This article explores the connection between the ecclesiology and the beliefs on church-state relations of Baptists in the mid-twentieth-century United States. The author analyzes white Baptists’ reactions to the US Supreme Court rulings in Everson v. Board of Education (1947) and McCollum v. Board of Education (1948), both of which inaugurated the modern era of strict separationist Establishment Clause jurisprudence. The author also traces the development of Baptist beliefs on how the institutional church relates to individual salvation—beliefs that distinguished Baptists from both Catholics and most other Protestants—and statements from US Baptist leadership supporting church-state separation. The author demonstrates that Baptists’ beliefs on the internal, individualistic, and non-sacramental nature of salvation induced them to see any government-sponsored religious activity as likely corrupting of a person’s genuine choice of salvation. Furthermore, Baptists’ origins as a persecuted minority in Europe and the United States reinforced their idea that government-sponsored religion would lead to the suppression of true Christianity. For both reasons, then, state-sponsored religion was not God’s design. Beginning with Everson and McCollum and continuing with later cases through the 1960s, Baptist’s strict separationism became the binding interpretation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause through Justice Hugo Black, who authored both the Everson and McCollum majority opinions. Although no longer a Baptist when the rulings were issued, Black retained his Baptist influence on church-state issues and enshrined strict separationism into American case law for decades, leading to a Baptist triumph that many Baptists themselves would later regret and attempt to reverse.

We consider three American policy controversies that have entailed memorable drives to repeal congressional measures. Those drives have targeted the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition), Section 14b of the Taft–Hartley Act, and the Affordable Care Act. We do not consider the actual conduct of these repeal drives. We consider the overall policy controversies in which the drives have figured. Components of this focus include factors related to political geography, Congress’s deliberative content and style, the U.S. system of vertical federalism, the U.S. system of elections, the role of crises, and the consequences of conflict. One line of takeaway is the following. In each of these three policy enterprises, we see a kind of controversy in which extreme intensity has joined with striking geographic differentiation in views. As a practical matter, the policymaking process in these cases has enrolled a multiplicity of actors, including the states as well as the public, and it has extended across time. All this activity has arguably constituted the policymaking process. In these instances, this is how the country has been making certain of its major decisions—jaggedly and extendedly. A congressional enactment can be just a first draft.

While extensive research exists on general pornography consumption, there is limited focus on the consumption of non-preferred sexual content and its potential associated discomfort. In 2019, a total of 1,133 Spanish men aged between 18 and 40 years (M = 24.78; SD = 5.91) completed a questionnaire regarding their consumption of male–female, female–female, and male–male pornography, the attentional focus, as well as the discomfort they experienced when aroused by such materials. The results were analyzed based on five groups of sexual attraction, ranging from “exclusively heterosexual” to “exclusively gay.” Regardless of sexual attraction, men reported consuming and experiencing arousal by all three types of pornography. Exclusively heterosexual men primarily consumed and were aroused by male–female and female–female pornography, while exclusively gay men preferred male–female and male–male pornography. Men with nonexclusive sexual attraction, especially bisexual men, exhibited high levels of consumption and arousal across all types of pornography evaluated. When watching male–female pornography, exclusively heterosexual men reported focusing more on women, exclusively gay men on men, and men with nonexclusive attractions on interactions among individuals. Male–male pornography material caused the most discomfort. These findings illustrate the variety of experiences of consumption and arousal by pornography, even from featuring non-preferred sexual activities. The study also highlights the associated discomfort, particularly with male–male pornography. Further exploration is needed to understand the phenomenon behind this discomfort, such as internalized desires, and to promote a more flexible understanding of sexual identities to support inclusive and healthy sexual health practices.

