This chapter explores the nature of the legislature and its relationship to constitutional government, focusing in particular on the importance of legislative agency and the dynamics that frame its exercise. The chapter begins by reflecting on the objects of legislative action, arguing that authorising a legislative assembly to legislate changes who legislates but not what it is to legislate. The object of legislative deliberation and action should be the common good and securing this end requires agency. The assembly faces many challenges in exercising agency, which it is structured to overcome, partly by way of its relationship to government, a relationship that goes well beyond acts of legislation. The relationship between legislature and government shapes the character of a constitutional order and bears on the relationship between legislature and the people. The legislature’s duty is to represent the people, which makes self-government possible. The legislature should deliberate and act for the people and be accountable to the people, with legislative deliberation taking its place in a wider public conversation. The legislature’s capacity for agency informs how legislative acts should be understood to change the law and helps explain the moral importance of legislative freedom and the limits on that freedom.

This chapter surveys one of the most significant enterprises of the Committee of Instruments and Proposals, established by the Board of Longitude following the Longitude Act of 1818. This was the management of a new observatory proposed for the Cape of Good Hope. Several Commissioners of Longitude had direct interests: John Barrow had been administrator and surveyor at the Cape; Joseph Banks advised on maritime surveys there; Davies Gilbert lobbied actively for a southern equivalent of the Royal Observatory. Commissioners successfully negotiated the scheme with the Admiralty and the Colonial Office. Though funds were forthcoming from the Navy, long-distance management proved difficult. The resulting issues reached the Committee and the Board, as did increasing costs of equipment from London’s finest instrument makers. These challenges had not been resolved at the Board’s dissolution in 1828; indeed, that moment coincided with discussions as to the possibility of closing the observatory. The affairs of the Cape Observatory thus reveal both opportunities and challenges in issues of scientific and geographical management in the epoch of empire and reform.

This chapter covers the two decades from the first minuted meeting of the Commissioners of Longitude in 1737. During this time, small groups of Commissioners were called together sporadically for ad hoc meetings, principally to agree funding for specific projectors, notably clockmaker John Harrison and longitude veteran William Whiston. Over this initial period, relations with Harrison were cordial and supportive. Despite these promising developments, it was a period in which public opinion gradually reverted to mockery of those seeking the seemingly impossible longitude dream. The chapter seeks to emphasise in addition the value of looking at some of the schemes that more recent authors have dismissed as invalid. This has occurred not only when proposals seem unlikely to modern eyes but also when their authors were partly or wholly motivated by factors such as religion or financial need, and overlooks the reception of those proposals. The books published by Jane Squire are a particular focus, since they contain some of the best records of the Commissioners’ activities and thoughts during the earlier decades.

This chapter details the creation and management of the Nautical Almanac, one of the Board of Longitude’s most important concerns. Appointed Astronomer Royal and thus a Commissioner of Longitude in 1765, Nevil Maskelyne oversaw its publication and that of associated texts, directing the work of a group of mathematical computers overseen by comparers. Hierarchical organisation and increasing costs preoccupied much of the Board of Longitude’s subsequent affairs. Calculated up to a decade in advance, the Nautical Almanac became a symbol of the Board’s repute among foreign academies and observatories, although its accuracy was later subject to satire and criticism. After Maskelyne’s death, work seems to have suffered and its management was overhauled by the Longitude Act of 1818 that brought it under Thomas Young’s management. Controversy wracked the Board’s direction of the Nautical Almanac for the next decade. Its assignment from 1831 to the astronomer William Stratford as superintendent was a major element of the aftermath of the Board’s abolition.

This chapter examines the Board of Longitude’s relationships with watchmakers in the five decades after their dealings with John Harrison. In this period in which the chronometer – a term brought into more common use in the period – began to develop into a stable technology, the Board still fielded proposals for schemes about mechanical timekeeping and actively engaged with a small number of makers. Acting within the remit of a new Longitude Act in 1774 that significantly changed the terms for testing and reward, the Board increasingly relied on land trials at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, alongside a small number of long-distance voyages, which provided an additional arena for testing the nascent technology. During this period, the Board became embroiled in two debates that further shaped its horological dealings and saw its authority contested in Parliament. The first, over the work of Thomas Mudge, saw the Board’s authority undermined. The second, centring on a long and bitter dispute between watchmakers Thomas Earnshaw and John Arnold (and son), finally saw the Board’s authority recognised.

This chapter surveys the workings of the British Board of Longitude in the period from the mid-1770s, which saw expenditure and bureaucracy increase. The Longitude Act of 1774 cut rewards and tightened the criteria for success. Managed through a permanent secretary, the Board more resembled an office of state, while personal and patronage relations still played vital roles in its conduct. Both Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne and Joseph Banks exploited the Board to further their own interests in policy and organisation in projects including management of the Nautical Almanac and its computers, supply of instruments to survey voyages, and trials of new kinds of optical glass. The chapter explains how Maskelyne used the Board to extend networks centred on the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, while Banks used his position as a Commissioner of Longitude to mend relations with the Admiralty and extend patronage. Although there were major tensions and conflicts with Maskelyne, Banks was able effectively to make the Board of Longitude an integral component of his system of public administration over the sciences.

