What does conducting law and society scholarship have anything to do with wilting blooms? In this essay, Lynette J. Chua makes the connection between the two through her reminder to law and society scholars to study the taken-for-granted, an intellectual project that has become all the more urgent as politicians and activists contest concepts such as citizenship, gender, territories, religion and rights. She also calls upon fellow law and society scholars to be humble – for the significance and impact of our research, like flowers, could come and go with the seasons.

Frank Knight’s work is examined through the lens provided by the posthumous publication of his essay “Economic History” in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas in 1973. Knight identified pivotal ideas in economics from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations until the time of his retirement from the University of Chicago, with some recognition of earlier contributions. The priority he gave to liberty within economics shows in the connection between Adam Smith and American independence. He then worked his way chronologically through a consideration of eight “moments” from classical economics, almost all declared errors. After identifying marginalism with the turn to economic science in three moments, he identified fifteen more moments that led to the development of a science focused on entrepreneurs and enterprises. Knight’s conclusion provides brief mention of six movements that claimed to conflict with economics, although Knight argued that none of them actually conflict.

Employer complaints about rising health care costs have been ubiquitous for a number of years. Survey evidence, though, finds widespread employer shortcomings in the processes they use to select and monitor health plan service providers. The evidence provides a data-driven basis to assess whether employers meet their fiduciary obligations, leading to the conclusion that employers need to increase their diligence or face the possibility of significant liability. The increased diligence may also mitigate health care costs.

This essay compares and contrasts the disciplines of sociology and law and society. I then outline how sociology can enrich law and society with stronger theory-building and better linkages of theoretical frameworks to empirical data. I next consider how law and society can enrich sociology, including by encouraging sociologists to take seriously law’s constitutive nature and to engage more directly with their work’s normative implications. Throughout, I draw primarily on research on U.S. immigration enforcement, which is both my area of study and a site of rich cross-pollination between the two fields.

The present work investigated changes in well-being during the transition out of upper secondary education (i.e., from shortly before graduating from upper secondary education to approximately one year later). The motivation for a post-school pathway (e.g., starting university or vocational training) was examined as a potential predictor of between-person differences in well-being trajectories. German-speaking high school graduates (N = 874 between ages 16 and 20; 69% female, 95% born in Germany) reported on their affective well-being in up to four surveys and indicated their motivation for their post-school pathway. At three measurement occasions, participants also participated in a three-week experience sampling phase, in which they reported on their daily well-being. Latent change models revealed an initial increase in well-being after graduation, but mixed evidence for subsequent trajectories, as both positive and negative affect decreased on average. Changes in well-being were more pronounced for global than for daily assessments of affective well-being. We did not find associations between the motivation for a post-school pathway and well-being trajectories. Overall, these findings highlight the complexity of well-being trajectories during the transition out of upper secondary education and the importance of using multiple time points and assessment methods to understand these dynamics.

We report on a first-principles numerical study of magnetic reconnection in plasmas with different initial ion-to-electron temperature ratios. In cases where this ratio is significantly below unity, we observe intense wave activity in the diffusion region, driven by the ion-acoustic instability. Our analysis shows that the dominant macroscopic effect of this instability is to drive substantial ion heating. In contrast to earlier studies reporting significant anomalous resistivity, we find that anomalous contributions due to the ion-acoustic instability are minimal. These results shed light on the dynamical impact of this instability on reconnection processes, offering new insights into the fundamental physics governing collisionless reconnection.

This article deals with late antique Jewish and Christian discourse on social hierarchy, martyrology, and attitudes toward the law and the commandments. I place Jewish and Christian attitudes to martyrdom in late antiquity within the larger system of the commandments. Beyond the circumstantial connections between martyrdom and the affirmation or violation of laws, I argue that martyrdom constitutes an important lens for the examination of the rule of the law and for the negotiation of socio-religious hierarchies. I argue that the elevation of martyrdom creates inner tension vis-à-vis the idea of life-long righteousness based on adherence to the law. I discuss the construction of martyrdom as the final and ultimate commandment, necessary for reaching a state of perfection. Through addressing a case where martyrdom is presented as competing with, if not substituting, a life according to the law, I discuss the theme of an upside-down world, which appears in both Christian and Rabbinic literature, concerning martyrs. In this framework, I discuss the view of martyrdom as a kind of stairway to heaven—an instrument for rapid advancement allowing to overtake those who lived according to the law—and the unique perception of law and martyrology in the fourth-century Syriac-Christian Book of Steps, which places the martyrs below the perfect.

The moduli space of bundle stable pairs $\overline {M}_C(2,\Lambda )$ on a smooth projective curve C, introduced by Thaddeus, is a smooth Fano variety of Picard rank two. Focusing on the genus two case, we show that its K-moduli space is isomorphic to a GIT moduli of lines in quartic del Pezzo threefolds. Additionally, we construct a natural forgetful morphism from the K-moduli of $\overline {M}_C(2,\Lambda )$ to that of the moduli spaces of stable vector bundles $\overline {N}_C(2,\Lambda )$. In particular, Thaddeus’ moduli spaces for genus two curves are all K-stable.