The European Union (EU) has embraced the “twin transition” – the simultaneous pursuit of digitalisation and ecological transformation – as a cornerstone of its industrial policy. EU lawmakers argue that digital technologies can advance environmental protection by enhancing environmental monitoring, optimising resource use, and enabling data-driven sustainability efforts. However, this vision tends to overlook the environmental costs of digitalisation, including rising energy and water consumption, intensive resource extraction, and the proliferation of electronic waste. This article critically examines whether EU law is adequately equipped to support a twin transition, drawing on a black-letter analysis of EU legal provisions, as well as insights from science and technology studies and critical environmental law. It posits that, while environmental law plays a significant role in the datafication of the environment and the digitalisation of society, it falls short in regulating digital technology and data in ways that advance sustainability. For the twin transition to evolve beyond a political slogan and deliver real ecological benefits, substantial legal reforms would be required. The regulation of digital technology would have to move beyond corporate self-regulation and disclosure-based models of environmental governance. Data governance should be reoriented to emphasise freedom of access and a more deliberatively restrained approach to data generation.

Tras revisar los datos arqueotanatológicos registrados desde el siglo diecinueve y realizar el análisis bioantropológico de todos los componentes esqueléticos humanos correspondientes, exponemos por primera vez un análisis integral del patrón mortuorio de Palenque-Lakamha’, cuya monumentalización data del Clásico Maya. Describimos la amplia distribución de sepulturas en los diferentes sectores del asentamiento, el elevado número de edificios dedicados a las prácticas funerarias, la preferencia por el uso de cistas, la frecuente colocación de más de un individuo en el mismo espacio sepulcral y la estandarización de la posición extendida en decúbito dorsal, con orientación al norte.

Un aspecto sobresaliente es el reingreso a los sepulcros, particularmente en entierros colectivos, depositados en contenedores de piedra, que presentan remoción, desplazamiento o ingreso de muertos y/o artefactos. Además de la identificación de esta secuencia funeraria que explica la desviación del patrón mortuorio, se propone una interpretación basada en datos etnográficos para entender la interacción entre vivos y muertos.

La distribución de los sepulcros, la prominencia de la actividad post-inhumación y los datos iconográficos y epigráficos sugieren que Palenque-Lakamha’ pudo haber sido un lugar vinculado al pasaje liminal hacia el inframundo, donde la frecuente interacción con los muertos y el importante número de mausoleos permitía entablar diálogos con el sagrado y, por ende, renovar los ciclos cósmicos.

The purpose of this retrospective population-based study of adults aged ≥50 years was to examine associations between older age, multimorbidity, and self-rated perceptions of health with frequent emergency department (ED) visits. Using Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) 2015–16 data, a multivariate logistic regression model was generated to evaluate associations between predictor variables and frequent ED use. The study sample included data for 57,138 participants across Canada, equating to approximately 13,091,592 when sampling weights applied. Frequent ED use was associated with older age, male sex, multimorbidity, and lower household income. Lower self-rated levels of health were most strongly associated with frequent ED use. Having a primary health care provider was not a significant predictor in univariate or multivariate analyses. Older adults who are frequent ED attenders are a distinct population whose characteristics need to be understood to target strategies for those who most need them to improve quality care and outcomes.

This paper presents a probabilistic model of loanword accentuation in Japanese, analysing a corpus of 3,017 English-based loanwords. Through corpus analysis and computational modelling, the study reveals that Japanese loanword accentuation involves two distinct types of faithfulness effects, alongside markedness effects. First, there is a significant influence of the stress patterns of English source words and the epenthetic status of loanword syllables. This challenges the common assumption that accents driven by faithfulness are merely sporadic exceptions, highlighting instead a probabilistic interplay between faithfulness and markedness. Second, this study uncovers faithfulness to Japanese speakers’ implicit knowledge of the English stress system. Rather than merely imitating the stress patterns of individual English words, Japanese speakers develop an internalised theory of the English stress system and mimic what they believe is the correct pronunciation according to their internalised theory.

This article explores the role of ideology in shaping Russia’s foreign and security policies, addressing whether it serves as a genuine guiding principle for the ruling elite or merely functions as a strategic tool to legitimise authoritarian rule and challenge the international order. Rather than focusing solely on Vladimir Putin, this study highlights the plurality of elite groups engaged in the production and contestation of strategic ideas. It highlights two key dimensions of ideology’s influence: first, its structural role in shaping elite networks and defining their internal power struggles, particularly among hawkish groups seeking policy influence; second, its instrumental function as a resource exchanged between ideological actors and policymakers, where ruling elites actively promote or demote ideological groups to justify strategic shifts in foreign and security policy. By analysing both the bottom-up diffusion of ideological narratives and the top-down mechanisms of state sponsorship, this research advances a nuanced understanding of how ideology interacts with domestic power dynamics, social environments, and international constraints to shape policy outcomes.

