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Chapter 3 examines what has given Trump a motive to publicly challenge IHL. Section 3.1 details how foundational moral values tend to make conservatives more receptive to overt challenges to IHL. It describes how Trump and various right-wing allies have activated these values, which mirrors tactics Trump has used in other areas of campaigning and governance. Section 3.2 presents findings from an original, national survey of U.S. respondents fielded in 2020 during Trump’s first term. Results from four separate experiments show that conservatives tend to disregard IHL more than other respondents, which correlates with emphasizing their foundational moral values. Additionally, treatments using real-life video clips of Trump demonstrate that impunity coalition messaging can magnify these effects.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, young and mostly urban Egyptian men and boys started writing in new ways. Inspired by the recent emergence of mass-circulated print fiction in both books and periodicals, they became infatuated with writing fiction. Their writerly endeavours often clashed with the textual preferences of their fathers, and represented a major shift in the understanding of what written texts are for, and who can write them.
One check on the abuse of power by the political elite is the ability of people to move away from those who abuse their power. In agricultural societies, this is difficult to do because individuals who move must leave their land behind. Land is not mobile. One result of the Industrial Revolution was that capital displaced land as the most significant factor of production, and capital is more mobile than land. The mobility of physical and human capital has constrained the abuse of authority and has contributed to the shift from feudal political institutions toward democracy.
The scope of authority of the political elite tends to expand because those in authority seek more power, and the masses often perceive problems and demand that those in power do something to address those problems. The demands of the masses are supported by the academic concept of market failure, which legitimizes the expansion of the elite’s scope of authority. Despite theories of market failure that are used to justify government action, most government programs do not correspond with the problems identified by economic theory. Interventions in response to the demands for government action often create additional unforeseen problems, which leads to more demands for government action. The result is that the scope of authority of the ruling class tends to continually expand as the political elite identify problems and the masses demand that the elite address those problems.
Institutions that lower transaction costs are effective only to the extent that they are enforced. Effective enforcement requires that the enforcers are able to display a capacity to use force sufficient to make people perceive that noncompliance would be futile. Institutions of authority, based on the threat of force to be used against those who do not comply, are controlled by the political elite. Once the ruling class has this authority, they can use their power to extend their scope of authority to other activities, such as producing goods and services and redistributing income and wealth. Because institutions of authority are a necessary foundation for an orderly society, there is no effective way for the masses to escape from being subject to them.
This chapter gives an overview of dictionaries, broadly conceived to include monolingual and bilingual wordlists for readers at all levels, in the history of English from the beginnings of Anglo-Saxon literacy to the present day. It argues against a reductive view of dictionaries as primarily agents of standardisation and authority, expressions of the ‘dismal sacred word’. Its arrangement is roughly chronological, beginning with Anglo-Saxon glossography and the lexicography of later medieval English, before turning to the bilingual and monolingual English dictionaries of the early modern period; to the monolingual dictionaries of the eighteenth century; and to the relationship of lexicography to two very important aspects of Late Modern English, namely its pluricentricity and its use as an acquired language. It concludes with a last look at the relationship of English lexicography with the ‘dismal sacred word’.
To the extent they consider the matter, tort theorists sometimes assume that the subjects of authority in tort law are the citizens of the state whose tort law applies. This assumption underlies democratic and social contractarian accounts of how to justify the authority of tort law. But as the doctrine of private international law—particularly choice of law—reveals, the subject of tort law is not the citizen, but the generic person; and authority in tort law is not grounded in the state-citizen relationship. Instead, choice of law rules reveal a more complex picture of how tort structures authority. Here, I offer a sketch of an approach that can justify tort law’s authority over persons, not citizens. And I discuss how this analysis may require us to rethink not just the subjects of tort law but also the subject of tort law: the nature of its primary rights and duties.
Since the advent of Web 2.0, the interaction of user-generated content on participatory platforms has democratized content creation and reshaped communication, identity, authority, and knowledge across various fields, from health to politics, amid the post-truth phenomena. This timely book provides essential insights into the transformative effects of the evolving digital landscape. It gives a comprehensive analysis of how areas such as health, politics, and language ideology have been influenced by digital communication, and explores how online spaces have amplified minority voices, promoting inclusion and representation, while also addressing the backlash that challenges human rights associated with Internet use and the free exchange of information. The book also examines the intersection of law and digital crime, revealing the legal challenges posed by the online world. As our understanding of identity, knowledge, and authority increasingly intersects with Generative AI, it also discusses the impact of intelligent tools and the challenges they present.
