Disinformation poses a serious threat to democracy, yet regulating it risks infringing on freedom of speech. This article defends the democratic legitimacy of regulating disinformation by distinguishing it from two similar forms of speech: ‘false opinion’ and ‘toxic persuasion’. I argue that disinformation, as deliberate falsehoods intended to manipulate citizens’ political judgment, does not merit protection. Regulation, on this account, is normatively legitimate and desirable when it safeguards citizens’ ability to function as meaningful decision makers in the democratic common world. I then propose a dual-track model to identify removable content. Paired with regular review, transparency obligations, and an appeal process, this framework offers principles that help democracies to balance between protecting expressive freedom and resisting disinformation.

This article offers new data on women and men’s occupations in Spain at the end of the nineteenth century. Our main source is the Censo de la Población de España 1887, which we combine with other sources to correct for women’s under-recording (different statistics and social reports). The main occupations of men and women based on the 1887 census are identified. By combining demographic data with other sources, we correct the under-recording of women’s work and show women’s high labor participation rates—more than 50 percent—in different judicial districts specialized in food processing, textiles, tobacco, and footwear industries. Furthermore, we provide a spatial analysis of the distribution of women’s employment.

Although Louis XIV’s sponsorship of a French Jesuit presence in China is well known, his attitude to the major dispute over the Chinese rites which engulfed the mission has been barely explored. This article shows that, as the Chinese Rites Controversy reached its peak in Paris and Rome in the years around 1700, Louis XIV’s response was surprisingly inconsistent, reflecting the fact that the two groups of missionaries whose work in east Asia he had supported – the Missions étrangères de Paris (MEP) and the French Jesuits – were pitted against one another. Furthermore, the king’s somewhat contradictory interventions were due to the opposing directions in which his chief advisers on ecclesiastical matters pushed him: his confessor La Chaise towards support of the Jesuits, and his wife Madame de Maintenon and Archbishop Noailles of Paris towards helping the MEP. In the end, Louis decided not to wield his influence in Rome in favour of one side or the other, but to leave the decision to the Holy See while prohibiting publication on the ‘Chinese affair’ in France. In doing so, the article offers an exploration of ecclesiastical policy in the making under the Sun King.

J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge (DDNWR) is located on Sanibel Island along the southwestern coast of Florida, USA. There, eutrophication attributed to agricultural discharge along the Caloosahatchee River has affected the area’s aquatic habitat. In anticipation of additional nutrient loading, we experimentally fertilized mangrove forests with nitrogen (+N; NH4) and phosphorus (+P; P2O5) for 3 years, and monitored soil and pneumatophore CO2 fluxes and tree sap flow from two mangrove species. Furthermore, we modeled individual tree and stand water use, from which we developed carbon (C) budgets for +N and + P vs. control simulations based on a novel application of water use efficiency conversion. Many of the measured response variables provided hints of subtle changes in response to +P rather than +N, which were enhanced when scaled. From this, we found that additional P loading is expected to reduce both gross and net primary productivity as well as CO2 uptake via net ecosystem exchange of C, likely pressing the system beyond metabolic capacity and leading to a 48–62% decrease in projected lateral C export. Greater eutrophication will likely compound vulnerabilities to sea-level rise submergence, especially where P concentrations are high and already reducing soil surface elevations.

The Nordic countries have often been portrayed as pioneers of human rights and international law. However, few are aware that court-protected human rights played an almost negligible role in post-Second World War Scandinavia. Instead, scepticism towards natural law thrived, and minimalist procedural democracy alongside legal positivism positioned ‘the people’ as represented in parliament at the apex of the democratic hierarchy. Therefore, while the desire to impose judicial limits on parliamentary majorities after the Second World War came to dominate most international constitutional discourse as a combination of judicial review and rights, the Nordics cultivated a form of political and even anti-constitutionalist position long before the term gained popularity elsewhere. This article presents the untold story of how and why the Nordics became a symbol of procedural democracy and majoritarianism, making it challenging for the region to embrace a European constitutional order in full. It also argues that by having few judicial safeguards in place nationally, the Nordic countries are badly positioned in the event of a populist or illiberal takeover. The article warns that a procedural and anti-constitutional democracy model, still strongly hailed in the Nordic countries and increasingly prominent in recent constitutional literature, may legitimate illiberal leaders around the globe with its strong link between the idea of unconstrained power of the majority and the right to rule. It may also, in a European context, significantly obstruct the European Court of Justice’s efforts to flesh out a stronger European constitutional democracy.