This commentary considers the intellectual property (IP) system from a global environmental law perspective by exploring the extent to which patent-related treaties, such as the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and the World Intellectual Property Organization Patent Cooperation Treaty, can facilitate implementation of global environmental standards in the field of biodiversity law. It provides practical guidance to countries that wish to introduce patent disclosure-related mechanisms into their legal systems with a view to mainstreaming instances of global justice, fairness and equity, and raises awareness of the limitations arising from their extant IP obligations. Global environmental law standards have exercised an undeniable influence on the political discourse in international IP policy making in the field of patent disclosure. Still, many patent disclosure requirements that pre-date the Nagoya Protocol apply only to genetic resources the provenance of which is the same country that established the requirement. However, if a country designates its patent or IP office as a compliance checkpoint under the Nagoya Protocol, then the disclosure requirement should encompass at least the genetic resources originating from all countries that are contracting parties to this instrument. This could allow the fulfilment of a core monitoring obligation of the latter, while enabling wider synergies and transparency within the IP system.

This study examines the extent to which priming voters on the trustworthiness of candidates or that of their parties elicits candidatecentric or partycentric attitudes. The analysis provides evidence of the trade-off for voters between mavericks and party insiders in presidential elections. It shows that voters are sensitized to the risks of electing a candidate with no party support, but in the particular case of Argentina, they still consider the candidates’ qualities to be more important than those of their parties. The results show that priming on the trustworthiness of candidates elicits stronger responses from low-income voters, who already have prior candidatecentric inclinations. The findings also reveal statistical differences in vote choice when respondents are primed with party- or candidatecentric frames.

It has normally been argued that because compulsory voting systems present higher turnout rates relative to voluntary voting systems, they do not generate as many biases between different groups of voters. This article qualifies that view. It argues that in cases in which compulsory voting does not ensure near-universal participation, there is no certainty that switching to voluntary voting will increase inequalities. This issue is examined by looking at Chile, a democracy that moved from compulsory voting to voluntary voting in 2012. The research finds that while the reform generated class bias in urban districts, it also substantially reduced age bias and, in national elections, equalized participation between small and large districts. The conclusion is that abandoning compulsory voting does not necessarily increase turnout biases, since much depends on the structure of preexisting biases and how these are conditioned by particular electoral institutions.

Previous research examining selection to legislative committees has assumed that the impact of constituency preferences on committee assignments is due to the incentives for individual legislators to use their committee seats to increase their personal chances of re-election. Examining the case of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies (where legislators were, until recently, barred from re-election), this study argues that the impact of constituency preferences on selection to committees also occurs because parties have incentives for their members to use committee assignments to increase the party’s chances of being re-elected. Analysis of assignments to 11 committees over 4 legislative terms provides support for the argument. These findings reinforce previous research arguing that concerns with constituency representation and its impact on re-election also apply to political parties and not solely to individual legislators.

This paper investigates the contemporary phenomenon of smuggling sperm from within Israeli jails, which I treat as a biopolitical act of resistance. Palestinian prisoners who have been sentenced to life-imprisonment have recently resorted to delivering their sperm to their distant wives in the West Bank and Gaza where it is then used for artificial insemination. On the level of theory, my analysis of this practice benefits from Jacques Derrida's commentary in The Post Card on imaginative postal delivery of sperm to distant lovers. I use Derrida's heteronormative implication to examine how Palestinian prisoners defy the Israeli carceral system via the revolutionary act of sperm smuggling. The article then argues that smuggling sperm challenges the conventional gender codes in Palestinian society that see women in passive roles. Drawing on Derrida's metaphorical connection between masturbation and writing, I problematize the perception of speech/orality as primary in traditional Palestinian culture. Women, who mostly act as smugglers, become social agents whose written stories of bionational resistance emerge as a dominant mode of representation.

Legal scholars rely heavily on vocabularies of ‘actors’, ‘agents’, and ‘experts’ to account for the fact that law does not develop by itself. However, the identities, idiosyncrasies, and individual professional contributions of law's people are rarely illuminated. This article suggests that the relative absence of people in transnational legal scholarship helps to explain some of its gaps. The task of bringing ‘human actors back on stage’ creates some new opportunities for transnational environmental law scholarship. It invites attention to both dominant and excluded voices. It offers a way of bridging the gap between the bureaucratic language of law and its lived reality. It also provides an understanding of why, despite ferocious attempts to roll back the advances of environmental law in some places, many scholars and practitioners find reason to be optimistic about the future of environmental law.

Throughout his career the geographer, and first reader in the ‘new’ geography at the University of Oxford, Halford Mackinder (1861–1947) described his discipline as a branch of physics. This essay explores this feature of Mackinder's thought and presents the connections between him and the Royal Institution professor of natural philosophy John Tyndall (1820–1893). My reframing of Mackinder's geography demonstrates that the academic professionalization of geography owed as much to the methods and instruments of popular natural philosophy and physics as it did to theories of Darwinian natural selection. In tracing the parallels between Tyndall and Mackinder, and their shared emphasis upon the technology of the magic lantern and the imagination as tools of scientific investigation and education, the article elucidates their common pedagogical practices. Mackinder's disciplinary vision was expressed in practices of visualization, and in metaphors inspired by physics, to audiences of geographers and geography teachers in the early twentieth century. Together, these features of Mackinder's geography demonstrate his role as a popularizer of science and extend the temporal and spatial resonance of Tyndall's natural philosophy.

In her recent book Atonement, Eleonore Stump objects to the Anselmian theory of atonement, claiming it is not consistent with God's love. I argue that her objection mischaracterizes Anselmian theories. First, Stump equivocates on the concept of forgiveness, conflating personal forgiveness with divine pardon, and second, Stump misrepresents the God of Anselm as unwilling to reconcile with sinners prior to receiving satisfaction. I suggest that Stump's real objection should be to the Anselmian view of divine justice as retributive, not to his conception of divine love. I suggest a model of an all-loving God acting as a retributive judge.