The concept of ‘stereotypes’ refers to generalisations that are made about the behaviour adopted and/or the characteristics possessed by the members of a particular group. Involving presumptions about human actions and attributes, a stereotype provides ready-made narratives as to how and why some events unfold as they do. Thus, stereotypes, especially when they operate ‘undetected’, hamper an objective analysis of the factual situation. In the courtroom, they tend to have a polluting effect on the assessment of evidence, leading to relevant pieces of evidence being ignored, irrelevant circumstances being given weight, and higher standards of proof being imposed than would have been the case in their absence. This chapter focuses on the approach of the CEDAW Committee in examining the impact of gender stereotypes on the evaluation of evidence performed by domestic courts. It provides an in-depth analysis of the views adopted by the Committee in selected individual communications.

Observation is a dynamic process important to our successful navigation of the world around us. It is not mere passive absorption of sensory input, but the ability to carefully attend to the richness, complexity, and interestingness of our daily experiences. This chapter suggests that engaging with the arts invites us to look more closely and intentionally, to notice patterns, to see nuance, and to seek the meaning of and in our observations. The chapter analyzes a plethora of empirical evidence across domains suggesting that observational and attentional skills can be developed through domain-specific arts training and may generalize beyond arts contexts. Trained artists, for example, often use distinct attentional strategies, exhibit greater attention flexibility and perceptual accuracy, and tend to process information more holistically than nonartists. Likewise, guided close-looking in visual arts contexts – whether in museums or classrooms – has been linked to improvements in clinical observational skills, diagnostic accuracy, and a willingness to engage with ambiguity. These capacities also underpin our abilities to experience empathy, to detect, interpret, and regulate our emotions, and to approach differences with curiosity, openness, and flexible thinking.

Economic growth boosted living standards after it first surfaced in Britain in the 1700s. Why did it not arise earlier or somewhere else? Why did it spread quickly to northwestern Europe, but take longer to reach much of the rest of the world? The answer is not slavery, colonialism, or capitalism. Rather, it lies with advantages shared by much of northwestern Europe: institutions that secured property rights with benefits beyond a narrow elite; states that could rearrange property rights with credible compensation to improve transportation and agricultural productivity; cities made possible by productive agriculture that spawned agglomeration effects like those at work in Silicon Valley; skilled workers who could implement new ideas; and access to the ideas themselves from the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. Northwestern Europe had these advantages for four reasons: its history, its religion, its intellectual heritage, and its distance from Eurasia’s steppes. Those four reasons are the ultimate causes for the onset of sustained economic growth in Britain in the 1700s and for its spread to northwestern Europe.

How much of the legislative agenda and the set of statutory law in a state legislature originate outside of the legislature? This chapter turns to a detailed source of data in California to answer these questions. In the California state legislature, the non-legislative “sponsor” is indicated on the bill analyses (the legislator who introduces the bill is called the “author” in the legislature.) A range of groups are indicated on these bill analyses, from California cities to major corporations. This unique reporting institution allows me to identify partnerships between a variety of extra-legislative organizations and legislators at the bill level. I gather information on the outside legislative sponsor on all bills introduced in the legislature from 1995 to 2014. A majority of California's statutes are proposed by outsiders. A set of explorations demonstrates that legislators with less experience rely more heavily on outsider input. Further, bills sponsored by state agencies, municipal entities, and think tanks, experts, and commissions are especially successful in their pursuits at bill passage. Drawing on both quantitative analysis and oral histories from former legislators, this chapter reveals the extent of group participation in crafting state policy – even in a highly professionalized legislature, non-legislators play a central role in shaping the law.

Racism is a fundamental threat to human rights and to child and youth health and wellbeing. Addressing racism is a human rights priority and essential to ensuring all children and youth are able to realize optimal health, development, and wellbeing. This chapter first provides a brief overview of the multiple ways racism operates to impact child and youth health, development and wellbeing in school settings, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data on the prevalence and impacts of racism in schools, and children and young people’s views regarding potential remedies. It then discusses principles of anti-racism interventions in school settings and evidence-based exemplar programs. We primarily draw on our experience and learnings within an Australian context, recognizing that while racism and its expressions share many similarities across settler-colonial settings, there are also considerable historical and contemporary social and political differences.

