Common Law, the shining cornerstone of the English Justice system, becomes a muddy pool when trying to uncover the ways in which it arrived into the early Virginian, Maryland, and early Eastern Australian colonies. This is particularly true for the common law of felony attainder. Attaint—social and legal death without physical death—had lasting implications on the question of legal personhood for the convicts transported from England to these colonies between 1614 and 1840. This article revisits the work done by Bruce Kercher, adding new primary research from the American colonies to enrich and challenge Kercher’s arguments. Expanding the primary source material used in the analysis gives us a deeper and more nuanced understanding about how attainder was received and applied in the colonies—in particular, in the American colonies—and a deeper understanding of outside forces that influenced property rights beyond that of the question of attainder. This article provides nuance to how common law was understood and applied by those with and without formal legal training in early developing colonial societies.

I examine the transformation of Italy during the fascist era and the way in which it was explained by one of the most prominent constitutional lawyers of the time, Costantino Mortati (1891–1985). A member of the Constituent Assembly of 1946–1948 and later a constitutional judge, Mortati had a deep influence on the Italian post-War constitutional thinking. Here I focus on Mortati’s understanding of the state’s transformation after 1922. I show how he conceptualised Italy’s transition from a liberal state to an authoritarian regime as a shift from the parliament to the executive of the power of ‘political direction’, ie, the power of identification of the aims and values of the state. Mortati did not envisage in the Italian transformation the full erasure of the separation of powers, but rather a large reshuffle of political direction moving from the Parliament to the Head of Government, allegedly a process in line with the country’s needs in the 20th century. He read the growth of executive powers as the most enduring constitutional transformation of his time, one destined in his mind to persist even after the downfall of the regime.

L’usage du français au Québec est en recul (Commissaire à la langue française, 2024a; Statistique Canada, 2022), contribuant à la perception que la langue française est menacée. Cette situation soulève plusieurs questions quant à l’évolution temporelle de l’opinion publique relativement à cette perception et ses conséquences politiques. Dans cet article, nous examinons d’abord l’évolution de l’opinion publique concernant la perception selon laquelle la langue française serait menacée afin de quantifier les changements survenus entre 1993 et 2024. Ensuite, nous analysons les déterminants de ce sentiment de menace. Enfin, nous examinons les conséquences électorales en politique fédérale. Les résultats illustrent (1) qu’une forte majorité des citoyens estime que le français est menacé, (2) cette proportion a nettement augmenté à travers le temps et (3) ce sentiment est lié au choix électoral. Ces conclusions suggèrent que les enjeux linguistiques constituent un facteur crucial pour mieux saisir la politique québécoise et canadienne.

In this paper, we study the existence of $k$-$11$-representations of graphs. Inspired by work on permutation patterns, these representations are ways of representing graphs by words where adjacencies between vertices are captured by patterns in the corresponding letters. Our main result is that all graphs are $1$-$11$-representable, answering a question originally raised by Cheon et al. in 2018 and repeated in several follow-up papers – including a very recent paper, where it was shown that all graphs on at most $8$ vertices are $1$-$11$-representable. Moreover, we prove that all graphs are permutationally $1$-$11$-representable – that is representable as the concatenation of permutations of the vertices – answering the existence question in extremely strong fashion. Our construction leads to nearly optimal bounds on the length of the words, as well. It can, moreover, be adapted to represent all acyclic orientations of graphs; this generalizes the fact that word-representations capture semi-transitive orientations of graphs. Our construction also adapts easily to other $k \geq 2$ as well, giving representations using a linear number of permutations when the best known previous bounds used a quadratic number. Finally, we also consider the (non-)existence of ‘even–odd’-representations of graphs. This answers a question raised by Wanless after a conference talk in 2018.

