This article analyses the changing options for the provision of burial places between the Reformation and the mid-nineteenth century in two major provincial cities, Bristol and Exeter. The two cities experienced very different patterns of change, especially in their Anglican provision, reflecting medieval differences of organization as well as the differential impact of dissent. Common factors include the effect of epidemics (plague, cholera) and population pressure, but also great conservatism regarding use of inner-city burial places. The major changes are associated with the three great shocks to church–state relations: the Reformation, the mid-seventeenth-century crisis and the reform period of the 1830s and 1840s.

This essay explores the ethical and legal implications of prioritizing the militarization of cyberspace as part of a roundtable on “Competing Visions for Cyberspace.” Our essay uses an ideal type—a world that accepts warfighting as the prime directive for the construction and use of cyberspace—and examines the ethical and legal consequences that follow for (i) who will have authority to regulate cyberspace; (ii) what vehicles they will most likely use to do so; and (iii) what the rules of behavior for states and stakeholders will be. We envision a world where states would take on a greater role in governance but remain constrained by law, including jus ad bellum and jus in bello criteria, but also sovereignty, nonintervention, and self-determination. We ask if the net result would mean states causing less harm than they do in kinetic conflicts. Ultimately, our essay takes no position on whether cyberspace should be a militarized domain (let alone one where warfighting is the prime directive). Rather, our goal is to situate a warfighting cyber domain within the reality of a pluralist cyberspace, where ethical imperatives compete or coalesce to support specific governance mechanisms.

In his recent book, Ian Hurd argues that international law is pervasive and foundational in international affairs and that the international rule of law is hegemonic over states. While the book is provocative and compelling, it fails to convince on two core points. First, Hurd does not offer a real alternative to international relations realism. Indeed, the book could unwittingly reinforce the realist stance that international law is simply power politics in disguise. Second, the book offers a problematic conception of international rule of law. What Hurd describes is at best a rule by law, or perhaps more appropriately qualified as a travesty of the rule of law.

This essay steps back from the more detailed regulatory discussions in other contributions to this roundtable on “Competing Visions for Cyberspace” and highlights three broad issues that raise ethical concerns about our activity online. First, the commodification of people—their identities, their data, their privacy—that lies at the heart of business models of many of the largest information and communication technologies companies risks instrumentalizing human beings. Second, concentrations of wealth and market power online may be contributing to economic inequalities and other forms of domination. Third, long-standing tensions between the security of states and the human security of people in those states have not been at all resolved online and deserve attention.

Samuel Moyn argues that the human rights movement, which thrived in the 1970s and peaked after the Cold War, became dominated by a misplaced focus on sufficiency rather than equality, ultimately abetting neoliberalism. He deplores the rise and fall of an egalitarian and redistributive worldview, from the Jacobin era to the slow decline of socialism in the twentieth century, culminating in ineffectual and unambitious human rights endeavors. Here Moyn cavalierly dismisses the enormous achievements of the human rights movement in many countries, overlooking the contributions of unsung heroes who fought for human rights at the peril of their lives. Even readers who share Moyn's political perspective will find little solace, either in the form of lessons learned or in forward-looking strategies for addressing socioeconomic inequity and other human rights violations of our time.

The failure of the UN Security Council to adequately and effectively address the Syrian crisis has brought renewed scrutiny to the veto and its capricious use during mass atrocity situations. In response to these concerns, the idea of a code of conduct to regulate the exercise of the veto during humanitarian situations is now being increasingly advanced by several states, including France and the United Kingdom. This paper disputes the utility of such a code and argues that it would not make any significant difference to the way mass atrocity crimes are addressed. I examine three core arguments often extended to justify the merit and the utility of the norm: the circumvention argument, the naming and shaming argument, and the Charter reform argument. I show how each of these arguments is undermined by mistaken notions about the norm's procedural effectiveness, and the role the veto plays in cases of what Simon Chesterman calls “inhumanitarian noninterventions.” Additionally, drawing on interviews conducted with diplomats at the United Nations in New York, I present evidence that resistance to a code of conduct comes not only from the permanent five members of the Council but also from the nonpermanent members, further imperiling the idea's capacity to effect change. Ultimately, I contend that the current global effort to curtail the influence of the veto is nothing more than a journey down the rabbit hole: exciting, but ultimately distracting.

A “national security–centric” approach currently dominates cybersecurity policies and practices. Derived from a realist theory of world politics in which states compete with each other for survival and relative advantage, the principal cybersecurity threats are conceived as those affecting sovereign states, such as damage to critical infrastructure within their territorial jurisdictions. As part of a roundtable on “Competing Visions for Cyberspace,” this essay presents an alternative approach to cybersecurity that is derived from the tradition of “human security.” Rather than prioritizing territorial sovereignty, this approach prioritizes the individual, and views networks as part of the essential foundation for the modern exercise of human rights, such as access to information, freedom of thought, and freedom of association. The foundational elements of a human-centric approach to cybersecurity are outlined and contrasted with the prevailing trends around national security–centric practices. A human-centric approach strives for indivisible network security on a planetary scale for the widest possible scope of human experience, and seeks to ensure that such principles are vigorously monitored and defended by multiple and overlapping forms of independent oversight and review.