My aim, in this response to Peters’ timely and powerful work, is both to acknowledge its transformative force for legal studies and at the same time to introduce distinctions that may be of value in distinguishing discussions of the ‘theatricality’ of law from the emergence of a modern understanding of ‘theatre’ as the production of coherent and powerful fictions enacted by characters. The early modern period (1500–1650) is described, in chapter 5 of Peters’ study, as ‘the age of theatre’. If Peters shows how judicial proceedings draw on the performative aspects of rhetoric and theatre, my response aims to show how, in the ‘age of theatre’, theatre’s distinctive fictionality drew on the fiction-generating power of probable argument and inferential reasoning, as taught in legal rhetoric.

The Introduction outlines the intermedial method of this book, which brings together Milton with nineteenth-century writers and artists who engage with each other’s work at the same time as reading Milton directly. It provides an overview of Milton’s place in the visual and material culture of the long nineteenth century. This includes the literary galleries of the late eighteenth century, the development of proto-cinematic technologies and stage spectacles, illustration on canvas and the page, and interventions in books such as extra-illustration and marginalia. The Introduction also addresses the various metaphors drawn from Milton’s writing that scholars have used to explain his influence, comparing him to a ghost, a troll, a father, even God. It then proposes the epic simile as a useful model for the way Milton is understood in this book: just as Milton’s similes describing Satan suggest, a powerful figure can be like many disparate things at the same time.

Introduction

Climate litigation has been defined as the set of judicial, administrative, or extrajudicial actions that are directly or indirectly related to the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (mitigation), the reduction of vulnerability to the effects of climate change (adaptation), the repair of damages suffered as a result of climate change (loss and damage), and the management of climate risks (risks) (Moreira 2021). As a subject of academic inquiry, it is a prominent field of study in numerous countries within the Global North, although it is a relatively recent and emerging area of study in Brazil.

According to Setzer and Vanhala (2019), there is an imbalance in academic production on this topic in the North and South countries. Nevertheless, comparative studies such as that of Peel and Lin (2008) reveal differences and similarities, as well as cooperative practices and reciprocal influence. The comprehension of the existing differences and similarities between countries of the Global North and South in the formulation and development of cases of climate litigation, as well as among countries of the Global South, is fundamental for the understanding of this phenomenon that has grown regularly and continuously. This theoretical and analytical approach becomes even more relevant when climate litigation is conceived as a potential instrument for implementing climate justice.

The third chapter examines the interventions of Domitian in the lower Subura. Domitian, who was even more socially conservative than Augustus, took a more aggressive approach to the Subura’s intensifying activity with the construction of his own imperial forum, severing the Subura’s connection with the city center. The complex highlighted Minerva and allowed Domitian to insert himself into the earlier discourse on female morality that had already been established in the Subura.

Distinguishing between wealth, prestige, productive, and ritual differentiation proves especially enlightening in ferreting out the dynamics underlying different bundles of trajectories in which social complexity emerges in different ways and takes different forms. Ideas previously posed as contradictory accounts of the universal origin of social complexity are seen to be complementary accounts of different bundles.

Introduction

Thirty-four years elapsed between climatologist James Hansen's 1988 testimony to the United States Congress, alerting the world ‘with 99 percent confidence’ that global warming was underway, and the 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report pleading that ‘It's “now or never”’ for nations to act to stave off the worst effects of climate change (U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources 1988; IPCC 2023). United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres succinctly captured the severity of the emergency in declaring:

The ‘litany of broken climate promises’ and ‘empty pledges’ refers to the shortcomings of the most significant international climate efforts to date, including the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its annual Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and the 2015 Paris Agreement, which all have failed to achieve ‘stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’ (UNFCCC 1992).

Everyone is familiar with algorithms and social media surveillance. What about farmer surveillance? The new ‘agricultural revolution’ is currently unfolding: drones, sensors, artificial intelligence (AI), and robots are put to the service of agriculture, fundamentally changing the way food is produced. This model of production is being disseminated rapidly, with states already adopting digital agriculture (or related) policies.

While agriculture specialists and social scientists have researched the benefits as well as the risks that digital agriculture presents, a legal analysis is missing, especially on the topic of the risks to human rights. In this chapter, I will be highlighting the projected effects of the spread of this technology, paying attention to the power imbalances, and potential threats to human rights and questioning the role of agricultural technology (AgTech) providers. First, I will be mentioning the benefits of digital agriculture, turning then to criticism of this technology, including, inter alia, issues of market concentration and climate justice. Second, I will be linking the criticism identified to risks to human rights, specifically the right to food. Finally, I will be contemplating whether a solution engaging the human rights obligations of AgTech providers based on business and human rights law is possible.

The Benefits and Risks of Digital Agriculture

First, it should be acknowledged that the development of digital agriculture fits into the existing model of technological and commercialized innovation (El Bilali 2018, 212). Namely, for years, private companies have been focusing their research and development efforts on intensifying agriculture, focusing on productivity and crops for developed countries (Stads et al. 2023, 126).

Through the case of a single intaglio found at a site in Northumberland, just north of the Roman frontier, this chapter challenges the view that consumption by the poor is about use: the imperative that the poor need to use, put to use, and use up the little they have. Combined with a reading of curse tablets from Roman Britain, a case is made for seeing possession instead as a capability in and of itself: something to be sought, valued, and treasured, even for those living precariously.