As Ronald Dworkin was writing his Einstein lectures “Religion without God,” at New York University (NYU) in the fall of 2011, I was also working in Washington Square, as a fellow of the NYU Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice. On December 8, just a few days before Dworkin delivered the lectures at the University of Bern, I had the opportunity to attend the last session of his famous Colloquium in Legal, Political, and Social Philosophy at Furman Hall. In that session, co-led by his colleague and friend Thomas Nagel, Dworkin presented the manuscript of his Swiss lectures. After the seminar, we had an anticipatory celebration of Dworkin's eightieth birthday, which would take place three days later. And that was the last time I would see Ronald Dworkin—which might explain why I remember in such detail that seminar, in which he talked about religion without God with more spontaneity and improvisation, I imagine, than he would in the Einstein lectures days later.

When Ronald Dworkin was to deliver his 1988 Tanner Lecture on Human Values at Stanford University, he was introduced by the university's president, Donald Kennedy. Kennedy offered an appreciative account of Dworkin's background and achievements, noted the title of the upcoming talk, then gathered up his notes and turned the podium over to the speaker. Dworkin proceeded to give a two-hour oration on the foundations of liberal equality, breathtaking in its detail and logical rigor and flowing eloquently without a hitch or hesitation. Just as he was concluding, Kennedy rushed up to the dais and exclaimed to the audience: “Please forgive me, I just realized that when I picked up my notes, I also inadvertently picked up Professor Dworkin's manuscript.” Without missing a beat, Dworkin had delivered his entire lecture from memory.

The sparse scholarship on the political role of Coptic Christians in modern Egypt almost always takes the Coptic Orthodox Church as a point of departure, assuming that the head of the church, the Coptic patriarch, is not only the spiritual leader of the community but its political leader as well. This article argues that the disproportionate attention afforded to the Coptic Orthodox Church in this scholarship has obscured intra-communal dynamics of the Copts that are essential to an understanding of their political role. Through an analysis of historical struggles between the Coptic clergy and the Coptic laity for influence in Egyptian politics, as well as a particular focus on how these struggles have played out in the arena of personal status law, the article demonstrates that Egyptian politics and Coptic communal dynamics are deeply intertwined, to a degree often disregarded both by Copts and by Egypt analysts.

The German Antarctic Receiving Station (GARS) O’Higgins at the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula is a dual purpose facility for earth observation and has existed for more than 20 years. It serves as a satellite ground station for payload data downlink and telecommanding of remote sensing satellites as well as a geodetic observatory for global reference systems and global change. Both applications use the same 9 m diameter radio antenna. Major outcomes of this usage are summarised in this paper.

The satellite ground station O’Higgins (OHG) is part of the global ground station network of the German Remote Sensing Data Centre (DFD) operated by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR). It was established in 1991 to provide remote sensing data downlink support within the missions of the European Remote Sensing Satellites ERS-1 and ERS-2. These missions provided valuable insights into the changes of the Antarctic ice shield. Especially after the failure of the on-board data recorder, OHG became an essential downlink station for ERS-2 real-time data transmission. Since 2010, OHG is manned during the entire year, specifically to support the TanDEM-X mission. OHG is a main dump station for payload data, monitoring and telecommanding of the German TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X satellites.

For space geodesy and astrometry the radio antenna O’Higgins significantly improves coverage over the southern hemisphere and plays an essential role within the global Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) network. In particular the determination of the Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP) and the sky coverage of the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF) benefit from the location at a high southern latitude. Further, the resolution of VLBI images of active galactic nuclei (AGN), cosmic radio sources defining the ICRF, improves significantly when O’Higgins is included in the network. The various geodetic instrumentation and the long time series at O’Higgins allow a reliable determination of crustal motions. VLBI station velocities, continuous GNSS measurements and campaign-wise absolute gravity measurements consistently document a vertical rate of about 5 mm/a. This crustal uplift is interpreted as an elastic rebound due to ice loss as a consequence of the ice shelf disintegration in the Prince Gustav Channel in the late 1990s.

The outstanding location on the Antarctic continent and its year-around operation make GARS O’Higgins in future increasingly attractive for polar orbiting satellite missions and a vitally important station for the global VLBI network. Future plans call for the development of an observatory for environmentally relevant research. That means that the portfolio of the station will be expanded including the expansion of the infrastructure and the construction and operation of new scientific instruments suitable for long-term measurements and satellite ground truthing.