With rising incomes, population growth speeds up and then slows as incomes climb. This demographic change is driven by economic growth, not the reverse. That was the case in northwestern Europe in particular, and its precocious economic growth did not result from any other demographic advantages such as an unusual family structure. Northwestern Europe did benefit, though, from highly productive agriculture that allowed northwestern Europe’s peasant farmers to feed a larger urban population than in China. They could do this from roughly 1500 on because unlike peasants in eastern Europe they were free of serfdom and their property rights that were secure. They also enjoyed a favorable natural environment. With the food they produced, northwestern Europe early on developed clusters of cities that were unknown elsewhere in Eurasia and that proved crucial for economic growth. These urban clusters helped circulate new technologies and ideas. Such urban agglomeration effects were critical to the Industrial Revolution.

Why do we need another book on ethnic and racial discrimination? Why should scholars, parents, educators and policymakers care about the impact of discrimination on our young people? The answer is both simple and complicated. The simple answer is that discrimination matters for how young people grow up – how they see themselves when they look in the mirror, how they see themselves as members of society, and how they see the prospect of their futures. But it is not just how they see themselves. Discrimination also matters for how they engage with their peers, how they develop a sense of self, how their bodies grow, and how they experience age and time. The more complicated answer is that who perpetrates the discrimination (e.g., peers, adults, teachers, strangers), when in the life course young people experience discrimination, what sources of support are available, how many forms of discrimination young people are exposed to (e.g., racial, ethnic, weight, language, gender, sex, sexual identity, adoption), and how young people respond physiologically and emotionally also matter for the ultimate impact that discrimination has on how they grow.

As we have seen in Chapter 1, the discovery of Kepler’s laws is a long and troubled story. Kepler was fully aware of the importance of his discovery, as we can guess while reading the few quotations of his books in these pages. Only later were his laws synthesized into the short and elegant statements that we may find in every book on Mechanics or Celestial Mechanics.

Can works of art teach us something, perhaps about ourselves, about the world, or about what matters? This chapter addresses whether and how the arts contribute to learning by drawing on insights from epistemology – the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge. It considers how the arts contribute to the various ways of knowing that philosophers distinguish: propositional knowledge (also called “know-that”), experiential knowledge, understanding, and skill-based knowledge (also called “know-how”). With respect to each, there are promising ways of working out how art may contribute to our epistemic growth. At the same time, each candidate type of knowledge faces challenges and complications that limit its ability to be the singular answer regarding learning from and through the arts. Ultimately, this chapter suggests that “know-how” – or skill-based knowledge – is an especially fruitful concept for understanding how we become epistemically better off through engagement with the arts. This chapter thus suggests that becoming epistemically better off through engagement with the arts is not about acquiring knowledge of facts, but rather about developing ways of seeing, perceiving, interpreting, and responding to the world more skillfully.

Over time, United Nations human rights treaty bodies (UNTBs) have developed an admissibility requirement that individuals’ allegations be ‘sufficiently substantiated’ or ‘not manifestly unfounded’. Explanations of these terms have varied, but States, treaty body members and scholars have equated them with a prima facie threshold. Among international tribunals, prima facie is commonly understood to require the complainant to make a plausible claim. However, review of UNTB decisions indicates that application of this requirement clashes with the accepted meaning of prima facie by: (1) often requiring the complainant to present convincing allegations; (2) taking into account – or giving greater weight to – the state’s arguments and evidence at the admissibility stage; and 3) sometimes requiring the complainant to pre-emptively overcome the state’s possible defences. This chapter seeks to identify relevant trends in order to both better understand current UNTB practice and illuminate paths to greater consistency and clarity in admissibility determinations.

Before accessing the UN treaty bodies’ individual communications procedure, a complainant must have exhausted domestic remedies. This admissibility rule exists for good reasons, but it has limits. In particular, exemptions must be recognised in respect to domestic remedies which lack effectiveness, including accessibility. Regrettably, UNTBs are currently reverting to a formalistic and mechanical application of this admissibility rule. What justice requires, however, is the opposite: an expansive consideration of the plethora of barriers that prevent access to domestic justice, as well as a reflection about how each barrier can realistically be evidenced by a complainant. This can be achieved, this chapter argues, through an individual-centred, contextual approach, which achieves the aim of preventing the state from escaping international scrutiny, while highlighting the crucial role domestic justice should play in remedying human rights wrongs.