We study a two-dimensional discounted optimal stopping zero-sum (or Dynkin) game related to perpetual redeemable convertible bonds expressed as game (or Israeli) options in a model of financial markets in which the behaviour of the ex-dividend price of a dividend-paying asset follows a generalized geometric Brownian motion. It is assumed that the dynamics of the random dividend rate of the asset paid to shareholders are described by the mean-reverting filtering estimate of an unobservable continuous-time Markov chain with two states. It is shown that the optimal exercise (conversion) and withdrawal (redemption) times forming a Nash equilibrium are the first times at which the asset price hits either lower or upper stochastic boundaries being monotone functions of the running value of the filtering estimate of the state of the chain. We rigorously prove that the optimal stopping boundaries are regular for the stopping region relative to the resulting two-dimensional diffusion process and that the value function is continuously differentiable with respect to the both variables. It is verified by means of a change-of-variable formula with local time on surfaces that the optimal stopping boundaries are determined as a unique solution to the associated coupled system of nonlinear Fredholm integral equations among the couples of continuous functions of bounded variation satisfying certain conditions. We also give a closed-form solution to the appropriate optimal stopping zero-sum game in the corresponding model with an observable continuous-time Markov chain.

This article examines the Canada-United States Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) in relation to a growing literature on bureaucrats’ role in immigration policy making, while challenging interpretations of the agreement as a “Europeanization” of Canadian policy. Canada is a prototypical liberal “migration state” that balances economic considerations, national security, rights and broader cultural concerns through its immigration regime. We open the “black box” of the state to examine how bureaucratic decision making informed the development of Canada’s asylum system. Drawing on interviews, archival materials and government documents, we show bureaucrats simultaneously sought to manage asylum backlogs and ensure compliance with international obligations while countering advocacy group opposition. The STCA reflects a uniquely Canadian approach to balancing competing imperatives in refugee policy, highlighting the role of bureaucrats in shaping immigration policy within domestic and international constraints. This research contributes to understanding the historical development of migration control policies in liberal democracies.

On October 21, 2022, the Spanish Competition Agency (CNMC) sanctioned the North American pharmaceutical company Merck Sharp & Dohme for abuse of a dominant position. The practice for which it was finally sanctioned consisted of the adoption of a strategy aimed at delaying and making it difficult for another company to enter the Spanish medicines market in order to protect sales for a product marketed exclusively by that company and for which had a patent. This paper analyzes this resolution in an attempt to delimit the difference between the legitimate exercise of the right to effective judicial protection and its abuse.

This article examines transnational appeals for humanitarian intervention to the League of Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the aftermath of the First World War, focusing on conflicts in Ireland, Montenegro and the Rif (Morocco). It analyses how participants and international organisations strategically framed these conflicts, often shifting between designations of ‘civil war’ and ‘imperial war’ to solicit or deflect intervention on humanitarian grounds. Despite public expectations placed on the ICRC and League both organisations were reluctant to intervene against imperial powers, prioritising maintaining the international order over investigating insurgents’ claims. Though insurgents appealed through the rhetoric of ‘humanity’, this was a selective category, reinforcing existing racial and religious hierarchies in Europe. By analysing these conflicts together this article demonstrates that ‘civil war’ was not a fixed category but a fluid and contested concept, instrumentally deployed in the dialogue between belligerents, international organisations and imperial powers.

The archives of the London Corn Trade Association shed light on how open competitive commodity markets expanded during the First Global Era in spite of hard, non-cooperative geopolitics. This private body, fully controlled by elite merchants, standardised supply, turning grains into fungible commodities; it arbitrated disputes; and it offered to traders standard contracts that integrated the international value chains. Enforcement rested on market power: few merchant houses in the world dared being expelled from the London market. Private rules and contracts thus applied extra-territorially, without being much affected by the political regimes on the ground. But they were also upheld by the London courts and the Bank of England, so that they were both local and global, therefore imperial. Market power, private ordering, and legal pluralism should be seen as a defining feature of Britain’s global economic governance.

