The paper provides a neurophilosophical assessment of a controversy between two neuroeconomic models that compete to identify the putative object of neural utility: goods or actions. We raise two objections to the common view that sees the ‘good-based’ model prevailing over the ‘action-based’ model. First, we suggest extending neuroeconomic model discrimination to all of the models’ neurophilosophical assumptions, showing that action-based assumptions are necessary to explain real-world value-based decisions. Second, we show that the good-based model’s presumption of introducing a normative neural definition of economic choice would arbitrarily restrict the domain of economic choice and consequently of economics.

This article examines a key ambiguity in the Opium War treaties of 1842-1843, which concerned the legal status of Hong Kong’s native Chinese population. Overlooked in existing studies, the question was whether the cession of Hong Kong entailed British jurisdiction over crimes involving Chinese people inter se. To British minds, the idea of territorial sovereignty pulled against the reciprocal premise of the treaties, by which China and Britain enjoyed an absolute right to discipline their own offenders. To square the circle, British officials mooted various compromises steeped in extant ideas of sovereignty and subjecthood. Subsequently, all efforts at a principled policy were abandoned following a pivotal murder in eastern Hong Kong. Seven Chinese suspects were examined at the colonial magistracy for possible surrender to China, but the hearing was construed after the fact as a full trial and acquittal, which anchored exclusive British jurisdiction on the island. Thus, Hong Kong lay at the intellectual centre of Britain’s incipient Chinese Empire. The meaning of the Opium War treaties was shaped through iterative domestic discourse, in which the ideas of territorial sovereignty, extradition, and extraterritoriality were mutually constitutive, and law-making involved the retrospective rationalization of equivocal events and decisions on the ground.

In 1907, the Second International adopted a resolution on migration that rejected restrictions on the free movement of workers. In this article, we contend that, despite this official stance, the issue of migration was a highly controversial one for the international socialist community. We present a multi-level analysis, in which we detail the migration debate as it took place on the platforms of the Second International (roughly between 1903 and 1907) and the way in which this debate played out domestically for the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands and the Socialist Party of America – two parties that openly rooted for restrictions at the international level. We discern three ideal-typical stances on immigration – internationalism, on the one hand, and protectionist nativism and xenophobic nativism, on the other – and argue that it was the incompatibility of the internationalist and nativist positions that caused internal divisions to arise during the debates. Apart from speaking to the classic historiography on the Second International, which deals with the incompatibility of internationalism and nationalism, this article traces the influence of additional racist and culturalist ideologies on the debate and further historicizes it within the broader context of the modern international migration system that was taking shape at the time.

Court records for infanticide present several mysteries. In three centuries of colonial rule, Venezuela’s Mérida province had just one court case for infanticide. During the first three decades of Venezuela’s independence, the province had over thirty cases, while the country’s other provinces had none. The defendants in these cases were all poor, illiterate, single women. Curiously, court officials endeavored to acquit even in the face of incriminating evidence, such that the courts convicted only those mothers that confessed. This article explores how these women explained to officials why they killed and/or hid the body, and why the judicial system prosecuted these cases, given that the colonial system did not and officials were inclined to acquit. The investigation finds that the mothers explained their actions as principally due to economic and emotional desperation, including fear of punishment from their parents, rather than an intent to preserve their feminine honor. Further, the provincial judicial system began to prosecute this crime as part of a larger project to build a liberal, patriarchal republic. The prosecutions facilitated civilian-state relations, legitimized nascent institutions, sought to protect the mothers and “reform” their morals, and shielded fathers from responsibility for illicit sex.

Since 2012, judges and prosecutors in Benin have repeatedly protested against political interference and demanded compliance with their statutorily guaranteed independence. In 2014 and 2017, magistrates demonstrated in their judicial robes in the streets, protesting against the government's bill to deprive them of their right to strike and other freedoms. Benin has been described as a ‘success story of democracy’ (Stroh and Never, 2006, p. 1) and even as a ‘model democracy’ (cf. Kohnert, 1996, p. 78; Magnusson, 2001, p. 211; Bierschenk, 2009) since its peaceful transition to democratic conditions and its participation in a national conference in 1990/91. So why were magistrates in Benin demonstrating in the streets for the first time in the history of their profession? Based on fieldwork in Benin in 2009 and 2015 and archival research in 2017 in France, my paper analyses the change in the style of interactions between parts of the executive and parts of the judiciary in the history of the profession – a change from political negotiation to confrontation. Through their strikes and industrial action, magistrates fought for judicial independence; yet, at the same time they constructed legality and strengthened democracy because their actions emphasised the rule of law. My paper also considers the specifics of their strikes in the context of other striking civil servants. When magistrates, as bureaucrats, become politically active, it marks a transformation in their self-conception, as they are usually reserved and withdraw themselves from political and public spheres.

How is policy implementation affected by increased polarisation and extreme shifts in politics? In order to address this question, the paper focuses on frontline workers’ (street-level bureaucrats’) interpretations of political shifts and how these are then translated into practice. Building on ethnographic fieldwork conducted among social workers in Northeast Brazil, the paper proposes a theoretical framework for analysing the influence of political landscapes on policy implementation by foregrounding the political processes in which these agents play a critical role. Drawing on empirical data, the paper proposes ideal types of possible outcomes of translation practices – counterbalance, collaboration, resistance – that function as a guiding framework for future research.

