits and a strong liquor lobby heralded prohibition's termination in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala respectively.

Greek melic poetry is characterized by its pragmatic features. It is thus natural to find strong differentiation within it: this is what we mean by the word genre in this context. Pindar’s genres are distinguished by their occasion, whether ‘secular’ or cultic; by their mode of performance; and by the identity of the chorus. These distinctive elements could overlap to produce hybrids. When Pindar’s oeuvre was gathered and catalogued during the Alexandrian period, each ode needed to be sorted into a ‘genre’, as indicated by its dominant characteristics. Of the seventeen books into which Pindar’s work was subdivided, the four books of epinicians have reached us practically intact by way of medieval transmission; of the other books, fragments of various lengths come from the papyri or indirect transmission, posing very different problems. In the case of the papyri, the main difficulty lies in the material conditions of fragmentation and legibility. When it comes to indirect transmission, we must consider the intentions of the quotation and the reliability of the witnesses, which is greater if stylistic or grammatical in nature, lesser if philosophical or otherwise ideological.

The introductory chapter presents an overview of the classical doctrine of civil war and discusses some of the reasons for studying them. It argues that some doctrine of civil war is an inevitable component of any international legal system. Observing how the doctrine of civil war that existed in the age of sail and steam has come to seem rather opaque and remote in the present day, this study aims to offer modern readers a valuable review of that past tradition and to help them remember how such a doctrine once came to be and what happened to it. At the same time, the purpose of the book is not to argue for a revival of or return to the classical law, but rather to better understand the aspirations and limitations of the law of past generations, which may not be too unlike those of our own times.

Quintilian suggests that law be learned in significant part a comicis, from the usages, customs and comedies of everyday life. Starting out from the theatrical and foundational form of a legal dialogue between sovereign and philosopher on pedagogy, the body, letters and images, this chapter examines the fabrication of common law in terms of what the barrister Blount coined as comediography (comœdiographus). In whirl and jig, lawyers and playwrights of comedies share a trajectory from conflict to resolution, disruption to decision, that provides a harmonious conclusion for the audience if not necessarily the actors.

In this chapter, we will discuss how to implement the graph processes we have defined elsewhere in this book. The fundamental implementation obstacle is that for practical applications, the graphs one desires to use can be very large.

The attraction of using artificial intelligence (AI) to support judicial decision-making in the administrative context is obvious, but the considerations used for judicial review of algorithmic decision-making (ADM) ought also to be applied to judicial use of ADM in order to ensure its fair and optimal use. This chapter focuses on the UK experience to argue that five factors should be considered: (1) the potential for a particular area to be technologically justiciable; (2) the definition of a fair procedure and the need to choose the model or form of automation to fit the particular purpose and context of the system; (3) the need for gisting, wherever it is important to provide contestability of the system; (4) the iterative adoption of technology at a macro level, with a proportionate right to individual-level accuracy at the micro level; and (5) the need for safeguards on the use of data from one area in another. The availability of these insights in public law has the capacity to inform our choices, not only in the administrative justice context, but also across the board.

The fifth chapter examines the European Union’s course correction since the late 2000s, which is characterised by a paradigm shift away from market-oriented liberalisation towards a comprehensive security orientation. Empirically, the chapter is dedicated to EU crisis management between 2009 and 2025, examining key events such as the Eurozone crisis, the migration crisis, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine. The analysis considers both institutional changes and the development of political narratives and priorities. It identifies a third major transformation of European integration, after those of the 1950s and the 1970s/80s. This change was brought about not by planned reforms, but by crisis-driven adjustments. The new security orientation reflects both the loss of post-Cold War optimism and the realisation that the EU must act in an increasingly dangerous world. While this transformation has strengthened the EU’s ability to survive, questions remain about the democratic legitimacy and effectiveness of the new security architecture.

In conversation with Peters’s Law as Performance, I suggest paying closer attention to dialogue as one central element of performance itself. In this contribution, I analyze the configuration of affective spaces based on the characteristics of dialogue in legal settings, from legislation to inquisitorial cases.