Perceptual disturbances are common in psychiatric and neurological conditions, yet some rare, non-psychotic disorders remain poorly recognised. This review examines two such syndromes: visual snow syndrome (VSS) and exploding head syndrome (EHS). VSS is marked by continuous ‘static’ across the visual field, often accompanied by palinopsia, photophobia and entoptic phenomena. EHS involves sudden, loud auditory sensations – like explosions or crashes – occurring during transitions between sleep and wakefulness. Although distinct in modality, both share common challenges: subjective distressing symptoms, normal investigation findings, frequent misdiagnosis and psychiatric comorbidities such as anxiety, sleep dysfunction and depersonalisation. The article synthesises emerging evidence on their neurobiological underpinnings, including cortical hyperexcitability, thalamocortical dysrhythmia and impaired sensory gating, and on pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatment options. Enhancing clinical awareness and adopting a multidisciplinary approach are essential for improving diagnosis and care. This article aims to support psychiatrists in recognising, differentiating and managing these complex perceptual disorders.

This essay opens JAS’s special issue on American Studies and the 2024 Election in which contributors explore issues that rose to prominence during the election campaign and the first months of the second Trump administration using a variety of disciplinary lenses and methodologies. It analyses why Trump became only the second president in history to win non-consecutive terms in office and assesses the transformative significance of his early second-term initiatives. At the same time, it advances the guiding premise of the special issue: that the broad objects of study, interdisciplinary approaches, and asynchronous perspectives of American Studies can combine with history and political science to help us better understand Trump’s victory, its causes, and its possible consequences. As demonstrated by It Can’t Happen Here, literature and other cultural outputs can enrich understanding of American history and politics at any given time. As an Area Studies discipline, with a geographical organising principle that compliments the traditional chronological frameworks of English and History, American Studies foregrounds relations between states and regions, and at a national and transnational scale that shape US politics and require consideration to better appreciate the complexity of the country that national aggregates may fail to reveal.

The international community has largely embraced the view that a regime that exercises effective control over the population and territory of a state is entitled to treatment as that state’s (what is often called de facto) government as a matter of international law. But individual states have retained discretion over when to extend full and formal (often called de jure) recognition to such regimes, which remains a traditional prerequisite for such foundational aspects of international relations as diplomatic and treaty relations.1 As a result, a state’s compliance with international legal standards regarding governmental status is contingent not just on how a state exercises its discretion over de jure recognition, but on how it treats de facto governments even absent such recognition. This essay brings the domestic legal and policy frameworks governing these decisions for one notable country—the United States—into dialogue with this symposium. The president exercises exclusive control over de jure recognition on behalf of the United States. But U.S. practice suggests that a more complex array of institutions and considerations can affect the treatment of foreign regimes. As a result, assessing U.S. compliance with relevant international legal standards requires one to look beyond formal U.S. recognition policies—and attempting to do so in turn highlights some areas where international standards may warrant further development.

It is often said that natural law and interpretive perspectives of adjudication are incompatible with the notion of judicial law-making—in contrast to positivist and legal realist perspectives, which are hostile to the declaratory theory. One must either accept the declaratory theory or accept that judges make law, but one cannot accept both views. This article draws upon the jurisprudence of H.L.A. Hart, Karl Llewellyn, Lon Fuller, and Ronald Dworkin to push against the idea that these conceptions of the common law judicial method are fundamentally discordant. It is argued that, properly understood, the declaratory theory can be reconciled with the notion of judicial law-making.

In this paper, we develop a model economy to study how financial innovations affect financial access and inequality. Financial innovations alter distribution of costs. In this way, the measure of buyers is endogenous regarding the payment method. In studying financial innovations in an economy with limited commitment, it is possible to bridge two existing literatures. When comparing stationary equilibria, we find that the results depend on the scarcity of collateral. Moreover, the expected welfare and inequality are affected by consumers access to the form of payment systems.

The 2016 election serves as an important case study in understanding how gendered political contexts can shape emotional reactions and engagement, particularly among women. Two important features of that election, Trump’s treatment of women and Clinton’s historic run for office, influenced emotional reactions to politics in distinct ways. We used two experimental designs in which participants were randomly assigned to read vignettes about Trump’s treatment of women or Clinton’s historic run for office. Reading about the former led to higher anger, especially among Democratic women and men, while reading about the latter increased enthusiasm among highly educated women. These elevated emotions increased intended future engagement. We conducted a third study in which we induced anger about Trump’s treatment of women and found that it led to greater intended engagement.