Multilateral development banks (MDBs) are crucial in promoting economic growth through their project finance activities. Meanwhile, to address negative effects arising from their development projects, MDBs increasingly have focused their attention on the environmental and social impacts of their supported projects in recent decades. This article analyzes the relationship between the Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) adopted by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). It argues that better compliance with MEAs by the AIIB and its borrowers in implementing AIIB-supported development projects will be achieved only if its independent accountability mechanism (IAM) can actively examine project compliance with the ESF in the light of MEAs. The AIIB has an opportunity to provide leadership in promoting the fulfilment of MEA obligations in development finance. However, this is contingent on ensuring effective oversight by its newly established IAM moving forward.

Victims of transnational human rights violations caused by multinational corporations (MNCs) are often confronted with substantial impediments to effective remedies. While justice is de facto unattainable in host state courts, due to weak government or the absence of judicial independence, barriers that prevent victims from litigating in home states are no less insurmountable. Transnational litigation in home states has faced jurisdictional challenges. Defendant corporations have argued that home state courts are not the most appropriate forum to hear a case involving foreign torts.1

In the context of socio-economic transformation of Svalbard, from a place dominated by the coal mining industry to a nature-based tourism destination, the article focuses on how this transformation is co-created with material objects of coal mining remnants. These seemingly marginal, insignificant or even out-of-place remnants of coal mining activity (such as rusty barrels or collapsing infrastructure) have become, by law, a protected part of the Svalbard environment, a cultural heritage. Based on the relational (more-than-human) ethnography of guided tours, the analysis shows that this transformation is co-creating the characteristics of both the past of coal mining and the present notion of wilderness. It demonstrates the process not only as a transformation of interpretations, knowledge and values but also as a transformation of relations with non-human components of the environment. Rather contextual than linear shifts in a biography of the objects, together with the temporality of the objects and their porous character, play a significant role in the Svalbard’s transformation into a nature-based tourism destination.

At first blush, normative arguments justifying representation of future generations and nature appear to rest on contradictory values. This article argues, however, that there are strong synergies between these discourses. Arguments for institutions for future generations based on human rights are compared with justifications for proxy representation of nature based on ecological justice, Indigenous ecological justice and socio-ecological justice. Case studies involving the Welsh Commissioner for Future Generations, the Aotearoa New Zealand Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and ascribing legal personality to rivers in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, are presented to demonstrate that representing future generations and nature reflect mutually supporting values. Building on these synergies is vital for reform efforts.

By considering the history of bioethics and international humanitarian law, Joseph J. Fins contends that bioethics as an academic and moral community should stand in solidarity with Ukraine as it defends freedom and civility.

Research has rarely investigated the actions bureaucrats take to challenge the status quo of their organisation from within. Proposing a power-analytical approach to voice, exit and everyday resistance as political strategies of challenging the bureaucratic status quo, I study the difficulties of achieving organisational change in a context of structural constraints on junior bureaucrats’ reformative power. During field research in Niger's Refugee Directorate, I found that despite the associated risks, junior bureaucrats criticised their working conditions and, in confidential conversations, the administration. As precarious staff, they often combined criticism with compliance. In frequent acts of semi-private criticism amongst peers and with external actors, they problematised their working conditions and the state, but performed symbolic conformity in the everyday to avoid sanctions. This strategy nevertheless created autonomy for themselves and mobilised external actors for change-making. In rarer acts of direct criticism voiced to their superiors, the junior staff often complied with the same informal solidarities they vocally criticised.

Between the sixth and the tenth century, India passed through a new phase of urbanization. This has been identified as the third urbanization in India, setting it apart from two earlier phases. The focus of historical investigations for this period has generally been on capital cities and royal centres, or centres of pilgrimage. Port cities have also received some attention. There are no exclusive studies on unplanned cities from this period other than the overview that a few historians provide. In this article, I am focusing on one of them, Sīyaḍoṇi in central India, in order to understand how urban centres developed in this period without being royal centres, places of pilgrimage or hubs of maritime trade. I propose that Sīyaḍoṇi emerged as a merchant town on an important trade route and its commerce-centred economy was reinforced by deep-seated practices of rent-seeking involving generation of income through ground rent, taxation and interest on loans.

This article suggests that the post-colonial viewpoint could be valuable in understanding Beijing during the colonial crisis between 1900 and 1928. Through the examination of urban space in the Legation Quarter, it pays attention to the emerging special types and forms, as well as the mechanisms behind them, and explains the transposition of a foreign modern cityscape to the local context. The Europeanized district in Beijing was a symbol of Western civilization and the uneven power dynamics in the city, and was regarded as both a spatial model and a competitor for the Chinese government's attempts to create a modern capital.

This article, part of the forum “The Everyday Materials of Colonial Legal Spaces,” analyzes how Spanish law intersected with longue-durée Indigenous histories to pattern performative judicial violence in disputes over boundary lands separating Indigenous communities. During the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when population growth and expansion and commercialization of the livestock industry put pressure on Indigenous lands, Native judicial officers used their coercive power and symbols of judicial authority to physically enter boundary lands and shape the course of legal disputes. By combining legal and extralegal procedures, Native officials developed customary patterns of judicial practice and performance proper to their own jurisdiction in which objects invested with political, sacred, and quotidian meaning figured centrally. Staffs of office and whips wielded by Native authorities as emblems of Indian administrative and legal jurisdiction represented one category of the everyday materials of law. Clothing, farming implements, and livestock afforded other tools with which Indigenous farmers and authorities made legal claims. When reading land disputes alongside criminal cases of land invasions across Oaxaca’s judicial archives, it becomes clear that Native officials and farmers used these objects to struggle over territory and authority in cycles of litigation, land titling or contracts of joint-possession, and violence that often endured for decades or centuries, forming an enduring facet of agrarian custom in the region.