In Tuscany, music is employed by park authorities, as well as cultural and conservation organisations, to attract visitors to natural and protected areas. This article examines the benefits of incorporating music performances within these natural settings, highlighting improvements in management, income generation for maintenance and conservation, increased visitor numbers, and enhanced environmental awareness. Through qualitative interviews and the analysis of four case studies, this article explores how integrating musical performances into ecotourism activities can foster a sense of place and stewardship among visitors and local communities.

Maritime security challenges are intensifying globally, from armed attacks on shipping in the Red Sea to critical infrastructure sabotage and environmental threats from shadow fleets. These developments have led some to question whether the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) remains ‘fit for purpose’. This article reframes that debate, suggesting that maritime security operates through a complex assemblage of institutions and mechanisms. In this context, UNCLOS is best understood not as a monolithic ‘constitution’, but as one important site in a more complex and dynamic system of maritime security governance. It examines how the United Nations (UN) system, regional organisations and informal arrangements collectively address maritime security challenges, revealing both the strengths and limitations of this diverse governance landscape. The analysis shows that while this complexity enables flexible responses to varied challenges, it also creates coordination problems and accountability gaps. Rather than calling for a revision of UNCLOS, the article proposes three pathways for recalibrating the system: establishing a dedicated UN maritime security body; addressing interface conflicts through targeted interventions; and selectively formalising successful informal mechanisms.

In this paper, I want to challenge the rationalist-compatibilist intuition that for freedom to be a rational two-way power, the relation to reasons cannot be a mere necessary condition for the actualization of the power. To this end, I discuss Crusius’s voluntarist conception as a historical case study.

According to Crusius, any choice of an action, as the activity of freedom, requires not only the evaluation of the available options but also something like the ‘active embrace’ of an option as a necessary condition. It will become clear that this ‘active embrace’ is Crusius’ way of expressing the incompatibilist idea that there is no necessary, determining connection between judgement and choice. This conception of freedom has the advantage over rationalist-compatibilist approaches that it is much better suited to account for the case of choosing between equally good options. This case is crucial to us as rational agents when it comes to the question of what to make of one’s life, what career to choose. In my view then, that Crusius’s approach can account for this case is a reason that strongly speaks in favor of his conception of freedom.

Cyprian of Carthage’s On the Lapsed, written in the aftermath of the third-century Decian persecution, contains several stories of the eucharist attacking apostate Christians. These Christians claimed they had been admitted to the eucharist by local, highly esteemed martyrs and confessors. Cyprian, who had fled during the persecution and been unpopular since the day of his election, could not afford to confront this group directly. Instead, he crafted a text that conjured up an autonomous eucharist that policed itself against unworthy intruders. Moreover, he used the graphic language of bodily suffering and dismemberment to scramble the boundaries between lapsed Christian, bishop, and martyr, essentially reconfiguring himself as a martyr.

The shuhūr sanah, also called the Shuhur era, was a solar calendar used in Deccan India in the pre-modern and early modern periods. Scholars have long assumed that the calendar was instituted in the early fourteenth century, sometime in 1344–1345 CE, although, to date, no primary evidence from the fourteenth century has been examined to substantiate this inaugural date or explain the circumstances that led to the genesis of the calendar. In the present article, I discuss a 1333–1334 CE Persian epigraph from Daulatabad that uses the phrase shuhūr sanah and argue that the calendar was instituted during a period of economic, administrative, and agricultural uncertainty in the reign of the Delhi Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq (r. 1325–1351). In so doing, I re-date the inauguration of the calendar to a decade prior to what has been assumed thus far and posit a new theory about the calendar’s longevity in the Deccan. More broadly, I examine the historiography and the historical usage of the Shuhur era in the Persianate epigraphic corpus. The survey reveals how the Shuhur era was used to make public-facing pronouncements and also clarifies the limits of the calendar’s usage. The calendar was popular in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; after this period, it was phased out by other calendrical systems preferred by the Mughal (1526–1857) and the Maratha (1674–1818) empires, who came to control the Deccan.

Whether the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is being praised or criticized, the focus often is on the perceptions of it in African countries rather than how it is conceptualized in those countries and by continental entities such as the African Union (AU). As a result, there is no understanding of the collective African conceptualization of the BRI and how that conceptualization shapes the continent’s engagement with China and, in turn, the perceptions of the BRI. By employing the intentionality, instrumentalist, and geopolitical approaches, this study analyzes Africa’s conceptualization of the BRI as a global project through the lens of strategic utility, intentionality, and geopolitical positioning, which can be summarized as “strategic globalism.”

Due regard obligations require both States and non-State actors to reasonably consider the rights or interests of other States or non-State actors when exercising their own rights and performing their duties. This article examines how due regard obligations should be interpreted in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) in light of the adoption of the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement). As human activities in ABNJ increase, due regard obligations become crucial for balancing the competing rights and interests of States, non-State actors and relevant institutions, frameworks and bodies (IFBs). The literature and case law have mainly addressed conflicts between coastal and flag States concerning the application of due regard obligations within national jurisdictions. Different dynamics arise in ABNJ from potentially conflicting activities and disagreements between States with the same rights or interests, or those between States, non-State actors and IFBs. This article addresses this gap by analysing the new dynamics of due regard that are expected to arise concerning marine genetic resources and area-based management tools with the implementation of the BBNJ Agreement.