There is much discussion about the inability of political systems in democratic countries to deal with a range of problems, aspects of which all to some extent relate to the current evolution of global economic growth and its environmental consequences. The paper explores some long-term underlying causes of the inability of national political systems to adapt to global markets in trade and labour. This is primarily because of how the nation state developed over the long term as a means of providing employment and basic necessities to its subjects and citizens.

To understand the early modern Caribbean, we must understand the societies that inhabited it. The parameters through which historians approach these societies have changed drastically in the last decade. While recent interventions have proven useful for framing our attitude to how populations in the Caribbean formed, they are less effective when applied to societies whose longevity was uncertain that, in some cases, fractured or collapsed. It is in this context that some historians have identified what they term “sinew populations”: communities whose “off-grid” nature necessitates different ways of thinking about how they functioned. Recent works have discussed how sinew populations ensured the long-term viability of their communities, but this approach also requires attention to the factors that could render a sinew population’s existence unviable.

This article uses an eighteenth-century Caribbean population of pirates as a case study to illustrate the issue of viability within sinew populations. In particular, the article emphasizes the weak social foundations on which this sinew population was built and the lack of interest among the pirates themselves, after 1718, in maintaining a large pirate population. In thinking about how pirates related to one another and what this meant for the long-term survival of the pirate sinew population, this article demonstrates the importance of social maintenance for understanding how Caribbean societies operated.

This study uncovers a previously overlooked chapter in the historiography of civil disobedience: Menachem Begin’s resistance to Israeli emergency legislation between 1948 and 1954, which he argued undermined foundational democratic principles. It presents the first scholarly analysis of Begin’s resistance, contending that it constitutes a clear instance of civil disobedience, embodying its core tenets. At the heart of this historical case study lies a paradigmatic question: how can laws that erode foundational—yet abstract—democratic principles, such as the separation of powers, be effectively resisted, and can such resistance be accommodated within traditional frameworks of civil disobedience? Begin’s struggle brings these questions into sharp relief, illuminating longstanding critiques of the framework’s overly restrictive boundaries and underscoring the tension between theoretical frameworks and political reality. More broadly, the article engages central debates at the intersection of law, politics, and democratic thought. By examining the democratic convictions of a prominent right-wing leader, it contributes to historical scholarship on the role of conservative and right-wing movements in shaping democratic ideologies, while also providing a historical reference point for subsequent ideological transformations and radicalization processes within these movements. Finally, by illuminating the complexities inherent in opposing laws that erode core-yet abstract-democratic principles, this study resonates with contemporary debates on democratic backsliding, offering a historical lens through which civil disobedience has served as a principled response to such challenges.

Our collective futures depend on ecological stewardship rooted in both understanding of and care for the complex relationships of forest ecosystems. In particular, nuanced insight into forests’ entwined link with climate change is integral to policies and practices that can mitigate the worst climate impacts and sustain resilient multispecies communities. To this end, we foreground a creative approach to critical data literacies in the context of the biodiversity and climate crises. As part of the project Forest Carbon Futures, we present three explorations into different creative avenues for representing data, which share common aims of exploring the value of storytelling and situatedness in supporting more palpable connections between people, forests, stewardship responsibility, collective agency and more resilient futures. We position this inquiry as a valuable facet within an emerging field of Critical Forest Studies that holds promise in fostering ecologically-attuned understanding and care in relation to forest landscapes. Through interdisciplinary co-inquiry grounded in design and creation methodologies, we offer a constellation of interlinked themes, strategies and insights to inform transformative approaches to environmental education in our current era of ecological disconnect and rampant mis/disinformation.

The Chignecto Isthmus is the sole land connection between Nova Scotia and mainland Canada, supporting national trade, agriculture and transportation. Much of this low-lying corridor is protected by aging dikes that are increasingly vulnerable to compound flooding from tides, storm surges and sea-level rise. This study combines static flood modeling and GIS-based land use classification to evaluate the elevation-based flood exposure of infrastructure and agricultural land. A planar water surface modeling approach validated with differential GPS measurements was applied to a 1-m-resolution digital elevation model. Results indicate that water levels in the adjacent basin can reach within 1 m of the mean dike crest elevation during spring tides. Planar surface modeling scenarios demonstrate that relatively modest increases in water level beyond this threshold could result in inundation, affecting thousands of hectares of cropland and hundreds of hectares of developed land, along with critical transportation infrastructure. This exposure has the potential to disrupt agricultural productivity, rural livelihoods, groundwater quality and interprovincial supply chains across the isthmus. While simplified, this analysis highlights the diminishing safety margin afforded by existing dikes, underscores the need for more detailed scenario-based modeling and reinforces the importance of proactive adaptation planning to safeguard this nationally significant corridor.