In the epilogue, the editors reflect on the series of conversations. They revisit the definition of ‘legal innovation’ and what they have learned about it through the discussions. Their perspective on legal innovation is twofold. On the one hand, technology transforms the reality of law and fundamentally changes the way we access and experience law and justice. On the other hand, law evolves, adapts to changes in society, but can also facilitate and implement innovation. They conclude by considering what it takes to initiate legal innovation.

Since 1985, when China’s first Patent Law came into effect, China has established a legal protection system for utility models. At present, after four revisions of the Patent Law, China’s utility model patent legal system has also been improved. However, among the authorized utility model patents, those that fully meet the necessary conditions of novelty and inventive step might be in the minority. Of course, this phenomenon is not unique in China. The purpose of this chapter is to illuminate the ongoing optimization of the Chinese utility model patent system in the context of the development of China’s overall patent system. Accordingly, Part Ⅰ traces the emergence of China’s Patent System, including the Chinese utility model patent-based subsystem. Part Ⅱ centers on the basic contours of the Chinese utility model patent system. Part Ⅲ then summarizes existing deficiencies of the Chinese utility model patent system and future development trends. It concludes with a discussion of potential implications of proposed revisions to the Chinese utility model patent system.

Cultural confidence, moral superiority, and metropolitan elitism: these characteristics of the 1870s are exemplified by Harley Granville-Barker’s edited collection of essays, The Eighteen-Seventies (1929), which offers a nostalgic, aristocratic, Oxbridge, and high-culture account of this decade. But this present collection, in the spirit of the series to which it belongs, frames the 1870s as a decade in transition, and seeks to unsettle its conventional associations while acknowledging their force and legacy. Indeed, writers of the 1870s were especially adept at questioning their current temporal moment, often betraying an overdetermined sense of their place in time, and even of temporality itself.

Chapter 10 As the French Revolution became increasingly violent, there was an growing backlash in Britain against the celebration of liberty as independence. One response, popular among a number of conservative churchman, took the form of reviving the claim that all subjects have a duty of non-resistance and passive obedience. But a different although no less hostile response came from a number of self-styled ‘liberal’ legal and political writers who saw themselves as equally opposed to conservatives and revolutionaries. This group has been little studied, but the aim of this chapter is to show that they were of central importance in discrediting the ideal of liberty as independence. They accepted the Hobbesian view that most of our natural rights must be given up in the name of peace, and that the rights remaining to us as subjects of states must basically take the form of the silence of the law. Although the ideal of liberty as independence continued to be celebrated by early British socialists, the liberal writers paved the way for the explicitly Hobbesian commitments of the early utilitarians, who finally succeeded in turning the claim that liberty cannot mean anything other than exemption from restraint into a new orthodoxy.

How, given the murder of those demanding a more representative political system at Peterloo in 1819, did more Britons, at home and in the colonies, get to vote by 1885?

How did an English state torn apart by sectarian conflict, civil war and a revolution in the late seventeenth century become the most powerful in the world by 1819?

The Conclusion draws on the findings of the book to analyse the main implications of a reciprocity-based understanding of belligerent reprisals. First, it distinguishes this formalization of belligerent reprisals from earlier theories stressing the law-making function of the measure. Then, it accounts for the continued relevance of belligerent reprisals even at a time when mechanisms monitoring and enforcing compliance with the laws of armed conflict gain momentum. Finally, it explains how a reciprocity-based interpretation of belligerent reprisals would affect follow-up reform of the mechanism – be it in the sense of fine-tuning its regulation, or in the sense of disposing of it altogether.

This chapter argues that Gissing’s novels offer significant and philosophically sophisticated engagements with the novel of ideas. Gissing’s study of Schopenhauer’s works led him to take a keen interest in post-Kantian idealism and in fundamental questions regarding the irreconcilability of the ‘ideal’ and the ‘real’. These concerns are reflected in the novels Gissing wrote in the 1880s – these books satirize the idealist pretensions of social reformers, and they demonstrate that the philanthropic ideals of the Settlement Movement were bound to fail when confronted with the complex and harsh reality of London’s East End. Gissing’s novels are animated by a set of questions that bear directly on the history of the novel of ideas: are aspirational ideals necessarily external and alien to the literary work, or is it possible for them to be assimilated into the medium of literary form? Is it possible for these ideals to become artistically productive?