An effective and just Financial Mechanism will be crucial to the success of the Global Plastic Treaty. The content in the latest Chair’s Text from INC-5.1 on finance (primarily in Article 11) could be strengthened to avoid replicating shortcomings in existing financing models, which have often been insufficient and have not always provided the necessary resources for global sustainable development. Experiences with climate finance mechanisms reveal a pattern of misdesign that needs to be addressed. The current Article 11 reflects the deep divisions evident in the two main proposals tabled at INC-5.1 in November 2024. In the light of past precedents and tensions, we argue that several core design principles related to scope, scale and social and health considerations could ensure that the Global Plastics Treaty’s Financial Mechanism supports just, ambitious and transformative global action on plastic pollution. Furthermore, we argue that several elements in the current treaty text may undermine the design and implementation of an effective and just Financial Mechanism for the future Global Plastics Treaty. These risks include overemphasizing waste management; missing connections between finance and other measures in the treaty; risks of not addressing the most effective responses; not adequately addressing plastic leakage, releases and emissions; sustaining financial investments in techno-economic lock-ins lacking sufficient safety and sustainability criteria, standards and monitoring requirements and the prospect of plastic credits, which risks repeating past false solutions. There is an opportunity for the treaty to overcome these challenges with a financial mechanism that addresses overproduction and incentivizes safer, more sustainable, accessible and cost-effective upstream solutions.

To date, Article 2 TEU has mainly been construed as a negative obligation to refrain from violating the values enshrined therein. In light of the Repubblika case law, which established a duty to prevent any regression in the protection of Article 2 TEU values, this paper considers whether Article 2 TEU can be construed in such a way as to bring about a positive obligation on the part of the Member States to take preventive action to safeguard the EU’s foundational values and thus prevent (or at least mitigate the risk of) violations of those values. We first consider the doctrinal and normative bases for such an obligation. We then argue that such an obligation arises whenever Article 2 TEU values are presently under threat (or when a threat is imminent), and when such a threat is sufficiently grave or systemic. We believe that an interpretation of Article 2 TEU that requires Member States to act, at source, to prevent national actors from committing violations of EU values, contributes to enhancing constitutional resilience in the EU. Consequently, we propose a novel legal approach that could, under certain circumstances, better equip the EU to address future threats to Article 2 TEU.

People who experience mental ill-health are typically more disadvantaged across a range of social and economic domains compared with the general population. This disadvantage is further heightened for people from marginalised communities. Social and economic adversities can limit both the access to, and effectiveness of, interventions for mental ill-health; however, these challenges are often overlooked by mental health services. Therefore, adequate support for social needs is urgently required, particularly for those from marginalised and vulnerable groups. We conducted a PRISMA-compliant systematic review of three academic databases to identify social and/or economic interventions which were adapted or developed bespoke for people from marginalised or minoritised communities living with mental ill-health. All records were screened blind by two reviewers; quality appraisal was conducted with the Kmet tool. Seventy-eight papers were included, deriving mostly from high-income countries. The identified interventions targeted nine sociodemographic or socioeconomic groups including: people experiencing homelessness or unstable housing (n = 50), people with an offending history (n = 9), mothers (n = 6), people experiencing economic disadvantage (n = 3), older adults (n = 3), caregivers (n = 2), minority ethnic groups (n = 2), women with experience of intimate partner violence (n = 1), and people with comorbid intellectual disabilities (n = 1). All identified interventions demonstrated feasibility, acceptability, or effectiveness on at least one social and/or economic outcome measure, suggesting that targeted intervention can help to address social and economic needs and reduce systemic inequalities in mental health care. However, the evidence base is still sparse, and further replication is warranted to inform commissioners and policy makers.

A COVID-19 pandemic gown conservation strategy for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) asymptomatically colonized patients caused no significant difference in healthcare-associated MRSA (HA-MRSA) bacteremia, healthcare-associated VRE (HA-VRE) bacteremia, or healthcare-associated Clostridioides difficile infections (HA-CDI) versus prepandemic contact precautions (CP). Postpandemic HA-VRE and HA-CDI rates mirrored national trends.