The beauty of nature in Greenland and the selling point of Greenlandic tourism ‘Our ice is melting, yet it is still here’ have been attracting more tourists in recent years. Therefore, demand for tourist accommodation is expected to grow in the future. Staying overnight in small huts is a traditional way for nomadic Greenlanders and for tourists. However, the austere condition of the existing huts cannot meet requirements nowadays. Meanwhile, climate change is causing retreat of ice, so tourist attractions might change in the future. Therefore the contradiction of ‘improved lodging’, ‘environmental friendliness’ and ‘flexibility of location’ raise the problem for the future development of tourist accommodation. The aim of this work is to explore a desirable solution by developing stand-alone mobile tourist huts with light and heating based on renewable energy supply, and sustainable black waste water management. The cabin can be disassembled into pieces and transported to new areas by trucks, snow scooters, boats or dog-sledges with almost no disturbance to the environment of the original location. In addition, cultural sustainability is also taken into account.

This article investigates the “pre-history” of the colonial and postcolonial personal (status) laws of India, which tie religious identity with legal status, particularly in matters of family law. It examines the concept of law and legal jurisdictions in Mughal India (1526-early eighteenth century; officially 1857): a unique political formation in which an Islamic state ruled over a populace which was predominantly non-Muslim. Using Mughal official orders, Persian-language legal documents produced between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, and Persian-language legal formularies, the article proposes that despite frequent local delegation, the Mughals, their officials, and their subjects did not conceive of law as divided up into several religion-based jurisdictions. Instead, an inclusive operationalization of shariʿa1 (Islamic moral code, in a more specific sense Islamic law) appears to have popularized Islamic legal concepts and forms, and a host of pragmatic concerns attracted many who were not Muslims to the courts of the imperially appointed qazis (Islamic judges). Based on this evidence, this article proposes that Mughal India represents an instance of widespread “permissive inclusion” into shariʿa, whereby in non-criminal matters the qazis' courts allowed and attracted, but did not require, all Mughal subjects to avail of their civil jurisdiction. This proposition is examined further in connection with the acrid debates between late Mughal administrators (particularly, Muhammad Reza Khan of Bengal) and their British overlords. It is thus suggested that while instituting colonial rule in the late eighteenth century, British imperialists also introduced a new concept of religion-based distribution of legal authority to India.

William Barr's article on John Rae presents quite the spectacle (Barr 2014). Barr paints a picture of eminent British historians, staunch defenders of Arctic orthodoxy, scurrying around to deny Rae his rightful recognition and stumbling into an abyss of self-contradiction. In their anxiety to keep Rae in his ‘proper place’ at Westminster Abbey, Barr and his friends have repudiated Sir John Franklin's claim to being the discoverer of the northwest passage – the claim they sallied forth to defend.

Written as a response to the article ‘Does Size Matter? The ICRW and the Inclusion of Small Cetaceans’ by Sean Stephenson, Arne Mooers and Amir Attaran, this commentary considers how important global and regional biodiversity- or conservation-related conventions have deliberately avoided the issue area of cetacean management. One of the effects of this is that so-called ‘small cetaceans’ – approximately 70 species – are left largely unregulated. This article differs from that of Stephenson and his co-authors, who argue that the ‘only appropriate’ forum for dealing with the issue is the International Court of Justice. Instead, it is argued here that the ‘Future of the IWC’ compromise process may yet represent the best course for bringing small cetaceans under IWC management authority. Another alternative was recently suggested in a draft resolution put forward by Monaco in 2012 – and is likely to be put forward again in 2014 – which advocated involving the United Nations General Assembly in the issue. The issue is both complicated and important, and a solution is needed.

The remarkable rescue of Shackleton's men from Elephant Island, after the sinking of Endurance, and from Ross Island, has been recounted many times by both participants and historians. There has been little critical examination of the part played by governments, nor assessment of some of Shackleton's own actions. In this paper we explore more fully from official British archival sources the extent to which the British Government was prepared to underwrite the rescue efforts; the importance of the plea made by Emily Shackleton directly to the Prime Minister; the role and actions of the Relief Advisory Committee (especially in respect of limiting Shackleton's actions); the significance of the media rights to the debt-laden expedition, and how such preoccupation could have influenced Shackleton's endeavour to rescue his marooned parties.

The Characteres Generum Plantarum of Johann Reinhold Forster and Georg Forster was the principal printed botanical work emanating from James Cook's second voyage of 1772–1775. The printing most frequently encountered is a 31.2 cm quarto dated 1776 that was probably run off in several hundred copies. A single 1775 quarto was recently discovered. Also produced was a well-known but very rare 47.5 cm folio. In this first-ever census of folio copies, two dated 1775 and 14 dated 1776 are verified; their locations, descriptions, and provenances are detailed herein.