In the 1990s, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) emerged as the primary international forum for managing the interface between biodiversity and biotechnology. Three legally binding protocols to the Convention were concluded, all aiming to regulate bio-innovation. Despite the rapid pace of biotechnological innovation, however, and its implications for biodiversity and equity, CBD policy outcomes have recently shifted towards lower stringency in substance and weaker institutionalization in process. To confirm this trend, we examine decisions adopted by the CBD Conferences of the Parties in 2022 and 2024. We focus on outcomes on three key agenda items: (i) digital sequence information on genetic resources, (ii) risk assessment of living modified organisms, and (iii) synthetic biology. We analyze shifts towards lower stringency in the light of scholarship on legalization and de-legalization, including the softening of international law. We conclude by assessing the implications for the CBD, and for global biotechnology governance more generally.

French diachrony offers two textbook examples for negation studies: the evolution of ne…pas illustrating the Jespersen’s Cycle (Dahl, 1979) and the evolution of polarity-neutral items into negative indefinites (NIs), sometimes termed the Quantifier Cycle (Willis et al., 2013) and often exemplified by personne.

However, a significant disparity exists between the detailed research on ne…pas and the vagueness surrounding personne’s as NI origins. While its medieval origin is accepted, the dating of first attestations and definitive grammaticalization varies (Déprez, 2011; Vachon, 2012; GGHF, 2020), and predominant noun use and data scarcity hinder firm conclusions (Déprez, 2011; Larrivée & Kallel, 2020). Consequently, assumptions about personne’s development as an NI rely heavily on parallels with rien and aucun, lacking support from quantified data.

Through a corpus study of personne in Medieval and early Pre-Classical French (9th–16th centuries), focusing on its evolution into an NI, this article reveals a unique trajectory for personne, further demonstrating the variety characterizing the macro-construction of French NIs (Hansen in GGHF, 2020). Methodologically, the communicative immediacy-distance theory (Koch & Oësterreicher, 1985) and the “represented speech” perspective (Marchello-Nizia, 2012) prove relevant for tracing innovation in written diachronic corpora.

The Christian Holy Land is defined by and through representation. Images of Christ’s life, death and resurrection draw on scriptural details to set sacred events in a Palestinian landscape. A desire to witness locations marked by divine presence propels Christian travellers towards monuments built to enshrine the terrestrial traces of the faith’s central mysteries. Shortly after the fourth-century construction of Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea declared that the sight of Christ’s empty tomb in the structure testified to the truth of the Gospels ‘by facts louder than any voice’.1 Textual descriptions, visual depictions and monumental designs soon began to reference the church’s characteristic architectural features. This intentional layering of structure and Scripture enabled readers, viewers and users to activate these associations from afar.

The 2023 Barbie movie became an unexpected touchstone in my clinical practice. In the months after the film’s general release, children, young people and adults quoted from the film’s comedic moments and inspirational monologues, using them as a shorthand for complex emotional experiences, and to identify struggles and experiences of care and recovery. The film’s playful tone and layered themes allowed for moments of humour alongside serious introspection. This paper describes an exploration of the Barbie movie as a shared cultural language that facilitated therapeutic conversations and provided a narrative framework for self-exploration. Drawing upon concepts from narrative medicine, psychoanalytic theory and the enduring cultural symbolism of Barbie, this discussion positions the Barbie film as a displacement object, a transitional space, a narrative tool and a fitting metaphor for adolescent development as well as recovery. I consider the impact of the film’s rich cineliteracy on clinical practice, against a background of historical psychiatric discourses around the Barbie doll, and her enduring cultural symbolism. Fictionalised clinical encounters illustrate how young people engaged with Barbie to explore issues of gender, trauma and institutional structures. This paper argues that an openness to integrating popular media into psychiatric practice expands the scope of assessment and therapeutic engagement, allowing children, young people and adults to express their experiences through culturally familiar, accessible narratives.