This article explores the contraception campaigns of Irishwomen United (I.W.U.) and their offshoot, the Contraception Action Programme (CAP), in the Republic of Ireland from 1975 to 1981. It draws on ten oral history interviews with former members of I.W.U. and CAP conducted by the author, in addition to feminist magazines, newspaper sources and the Roisin Conroy/Attic Press archive. For Irish feminists, the issue of class was paramount to their contraception campaigns while, in common with their counterparts in the United States, they were also concerned about the increasing medicalisation of women's bodies and the potential health risks of the contraceptive pill, commonly prescribed as a ‘cycle regulator’ in Ireland. Fundamentally, I.W.U. and CAP members believed in a women's movement that allowed for the equal distribution of sexual knowledge and access to contraception. In this way, they foregrounded the connection between health and economic rights. Through their demonstrations, meetings and service provision, in unconventional spaces such as shops, markets, community centres and caravans, they challenged not only the law, but also the authority of both religious patriarchy and medical expertise in Ireland. Through an exploration of the activities of I.W.U./CAP, this article will contribute to understandings of campaigns around contraception and, with my commitment to profiling the experiences of ‘rank and file’ women, it will highlight class inequalities and concerns surrounding the medicalisation of women's bodies to a larger extent than has been done before. It also seeks to show the importance of informal women's networks in providing access to contraception and information about contraception pre-legalisation. Moreover, the article seeks to further elucidate the contribution of Irish grassroots organisations which have received limited historical attention.

Malka presents convincing evidence in support of the claim that the rabbinic list is not indigenous but borrowed from the Roman legal institution of infamia, which was also attached to certain professions and also deprived persons of their eligibility for testimony. More important, she shows that this structural parallel is bolstered by a deeper conceptual parallel, for underlying both the rabbinic and the Roman disqualification is a wider Greco-Roman discourse on self-control (with Plutarch providing a four-fold list parallel to the tannaitic list in substance).

The Islamic reformist movement in Algeria is often seen as a precursor to the independence movement, in which religion was supposedly integrated into nationalist identity politics. Focusing on the Muslim scout movements between the 1930s and 1950s, this article challenges this view by arguing that Islam continued to play a role beyond that of an identitarian marker. Influenced by Christian youth movements, the Muslim scouts developed ideas of a “muscular Islam” that remained central even after the movement split in two—one association close to the major nationalist party and another linked to the reformists.

This article examines how the handling of Irish affairs at the civil-war court was observed, commented upon, and probably influenced, by a man who had been at the heart of Irish government during the previous decade. It argues that the presence of Sir George Radcliffe, arguably Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford's closest advisor, at the royalist court in Oxford was significant in a number of respects. His surviving correspondence reveals the extent to which he was able to advise and support the newly-appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland, the marquis of Ormond. His letters also cast light on the politics of the civil-war court, in particular on how he, as an essentially second-level figure, worked flexibly with both secretaries of state. This article argues that Radcliffe's discussions with secretary of state, George Lord Digby, provided an important means by which Strafford's influence could make itself felt at the Oxford court, particularly during the 1644 negotiations with the Confederate commissioners. The pursuit of forceful, contentious policies by the former Irish administration and its contemptuous attitude towards critics, however, ensured that Radcliffe's presence at Oxford was probably unwelcome to many at court and failed to advance his career.

The year 1857 saw the first of the great riot commissions which provided much source material for Belfast history. It should be read as a continuation of the street conflict of that summer. Careful reading shows the skill with which the weak Catholic/Liberal alliance of the city managed the flow of witnesses and the naiveté of the Orange/Protestant lawyers. The Catholic/Liberal side ‘won’ the inquiry, achieving their aim of convincing the Dublin government that the local police force was ineffective if not sectarian and that Orange Order culture and evangelical street preaching was responsible for the disorder. Practical outcomes were limited. Resources were limited due to demands in other parts of Ireland and the process of taking first-class troops from Ireland to deal with the Indian mutiny. Considered in light of theories of ‘civil society’, the court was a means of countering the imperfections of representative government. Considered in the context of Ireland as a whole, events demonstrated the weakness of the Dublin authorities, their ignorance of Belfast and the importance of the resident magistrate. Much was concealed from the inquiry. The following months revealed evidence of an active Ribbon-style organisation, and the animosity of the local police and the constabulary. Attention to working class sectarianism diverted attention from elite failure to manage the class relationships of a fractured civil society.

In humanitarian studies, it is typically the white western doctor who stands apart as the cultural prototype or universal figure through which global aid is delivered to vulnerable groups. This article, by contrast, examines the experiences of members of a prominent Syrian-American global medical aid organization. The members of this organization provide life-saving emergency care to millions of Syrians affected by the ongoing civil war, both inside Syria and in surrounding refugee camps. Drawing on over four years (2014–18) of intermittent interviews and observations with these doctors, I suggest that they are positioned precariously within a global “hierarchy of humanitarians” that deems their lives less worthy of mobility and protection than others. In critically analyzing the unequal politics of humanitarianism that exists around the Syrian war, this research complicates our understandings of the givers of global aid, as well as the medical humanitarian encounter itself in times of war.

Orit Malka's Disqualified Witnesses, Between Tannaitic Halakha and Roman Law is structured around a puzzle. Why did the rabbinic literature produced in Roman Palestine in the early centuries of the Common Era identify a list of four seemingly disparate types of people—dice-players, usurers, pigeon-flyers, and traders in Seventh Year produce—as disqualified from giving testimony in court? This argument has important implications, I suggest, for all legal systems—like most throughout history—that are not structured around a modern, positivist conception of law and of the role of courts.