Governments and regulatory agencies make policy through a range of instruments from soft-law guidelines and executive orders to executive rules with the force of law. Based on her book, Democracy and Executive Power, Susan Rose-Ackerman’s essay highlights the link between cross-country differences in rulemaking practices and underlying constitutional frameworks. Based on the US, the UK, Germany, and France, the chapter illustrates how these countries’ disparate constitutional structures help to explain their divergent rulemaking practices. She stresses the existence of policymaking accountability under the rulemaking provisions of the US APA and its absence from the other cases. Nevertheless, whatever the legal framework, the author argues that bureaucrats should take account of outside input as they implement statutory language to make policy choices. The organization of the executive branch should encourage public input and promote bureaucratic competence. Contemporary pressures may indeed be moving all of these countries toward more accountable procedures – not just to protect individual rights but also to enhance the democratic legitimacy of executive rulemaking.

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.

The First World War marked a shift from liberalism and internationalism to a period characterised by nationalisation, ethnicisation of citizenship, and economic protectionism. The art market’s history aligns with these narratives, highlighting the fragmentation of a European trade zone and the disruption of a transnational trade equilibrium. The war prompted significant structural transformations in these markets, with Germany seeing a surge in art investment as a hedge against inflation. In Britain, art sales were driven by tax obligations and national service investments. Conversely, the French market struggled, facing stagnation and a focus on preserving existing collections due to the threat of destruction. Neutral countries such as the Netherlands and Switzerland maintained stable art markets, fostering avant-garde movements and serving as hubs for buyers and sellers. The year 1914 catalysed structural transformations in these markets, highlighting how modern warfare altered art’s perception, value, and trade.

The Sinai Campaign of 1956 was shaped by significant geopolitical developments, including the end of colonialism and the emergence of the Cold War. As former colonial powers relinquished control over territories, the Middle East became a focal point for global power struggles. Great Britain and France, seeking to protect their interests in the region, became involved in the conflict, aligning with Israel to achieve their strategic goals. Amidst these shifting dynamics, the Sinai Campaign unfolded as a pivotal military endeavor. The campaign was characterized by the emphasis on speed in battle, as articulated by Moshe Dayan. Dayan’s strategic vision prioritized the relative advantage of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), focusing on areas where they could create a decisive edge over their adversaries. This approach led to a reevaluation of force-building principles, with an emphasis on offense and rapid execution capabilities. Furthermore, the campaign revealed the formidable power of the IDF’s armored corps, triggering a genuine revolution in Israeli military strategy. The Sinai Campaign thus stands as a multifaceted historical event, shaped by geopolitical realignments, military innovations, and ethical dilemmas.

Considers the international law and practice around asset recovery. Starts with UNCAC Chapter 5 and its genesis, and covers what human rights bodies have said on asset recovery and return. Summarizes the national law of major asset-holding states on recovery and return, and looks at four different models for returning assets to states where they were stolen while avoiding those same assets being re-stolen. Considers some of the complications of asset return where the same networks responsible for stealing them are still in power.

This chapter considers access to courts for victims of grand corruption, especially in Latin America. It explains the origins and meaning of victim compensation in the UNCAC, how “victim” is defined in human rights law, and uses the Honduran Gualcarque River case to introduce how courts are beginning to apply concepts from human rights law to cases involving victims of grand corruption. It divides these cases into “direct harm” suffered by individual or group victims, and cases involving broad or diffuse harm where victims as a class are represented by civil society organizations. It looks briefly at which civil society organizations should be able to represent victims in proceedings.

The accession of British colonies to the League was drafted so as not to set a precedent, yet by 1923, another British Dominion had acceded to the League. Chapter Four covers the unanticipated accession of Ireland to the League, and how Britain attempted to use League membership to manage more active anti-colonial struggles within its Empire. This chapter examines how Irish nationalists perceived the League, both as a promising vehicle of international recognition and liberation, but also as a tool of British imperialism. Furthermore, it explores the role the League played in the negotiations around the Anglo-Irish ‘Treaty’ that created the Irish Free State, and how the League acted as a guarantor of the agreement. Finally, this chapter observes how the Free State approached League membership, and how the entry of the so called ‘restless Dominion’ would test the doctrine of inter se.

