This book is prompted by a concern that those who offend are blamed too much when they are held criminally responsible, suggesting that the law is running at a moral and social justice deficit. This concern represents an enduring criticism of the criminal law which is variously characterised as a failure to recognise crime as a social problem, its subjects as real people, or its own role in perpetuating injustice through its doctrine and principles of responsibility. In response, the book argues that the boundary placed around what factors can and cannot be included in assessments of culpability, and the apparent red line drawn between guilt and non-guilt, are both more permeable and less definitive than the law might have us think. The introduction explains and summarises the core arguments to support a Universal Partial Defence for the criminal law, based on a Real Person Approach to blaming people.

Leibniz is the genuine initiator of German Idealism, developing ideas of freedom as spontaneity or self-originating action, and linking freedom with justice and progress in ways that are decisive for Kant and later idealists. Rethinking spontaneity as negative freedom, Kant criticises the paternalistic perfectionism and Enlightened absolutism of Christian Wolff, a distinct development from Leibniz, but opens the way for a new perfectionism of freedom. The origins of perfectionism in Aristotle and the Stoics are surveyed, and the various formulations of post-Kantian perfectionism from Humboldt to Marx are outlined.

The Filipino people struggled for three years to free their land from Japanese occupation. Hundreds of thousands resisted, while most did their best to just survive, providing what support they could to the resistance. A few Americans, civilian and military, also remained behind and formed a leadership cadre around which Filipinos could coalesce. Theirs was a lonely existence until the first fragile contact was established with Allied forces in Australia. First, they fought to survive. Next, they fought for recognition from MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Area headquarters, which would bring with it legal protection, promotions, supplies, arms, equipment, money, and prestige. Finally, they often fought one another, sometimes as a matter of ideology but more often for power. The resistance grew on the back of Japanese atrocities that turned the Filipino people firmly against the occupation of their homeland. Slowly, steadily, inexorably, American and Filipino leaders formed the framework for a robust guerrilla struggle against Japanese occupation that morphed into one of the great resistance movements of World War II.

Chapter 3 probes the meaning of the word ‘equality’. It outlines a multidimensional, substantive conception of equality, as adopted by the UN Committee for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. But it notes the Act’s lack of engagement with some aspects of this ideal. The Act’s scope is both more limited and more individualised than this substantive concept might demand. Making sense of what law might intend to contribute to meeting equality ideals is difficult but necessary, as it can provide a benchmark against which to evaluate the law. With this in mind, this chapter proposes five potential objectives, which are guided by the Act’s scope. These range from changing attitudes and shaping perceived social norms through to influencing behaviours or compensating victims of negative treatment. These potential objectives are used as a framework for assessment of law’s contribution throughout the rest of the book.

I present a theoretical framework underscoring the way the emergence of a dominant party leader shapes strategic interactions among party elites, which in turn lead to distinct party-building strategies and capacities for resource mobilization. The key insights of the theoretical framework are threefold. First, party ideology serves as a constraining device influencing the types of party mobilization infrastructure – elite-centric vis-à-vis mass-centric – that embody distinct comparative advantages. Second, domination by a party leader mitigates the collective action problem faced by party elites, leading to coherent party-building strategies that serve as the foundation for effective resource mobilization. In contrast, when party elites engage in contentious power struggles, the quality of mobilization infrastructure suffers because of conflicting party-building strategies. Finally, I integrate the concept of contingencies into the theoretical framework, positing that the balance of intraparty elite power and the state of mobilization infrastructure act as mediators through which these events influence party strength.

This chapter synthesises the findings and discusses how sociomaterial processes shape languages. Challenging modernist linguistic paradigms, it examines how language categories emerge through diverse cultural, historical, and material practices. The chapter critiques binary linguistic models and universalist, teleological assumptions of standardisation, showing that stable linguistic systems are not ‘natural’, but result from specific sociopolitical and material conditions. In contrast, fluid linguistic practices in postcolonial and globalised contexts exhibit variability, innovation, and complex indexicality. Belize’s multilingual environment exemplifies a setting without a hegemonic linguistic centre, producing liquid linguistic norms. The chapter argues for decolonial approaches to linguistics that embrace heterogeneity and that challenge exclusionary, Eurocentric models. Ultimately, it positions fluid linguistic practices as a cultural avant-garde and understands postcolonial environments as inspiring insights into future global sociolinguistic orders shaped by digitalisation and transnationalism.