The Waldensians began inside the church in the 1170s, were excommunicated, went underground and survived into the sixteenth century. In our efforts to get at their past reality, how far can we penetrate the texts about them produced in the Middle Ages by a persecuting church, during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation by polemicists and in modern times by academics modelling them according to the latest intellectual fashions?

This chapter explores the impact of military grain provisioning on civilians through a study of yiyun, the Nationalists’ relay transport system. Having lost key sections of major railways and without adequate supplies of trucks or fuel, the Nationalists resorted to the large-scale use of civilian labor and equipment to transport military grain. There was no equivalent in scale in any other theater of World War II to the Nationalists’ reliance on mass local mobilization as a key mode of both military and commercial transport. Proponents of this nationwide scheme drew inspiration from the courier service of imperial times, but also applied the more recent concept of “scientific management.” As with granary networks, yiyun tied civilians directly to the prolonged conflict, extending state powers into the remotest communities through historic units of local administration, the baojia. Because both yiyun and granary networks hinged on civilian contributions of labor, property, and foodstuffs, they reveal the basis of the Nationalist war effort as the systematic imposition of sacrifice upon the citizenry.

This chapter focuses on the urban and rural landscapes of the Balkans in Late Antiquity, covering modern-day Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia . It examines how cities and countryside areas evolved between the third and seventh centuries, with a particular emphasis on the material traces of early Christianity. The chapter draws on archaeological evidence, historical texts and urban planning studies to highlight the transformation of key cities such as Thessaloniki, Nicopolis ad Istrum and Serdica (modern Sofia). This contribution argues that the Balkans served as a cultural and political bridge between Asia and Europe, influencing the spread of Christianity and shaping imperial policies. It also explores how urban centres adapted to economic shifts and military threats, with some cities reinforcing their fortifications while others declined. Thessaloniki, for instance, maintained its urban layout and economic role, even as certain Roman public buildings fell out of use. Religious change also played a crucial role in shaping the Balkan landscape. Christian basilicas replaced pagan temples, while monasteries and bishopric centres became focal points for local governance and cultural life. The chapter further addresses the challenges of dating archaeological sites, emphasising the need for more precise chronological frameworks.

A number of factors must be considered when reflecting on State responsibility and they are assessed in this chapter. First, what constitutes an internationally wrongful act for which a State may be responsible? Second, what conduct may be attributed to the State? Third, what reparation must a State make in the event it is held responsible for a wrongful act? Fourth, what defences might be available to a State that would preclude a finding of wrongfulness? Related issues such as diplomatic protection, nationality of claims, and the exhaustion of local remedies are also considered in this chapter.

Chapter 8 on Extraterritoriality discusses how the cross-border nature of climate impacts is addressed within climate litigation. The author scrutinises the interpretation of ‘jurisdiction’ and related procedural and substantive issues in the context of these transboundary impacts. His analysis showcases how these legal principles and procedural rules either facilitate or constrain courts and quasi-judicial bodies in grappling meaningfully with these impacts. In his exploration of key decisions, the author unravels their implications for the global governance of climate change and the challenges and opportunities they present for transboundary climate lawsuits. He distils emerging best practices that reveal how courts and quasi-judicial bodies, through judicious interpretation of legal principles, are grappling with the global dimensions of climate change. Despite the complexities inherent in integrating extraterritorial considerations into climate litigation, the chapter posits an optimistic outlook and highlights how visionary legal reasoning can tackle these complexities in a manner that is conducive to ensuring access to justice for those most affected by climate impacts.

China today is one of the most governmentalized societies in the world. State penetration into everyday life may not be as thorough as some critics insist, yet the idea that the state should be present in society persuades most Chinese to submit to state oversight in exchange for the security the state claims to provide. China is not alone in elevating the state above the citizen, but it does draw on a long tradition of state policy and political philosophy known as "Confucian statecraft" to support this orientation, for which Qiu Jun’s Supplement provides an almost complete account. This was the China that the Jesuits encountered in the seventeenth century and communicated back to Europeans at a time when the divine right of kings was in question. Qiu Jun’s method of handling monarchy was to caution the emperor on bad policy and warn him of the catastrophic effects that bad decisions could produce, and that the emperor’s main tasks were to detect latent signs of coming disasters and consult his advisors.

Conservatives claim that high taxes reduce economic freedom of choice so tax cuts are necessary to increase freedom. But freedom is ambiguous. Freedom from taxation can also enable people the freedom to do things that are detrimental to society, as financial crises and corporate scandals illustrate. Moreover, cutting taxes and therefore the resources associated with social programs can limit the freedom of these programs’ recipients to pursue their dreams and aspirations and to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. In that sense, freedom is unequally distributed in America. Poor people have fewer resources and less economic freedom than rich people. Cutting taxes to reduce welfare spending further limits the freedom of less affluent people and does little to increase freedom at the top. This is why cross-national data show that higher taxes are associated with more not less economic freedom. Cutting taxes also limits the government’s ability to provide the public goods that everyone needs.

This chapter discusses the emergence of the rescript system – a paradigm in which emperors used correspondence to settle legal questions – over the second century CE. This paradigm is most closely linked with the emperor Hadrian, and I consider three major legal innovations from Hadrian’s reign: Hadrian replacing the annually renewed Praetor’s Edict with a Perpetual Edict under more formal imperial control, Hadrian sunsetting the “right of response” which had formerly been given to individual jurists, and Hadrian’s vast expansion of the imperial bureaucracy and correspondence system. I then consider how imperial legal replies, or “rescripts,” could represent imperial sovereignty in a variety of different modes, from the collaborative and deliberative style of the Diui Fratres to the more bureaucratic and concise mode visible in documents like P.Col.123.