It is both unavoidable and rational to form beliefs on the basis of testimony. But whose testimony should I trust? To whom would it be rational to outsource my beliefs? In this paper, I explore the role (if any) that intellectual virtues might play in rational belief formation on the basis of testimony. I begin by considering Linda Zagzebski’s proposed intellectual virtue of being able to recognize reliable authority. I argue that this quality, which is surely an excellence, is better categorized as a skill than a virtue. Then I explore whether other intellectual virtues contribute to assessing the reliability of a testifier. I consider two options: the role of virtues in (1) directly assessing a testifier and (2) indirectly assessing a testifier. With respect to (1), I follow Neil Levy and argue that such assessment requires like expertise to the testifier as opposed to intellectual virtue. With respect to (2), I argue that intellectual virtues are helpful in performing indirect assessment and they enable us to avoid social structures that undermine our ability to perform this assessment. Given that we all must form beliefs on the basis of testimony, this role for intellectual virtues is of great importance.
Heresiological catalogues are one of the most distinctive forms of literature concerning heresy and have also traditionally been one of the most difficult to interpret. This chapter traces the development of this form of writing, focusing on the most productive period in late antiquity, and explores how much such works were intended to be employed in active ‘heresy-hunting’ and what other purposes they might have had, including increasing the authority and status of their authors.
This chapter surveys different ways in which ‘heresy’ has been conceptualised by a variety of writers, both within the periods in which it arose and in later centuries. Tracing a number of different inflections to the charge of heresy, the chapter suggests that we might see it not only as constructed by orthodox authority but as a means by which ‘authority’ itself is reaffirmed; and in conclusion suggests some ways through which modern historians might then reconceptualise their search for ‘dissent’ in past times.
This chapter addresses the question of how to understand Socrates’ willingness to obey the law and accept the death penalty in the Crito, seemingly in contrast to his rebellious attitude towards legal authority in the Apology. Its aim is to show that in submitting to the laws of Athens, Socrates does not betray his own ideal of self-government, in the sense of personal autonomy and freedom, which he explains and defends in several dialogues. However, it argues that Socrates conceives of self-government as the freedom to subject oneself to what used to be an external authority, but in such a way that this authority now becomes an integral part of one’s own moral stance. In order to throw further light on this issue, it also draws upon the discussion of the rule of law in the Statesman, where the notion of self-government similarly plays an important role.
This chapter “deprovincializes” the histories of Lake Kivu’s societies in the “frontier”, (present-day Rwanda and Congo), during the second half of the nineteenth century. It challenges the dominant narrative of the “greater Rwanda” thesis, which argues that colonial border-making “amputated” Rwanda from a significant portion of its territory. The chapter shifts the attention to the societies Rwanda claimed were part of Rwanda since centuries. The chapter shows that while the Nyiginya kingdom – Rwanda’s antecedent – indeed increasingly sought to exert control over and integrate some of these societies, especially under mwami [s. King] Rwabugiri, their control was incomplete, at times impermanent, and often contested. Such complexities are overlooked when considered from a state-centric, often ideological perspective premised on the stability of a centralized authority. The histories and memories of local communities within the region defy these narratives and provide critical alternatives to what has been largely accepted as mere prologue. These questions are not merely a matter of historical debate, they remain crucial for understanding contemporary debates. While the geographical complexity of this chapter makes it a challenging read, it is foundational for understanding the historical continuities and contradictions throughout the book.
An international authority is necessary for the features of international legitimacy—that is, international membership, rights holding, fundamental principles of international law and hierarchy of rights holding, and rightful conduct—to be identified and operationalized, to become the expression of legitimacy and legitimacy in action internationally. Since the end of World War II, the United Nations (UN) has embodied this international authority. Having been established by the will of states and the UN Charter, the UN serves as the international authority of the time, the framework in which most of the construction and evolution of international law—be it through lawmaking treaties, the resolutions of the UN Security Council, or the work of the UN General Assembly and other UN organs—has taken place since the end of World War II. In the process, it has played a central role in determining what is and is not legitimate in international life.