Armed conflicts often spill over from the land to the sea, rendering the law of naval warfare key for governing such conflicts. Against this background, the United States Naval War College developed the Newport Manual on the Law of Naval Warfare (Newport Manual) in 2023, which attempted to codify the existing rules of customary international law. However, this manual differs from the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts (San Remo Manual), adopted in 1994, particularly regarding the rights of neutral coastal States over their exclusive economic zones (EEZs). While the San Remo Manual requires belligerents to have due regard for such rights, the Newport Manual assumes that such due regard is not required under customary international law. These divergences are derived from different understandings of the relationship between the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the law of naval warfare. This article analyses this by examining the two manuals as well as the domestic military manuals of maritime powers. It concludes that due regard should be paid to neutral States’ EEZ rights, but the standard of due regard during an armed conflict differs from that applicable during peacetime.

In this essay, I analyse how practices of press denunciation operated within Hungary and impacted the theatrical landscape during the Cold War era. I examine how this technique of denunciatory criticism was transformed in Hungary with the change from the Stalinist ideocratic field of power to a post-Stalinist, now post-ideocratic, system, and also how denunciatory theatre criticism in the press, in its most severe form in the given circumstances, operated in this system. Adopting a structural approach, my aim is to examine what I am calling the ‘denunciatory article or criticism’ – the published article denouncing a particular artist or work aiming at ‘withdrawing from circulation’ the targeted artist, work or, indirectly, sometimes a whole series of artworks, or an entire movement. I argue that the denunciatory article is part of the system of state cultural control rather than simply aesthetic criticism. I am taking a well-known case in Hungary – the neo-avant-garde artists of Balatonboglár – to explore the operations of sociopolitical and professional power that resulted in the exile of these artists from Hungary in the early 1970s. In an era of ‘fake news’ and of increasing censorship of publications, this operation of power is becoming increasingly relevant and urgent.

In January 2019, Nigeria enacted the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act, which provides for a joint legal framework for both competition and consumer protection. This article examines the theoretical and practical rationale for integrating competition and consumer protection, recognizing that, while related, the two may pursue distinct goals and operate under different principles. It provides a lens to review the issues an African country faces following integration, especially in the broader normative discussion of the goals of competition law. Although there is literature investigating the integration of consumer protection and competition, there is still nothing that examines the place of consumer protection in the wider theoretical context of competition for developing countries, particularly how they balance efficiency with other goals of competition. The article also offers the first academic review of the five-year practice of competition law and its application in Nigeria.

Credibility and intent are important but imprecise legal categories that need to be assessed in criminal trials as neither common nor civil legal systems provide decision-makers with clear rules on how to evaluate them in practice. In this article, drawing on ethnographic data from trials and deliberations in Italian courts and prosecution offices, we discuss the emotive-cognitive dynamics at play in judges’ and prosecutors’ evaluations of credibility and intent, focusing on cases of murder, intimate partner violence and rape. Using sociological concepts of epistemic emotions, empathy, frame and legal encoding, we show that legal professionals use different reflexive practices to either avoid settling on feelings of certainty or overcome doubts when evaluating credibility and intent. Empathy emerges as a multifaceted tool that can either generate certainty or be used deliberately to instigate or overcome doubts. We contribute to the growing body of literature addressing the emotional dynamics of legal decision-making.

This article is concerned with the question whether a defendant in an unjust enrichment action can reduce or eliminate its liability by establishing that it could have obtained the enrichment (or part of it) from the claimant in a way that would not have given rise to liability. The answer in principle ought to be no. In arguing for that conclusion, I consider the meaning of “enrichment” and “loss”, the nature of the change of position defence and the basis of liability for unjust enrichment in cases involving ultra vires charges by public authorities and the taking of money without consent by private defendants.

Damage caused to underwater infrastructure has increased in frequency over the past few years. Incidents in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea have shown that anchor-dragging ships can easily cause disruption to internet or electrical networks, along with examples of other methods of deliberate harm, such as the use of explosives. The main legal challenges to the protection of critical offshore infrastructure lie outside the limits of the territorial sea. Relevant treaty law grants stronger legal protections to wrecks, unmanned platforms and floating buoys than to cross-border submarine telecommunications and power cables or gas and oil pipelines. Whilst the legal framework is fragmented and contains significant gaps, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea permits coastal States to enforce their laws for the protection of submarine cables and pipelines outside the territorial sea. Based on the effects doctrine and the protective principle, coastal States can extend their criminal jurisdiction over deliberate damage to submarine cables and pipelines connected to their territory. Furthermore, recent incidents in Europe show that suspected stateless ships can be interdicted by the coastal State.

In the aftermath of the adoption of the Implementing Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biodiversity in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement) and in view of the global target to protect at least 30 per cent of the ocean by 2030 (30×30), an issue that merits attention is the surveillance of marine protected areas (MPAs) on the high seas. The BBNJ Agreement is remarkably silent on how the relevant management measures in future MPAs will be implemented, despite the fact that enforcement challenges are prevalent in existing MPAs. This article discusses the potential use of maritime domain awareness (MDA) tools, including earth observation tools like satellites, in ensuring effective surveillance and subsequent enforcement of high seas MPAs. The article first introduces the concept of MDA and the use of earth observation tools in that context, highlighting the advantages that such tools may have in ensuring compliance in MPAs. It then explores the legal framework governing the employment of earth observation tools in high seas MPAs. The article argues that States are not merely permitted but also obligated to monitor their vessels’ activities in high seas MPAs. Furthermore, States are under a general obligation of cooperation, including the obligation to share information that is obtained by MDA tools. Finally, the article briefly discusses how evidence, like satellite imagery, could be used for enforcement purposes, including before domestic courts. It concludes that the use of earth observation tools would be instrumental to the effective surveillance and enforcement of high seas MPAs.