Chapter 2 covers the period from 1960 to 1980 and analyses how teachers’ unions emerged as the most powerful force in education policy, often at the expense of other interest groups – most notably the private school associations and parental groups. The chapter investigates how this shift in influence shaped major education reforms of that era. It explains how governments found it relatively easy to expand secondary education to an entirely new generation, as teachers’ unions stood to gain substantial material benefits. In contrast, governments faced extraordinary difficulties in integrating the selective education systems into comprehensive school types aimed at promoting social inclusion, largely due to strong union opposition. Additionally, the chapter analyses how teachers’ unions, in fierce competition with other interest groups, consolidated and extended their influence at local levels across the case countries and the European Union.

France has been at the forefront of the philosophical reflection on freedom of thought, along with the related freedoms of opinion and of conscience. Today, freedom of thought is constitutionally protected under French law as affirmed in Article 11 which makes the ‘free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man’. However, freedom of thought has received limited attention in French legal scholarship and is seldom considered as a standalone and influential factor in legal disputes, some even suggesting that France may be falling behind other democratic states in terms of the effective affirmation and protection of freedom of conscience in particular. The aim of this chapter is to elucidate how the right to freedom of thought finds expression in French positive law, as well as how it has been used distinctively and practically by the courts, if at all. Following a concise examination of the underlying concept, this chapter considers the legal foundations of freedom of thought and its implementation within the judicial system, with particular focus on the Constitutional Council.

In France, certificats d’utilité were introduced by the Law n°68-1 of January 2, 1968. According to article L. 611-2 of the French Intellectual Property Code, French certificats d’utilité are regulated by the same rules as French patents, with the main exceptions being a shorter duration, the absence of requirement of a research report for the delivery of the title (certificate), and of the lack of opposition proceedings.

This chapter discusses literary representations of plants in the French and francophone tradition, referencing texts and writers from Europe, the Caribbean, North America, Western Africa, the Indian Ocean, and Southeast Asia. Without pretending to offer an impossibly exhaustive history or a complete list of references, this essay considers a diverse set of examples to signal the broad range of these imaginary encounters with the vegetal, as well as shifting (though sometimes overlapping) approaches to botanical knowledge from the Middle Ages to the present. It also examines how and why plants have served as potent allegorical figures, and then focuses on select images of the plants themselves, noting some of their most popular species as well as the ways in which literary authors have tried to understand the otherness of the vegetal.

This chapter opens a series of chapters with case studies on France, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Poland. The institution of French laïcité is commonly understood as referring to a strict separation of church and state. This chapter explains how laïcité has become entangled in the pseudo-constitutional notion of vivre ensemble and the rising significance of social norms for the substantiation of the legal concept of l’ordre public. This is inferred from two particular expressions of constitutional intolerance: first, the overly general and restrictive prohibition of the full-face veil in public spaces, which culminated in the S.A.S. v. France case. Second, it details the expansion of the legal concept of laïcité as expressed in the 2021 Law Concerning the Respect for the Principles of the Republic, which exercises extensive control over the organisation of religious institutions, sources of funding, and their political loyalty to the Republic.

A popular refrain in many countries is that people with mental illnesses have “nowhere to go” for care. But that is not universally true. Previously unexplored international data shows that some countries provide much higher levels of public mental health care than others. This puzzling variation does not align with existing scholarly typologies of social or health policy systems. Furthermore, these cross-national differences are present despite all countries’ shared history of psychiatric deinstitutionalization, a process that I conceptualize and document using an original historical data set. I propose an explanation for countries’ varying policy outcomes and discuss an empirical strategy to assess it. The research design focuses on the cases of the United States and France, along with Norway and Sweden, in order to control for a range of case-specific alternative hypotheses. The chapter ends with brief descriptions of contemporary mental health care policy in each of the four countries examined in this book.