This paper explores the themes of abduction, patronage, female wealth and marital relationships through their intersection in the life of Derbforgaill (d. 1193), whose abduction in 1152 sparked a chain of events that contributed to the English invasion of Ireland. Derbforgaill is also remembered for her donations to Mellifont in 1157, during the consecration of its ‘church of the monks’, and to the construction of a nuns’ church in Clonmacnoise in 1167. Focusing on the broader political context of these donations offers strong grounds for reconsideration of both Derbforgaill's and other women's experiences. Among the wider implications of this study must be the reconceptualisation of female political importance as functional through or in concert with marriage partners, rather than the natal family.

An analysis of the multiple publications relating to the career of Hugh O'Neill that appeared during the middle decades of the twentieth century reveals the extent to which authors who were then writing about the past permitted their interpretations to be influenced by the politics and prejudices of their own time. It is then demonstrated that the various positions then adopted by competing authors had been influenced also by polemics from the past. A study of the place accorded to Hugh O'Neill by authors writing in the nineteenth, eighteenth, seventeenth and even the sixteenth century shows that they too were divided over whether O'Neill should be considered the forger of an Irish nation or a champion of Catholicism, or an ingrate who had betrayed the crown that had rescued him from obscurity. This leads to a discussion of academic writing of more recent decades and the efforts of scholars who have engaged on fresh research to better comprehend what motivated Hugh O'Neill at various junctures in his career, even as he remains one of the more enigmatic personalities in Ireland's history.

In November 2010, twenty-four heads of member states of NATO assembled for a summit in Lisbon. On their agenda was an overhaul of the alliance's decade-long security strategy. On the sidelines of this summit, the heads of government met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and announced plans to withdraw all NATO troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. The decision was not wholly unexpected. However, in newsrooms and among select consulting firms that worked with Afghan ministries in the capital Kabul, the announcement ratcheted up a sense of unease. Doubts were cast over the Afghan national army's preparedness to carry out solo combat operations.

Weimar legal philosophy enjoyed a surprising prominence in religious kibbutzim. These were communities, established in Palestine/Israel, whose members attempted to create revolutionary utopian societies organized around the principles of socialism, Jewish nationalism, and Orthodox Jewish law. The kibbutzim existed under the shadow of a double crisis: the economic and social upheaval of the era, and the intellectual and spiritual challenge of synthesizing the diverse world views to which they were committed. Remarkably, the legal philosophy developed by the jurists of Weimar Germany – Hans Kelsen and Gustav Radbruch in particular – provided an intellectual framework by which the thinkers of the religious kibbutz navigated these crises.This article identifies references to Weimar jurisprudence in the discourse of the religious kibbutz, and addresses how and why kibbutz thinkers used it to think through issues that were so far removed from interwar Germany. It also expands our understanding of legal and historical phenomena in general, beyond the confines of the study of Israel or Judaism. It explores the ways that jurisprudence may be employed in religious and social thought. It also demonstrates how legal ideas flow along paths of immigration and intellectual exchange, how they can be applied by diverse actors in very different social circumstances, and how law and legal transplants operate, even outside the context of the state.