This chapter reinterprets the demise of the Board of Longitude in 1828, which has been seen as resulting from reformist pressure or financial retrenchment. Such accounts underestimate continuation of the Board’s activities, notably managing chronometers, producing the Nautical Almanac and providing scientific advice. Changes were initially driven by Joseph Banks’s interests, notably the appointment of Royal Society fellows and Resident Commissioners including Thomas Young, who became secretary and a key organiser after Banks’s death. Schemes such as rewards for finding the Northwest Passage, improvement of optical glass, determining the figure of the Earth and the foundation of the Cape Observatory, were managed under Young’s aegis. The role of the Admiralty and its Secretaries John Wilson Croker and John Barrow were decisive. The Longitude Act of 1818 brought the Board under Admiralty control, and that of 1828 moved its work into the Admiralty. An Admiralty committee comprising Young and natural philosophers Michael Faraday and Edward Sabine was formed; the Nautical Almanac and chronometer testing remained within the Admiralty’s financial remit.

Focusing on the period from the early 1760s to the resolution of the John Harrison affair in 1773, this chapter argues that it was only in this period that the ‘Board of Longitude’ came into being. This was largely in response to the debates surrounding the sea trials of Harrison’s fourth marine timekeeper (H4) and two other longitude schemes – Tobias Mayer’s tables and method for lunar distances and Christopher Irwin’s marine chair for observing Jupiter’s satellites. The transformation into a standing board manifested in regular rather than sporadic meetings and the appointment of a secretary to keep the Board’s papers in order as the Commissioners, for whom astronomer Nevil Maskelyne would become a central figure, sought to defend their decisions over the allocation of monetary rewards. The debates with Harrison, which focused on questions of adequate testing and the judging of trials, disclosure and replicability, and accusations of self-interest, would see the Board harden its stance through the use of legislation to ensure resolution. The Harrisons and their supporters, by contrast, sought to bolster support through lobbying and publication of their claims.

The fragmentation of the European art market after the First World War resulted not only from the war itself but also from deliberate legislative choices. Post-1918 legislation was enacted in a climate of emergency, influenced by the imperative to generate fiscal revenue and protect art. Paris’s decline as an art hub was exacerbated by well-meaning but ill-conceived export and tax regulations, hindering its ability to regain pre-war prominence. Fears of economic and political seizure influenced Weimar policymakers, worsening German isolation. In contrast, Britain opted for minimal postwar intervention. These legislative approaches reflected different economic trajectories as much as they did postwar mentalities. The state’s attempt to protect art, extract profit from it, and avoid economic and cultural expropriation was a symptom of postwar nationalisation. It dealt the final blow to an already weakened European auction system.

This chapter explores the long- and short-term roots of the British Longitude Act 1714, highlighting the degree of continuity with earlier precedents. It first explores the nature and impact of developments in navigational techniques and instruments, astronomy, timekeeping, the finding of longitude on land and the judging and funding of longitude proposals in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. It then delves into the chain of events and written and verbal discussions which gave rise to the new British rewards in 1713–1714. These saw the self-interested lobbying of two projectors gain momentum through a confluence of national and political interests, before becoming enshrined in law as rewards open to all comers.

Several provisions of the Convention deal with obligations to punish or suppress genocide using criminal law mechanisms. States Parties to the Convention are required to prosecute the crime of genocide and to provide for appropriate penalties. The Convention provides explicitly for territorial jurisdiction, and makes no mention of other forms, such as active and passive personality jurisdiction. The drafters of the Convention rejected reference to universal jurisdiction although it is now recognized under customary international law. States are also required to cooperate in extradition of suspects to stand trial for genocide.

Following a brief historical overview of the birth of the organised movement, Chapter 1 introduces literary figures and texts promoted by antivivisection periodicals such as the Zoophilist, the Home Chronicler, and the Animals Guardian. Adopting a literary-critical approach offers a fresh perspective on the movement’s association pamphlets and periodicals which have, thus far, largely been examined as historical documents. Poems, stories, and ‘humane words’ from notable writers were sourced and deployed to shape a common antivivisectionist identity, articulate the movement’s ideology, and mobilise activists. Analysis of antivivisection poems by Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and Robert Buchanan is complemented by attention to the framing and reception of these works in antivivisection publications and the wider press.

This chapter explores rules on compensation that are peculiar to cases involving personal injury or death. The wrongful act is usually a tort, but it may also be a breach of contract1 or a statutory wrong. It is assumed that the claim is not excluded by statute; some exclusions are mentioned. This chapter does not discuss rules on compensation that apply to personal injury as well as other types of harm. Those rules are discussed in Part 1 and in the other chapters of Part 2. Furthermore, this chapter, like the rest of Part 2, is concerned only with ‘normal’ compensation. Aggravated damages, which may be awarded in cases of personal injury (and other cases), are discussed in Ch 15.

Comparing ancient societies allows us to observe the variety of relationships that prevailed between states — in different forms and at different scales — and their complex legal environments. This chapter explores five dimensions of this relationship. First, we examine the capacity of law to shape state power. While constitutional law, strictly speaking, was comparatively rare in the ancient world, we can yet observe various ways in which law, law-like practices and other cultural norms operated collectively to both empower and constrain the state. The second and third parts of the chapter look at the inverse relationship: state power over law and legal practice in the form of legislative powers and jurisdiction, respectively. In the fourth part, we turn from ideational aspects of state law to the structure of state legal systems themselves, particularly in the context of private or non-state legal practices. Here we focus on those domains of law in which the state was most intimately engaged, what was left to non-state actors and the engagements between both across a sometimes indistinct boundary. The final part of the chapter explores the role of law in legitimizing state power.