Different units of international politics, such as states or the church, cannot be present in their entirety during international interactions. Political rule needs to be represented for international actors to coordinate their activities. Representants (i.e. maps, GDP, buildings, and diplomatic and warfare practices) establish collective understandings about the nature of authority and its configuration. Whilst representants are not exact replica, they highlight and omit certain features from the units they stand in for. In these inclusions and exclusions lies representants' irreducible effect. This book studies how representants define the units of the international system and position them in relation to each other, thereby generating an international order. When existing representants change, the international order changes because the units are defined differently and stand in different relations to each other. Power is therefore defined differently. Spanning centuries of European history, Alena Drieschova traces the struggles between actors over these representations.
Ethnographic approaches to transnational legal conflicts (TLCs) can provide key insights into the material and symbolic manifestation of the authority of international organisations (IOs) within global governance. TLCs emerge due to the differing pursuits and ambitions of actors in a pluralistic global society. In global governance, the multiplication of international institutions and the fragmented legal frameworks to which they refer raise questions as to the legitimation of IOs’ authority. This contribution builds on ethnographic observations of the TLCs around migrant rescues at the external maritime border of the EU in the Central Mediterranean. The emergence of the Libyan Search and Rescue Region (SRR) in the International Maritime Organization’s Global Search and Rescue Plan in June 2018 legitimised European authorities’ handing over of responsibility to Libyan authorities to coordinate the rescue of migrants and to thus disembark survivors in Libya. This, in turn, clashed with the international principle of non-refoulement and the duty to disembark rescued people in a place of safety according to the 1979 Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue. By describing the dilemmas posed to NGOs involved in rescues of migrants in the Libyan SRR, this contribution shows how IOs’ transnational authority materialises in the on-site hierarchisation of legal provisions within TLCs.
The academic imprint of Susan Strange, long considered a pioneer in the field of IPE, no longer resonates with contemporary debates about the organization and structure of the global political economy. We argue that her analytical framework continues to be a productive way to think about important current developments, most importantly in relation to what can now be called the digital age and its emergent form of capitalism. We therefore modify and update Strange’s framework to highlight its unique analytical potential, and to set out the operational principles of what we want to call a ‘neo-Strangean’ framework of authority. We then apply it to what Strange identifies as the finance or credit structure. By focusing on a core domain of political-economic power, we demonstrate our principal claim that a neo-Strangean framework of authority points towards an understanding of how new actors and imperatives are reshaping the global political economy. We close by outlining the analytical benefits that a neo-Strangean research agenda promises for the field of IPE, which for us centre on emphasizing the dynamics and disruptive consequences of a knowledge-infused global political economy in a way that pays sufficient attention to ideational and material factors.
How did conflicting legitimation narratives in early modern East Asia coexist despite the tensions their mutually exclusive claims generated? Prevailing accounts understand authority to be legitimised through narratives emphasising hierarchical delegation or autonomous production. In practice, both existed simultaneously. Existing accounts in International Relations (IR) suggest conflicting legitimation narratives should produce instability at best and hostilities at worst. Yet conflicting narratives endured over the long term in this period. I argue conflicting legitimation narratives were performed by actors in early modern East Asia within separate locations, allowing contradictory claims around the nature of their authority to coexist. This is seen through the contemporaneous phrase wài wáng nèi dì or ‘emperor at home, king abroad’. To demonstrate this, I introduce the segmentation of space as a concept. Producing an inside/outside dynamic, East Asian actors performed their authority through autonomously produced legitimation narratives inside while acknowledging hierarchically delegated narratives as the basis for authority outside. I identify this process of segmentation operating at both the state and the region level. Both early modern Japan and Vietnam demonstrate how East Asian thinking and practices on spatial organisation were adapted across all levels of the system. Thus, conflicting legitimation narratives could endure without converging on shared understandings.
The journey of mediation as a non-authoritative process into the court system has come full circle with one utterly different model emerging in contemporary times. As mentioned in the previous chapters, mediation has inspired hybrid judicial roles and settlement promotion and introduced consent as the foundation for many hybrid legal processes. Yet this hybridization has worked both ways, affecting mediation as well. Authority-based mediation is emerging as an advanced judicial process that generates public norms. This new sophisticated model for dealing with polycentric legal problems while preserving soft qualities of the process and keeping a narrow focus on a legal outcome is, in fact, a novel form of private adjudication. We describe this emergent form of mediation and its theoretical underpinnings.