This chapter summarises the main findings of the book and the trajectory of republican liberty as the central element of the competition–democracy nexus. The chapter also explores proposals for how the competition–democracy can be revived to allow competition law to address the contemporary challenges of industry concentration and the rise of corporate power. The chapter discusses different avenues towards a competition–democracy nexus 4.0 that would realign competition law with the parameters of republican antitrust. The chapter also casts light on the hard policy choices one such reform would involve.

Chapter 4 opens up the black box of the firm to assess the effects of leadership on reform outcomes in China Infrastructure (CI) (pseudonym), a central SOE in the construction industry. The chapter features paired comparisons of the consecutive tenures of chairmen in CI and process tracing of original data gathered during fifteen months of fieldwork inside the company, primarily in its Beijing headquarters, between January 2014 and June 2016, with follow-up visits in June 2018, December 2019, and December 2023. It presents evidence that the chairman’s leadership generated variation in the degree to which market expansion was decentralized and in the balance of influence among intra-firm actors. The chapter also evaluates and rules out alternative explanations: guanxi with and intervention by higher-level officials, shifts in policy by administrative superiors, and changes in industry competition in domestic and international markets.

Chapter 5 examines the effects of leadership on reform outcomes in four other central SOEs: State Grid, China General Nuclear Power Group, Sinochem, and China Railway Engineering Corporation. These companies are selected to capture full variation along two key dimensions: industry strategic importance and firm type. For each of these four central SOEs, the chapter compares the consecutive tenures of their chairmen to assess the effects of leadership on reform at the firm level. This survey provides additional evidence that successive leaders’ decisions about organizational strategy and structure are an important driver of variation in reform outcomes. Cross-firm analysis further suggests that the effects of leadership on reform are a matter of degree and are conditioned by existing institutions, policies, and economic factors.

John Keble and his protégé Charlotte Yonge take ritual time in a seemingly humbler, domestic direction. Rather than using higher time to engage an overarching political project as Wordsworth did with the Revolution, they see the church calendar as sacralizing even the smallest mundane tasks – the trivial round, as Keble calls it. Yet, for Keble, the transfiguration of daily work performed in linear time leads to nothing less than humanity’s deification or theosis, to use the language of the Greek Church Fathers venerated by the Oxford Movement. For Yonge, higher time and the Prayer Book’s liturgies not only reconcile reason and faith but also structure the material work of parish reform – the building of a local school, the repair of a dilapidated neighborhood, the hiring of a responsible priest to replace an absentee one. Through liturgy, therefore, the Tractarians can attend to everyday life while still seeing that life as sharing in the divine.

Chapter 1 introduces the book’s core argument: that leadership in China’s public sector helps to explain variation in reform outcomes at the organization level. Focusing on Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs), it introduces the book’s analysis of the effects of leader decisions about strategy and structure and their execution on two types of reform outcomes: (1) the degree to which SOE market expansion is decentralized and (2) changes in the balance of influence among intra-firm actors – who gains and who loses during reform. This chapter also provides an overview of Chinese SOEs’ domestic economic presence and their strategic functions for the state. It distinguishes between SOEs owned by central and local governments and situates them in China’s administrative hierarchy. Next, the chapter takes a closer look at central SOE leaders: their demographics, integration in China’s political system, and attributes relative to other Chinese officials. It concludes by previewing the content of the remaining chapters.

Silver coinage developed accompanied by locally produced silver. Gold was introduced in the late first century bce. Both were reformed by Nero, and the system eventually collapsed.

The victory of Cameron’s Conservatives in 2010 ushered in the idea of a new Conservative Party, repairing both image and electoral prospects. However, this chapter will examine to what extent that change occurred, and how much the Conservatives were united or divided by the same older questions of policy and ideology – particularly on Europe and the economy. The chapter will also analyse the development of the party’s structures, power and personnel, and contemplate what effects any change may have had.