Scottish constitutional history has become a subject of much interest in recent decades. Since the Union came into force in May 1707, Scotland has been one component of a complex and dynamic state. The Union itself has been described as an ‘enigma’ that defies easy or conventional definitions.1 Britain is simultaneously ‘unitary’, in the sense that sovereign power, to this day, rests with the ‘crown-in-parliament’ at Westminster, and ‘pluralistic’, because the Treaty continues to guarantee Scotland (more than Wales and Northern Ireland) considerable autonomy in civil affairs.2 In this respect, the establishment of a Scottish parliament in 1999 is simply the belated democratisation of what has always been a distinct ‘national’ politics. It has also (re)kindled debates on Scotland’s possible constitutional futures and this has included reflection on Scotland’s pre-Union heritage. These debates were aided by the creation of an accessible online edition of the records of the Scottish parliament to 1707.3 The renewed interest in Scottish parliamentary history has complemented endeavours in the field of political thought, where attention has focused on the centrality of kingship to Renaissance and early modern discourses. Certain questions have been thrown into sharper relief as a consequence of these inter-related developments. How did abstracted conceptualisations of the political community inform the ways in which people engaged with its governing and representative institutions? How were the boundaries of legitimate political action negotiated and renegotiated over time? To what principles were political actors expected to conform and what happened when those principles were challenged?

Scholars have often characterized John Gower as a moralizing and even severe poet, one for whom obedience to normative law is the sole ethical standard. I suggest that this is only half of the picture. On the one hand, Gower certainly relies on prescriptive forms, such as the exemplum, distinctio, and the microcosm, to make the ethical lessons of his poetry legible to the reader. But on the other, he also draws the reader’s attention to moments in his poetry when a strict obedience to normative forms of ethics leads his characters into moral error. Gower does this by staging for his reader moments in which these characters cry out to various figures of power, begging those figures to suspend ethical norms in the name of mercy and pity. I argue that, in his three long poems—the Mirour de l’omme, the Vox Clamantis, and especially the Confessio Amantis—this “crying voice” casts light upon Gowers views of ethics and poetics alike, by stressing at once the flexibility of Gowers moral views and his commitment to listening, if only in conceit, for the voices that are latent in the matter he reworks.

The second part concludes with a chapter on effective advocacy before the ICJ, by Samuel Wordsworth QC and Kate Parlett. It examines both written and oral advocacy before the Court, with the fundamental objective of the advocate in all cases being to persuade, making it essential to consider what will be of most utility to the judges when they come to reach a decision on the case. They also emphasise the significant role the advocate has to play in the pre-litigation stage and in early procedural exchanges: she or he must bear in mind that they have a dual function of presenting the best case for the client to the Court, while also persuading the client as to the most effective way in which to do that.

Focusing on the various rounds of debates between the 1620s and 1640s on whether or how to seek peace or truce in the war with the Dutch Republic, this explores how agents and counsellors from different parts of the Spanish monarchy navigated the conflict between ideology and necessity-driven pragmatism in contexts of concrete decision-making. Directed at preserving and re-establishing dominion over the various realms of the monarchy, reason of state was at the heart of this weighing of principle and pragmatism. Agents were at the centre of a constant cycle of collecting and assessing information, projecting likely future courses and searching for the utmost expedience within the boundaries of royal conscience and obligations. What solutions were conceivable when attempts to preserve dominion over the Low Countries ran contrary to the demands of the Catholic faith and the preservation of the rest of the monarchy? Could special circumstances allow for special measures or concessions that might deviate from the princely obligations towards justice and the Faith? The chapter shows that as each decade of the war added to its own history, pragmatic arguments and solutions were often inspired by experience, together with a notion of extenuating necessity.

This chapter explores ideals and practices of turning classical histories into political lessons for the present, focusing on a number of individuals who translated the histories of Tacitus into Spanish, while they also served their king as soldiers, counsellors and informants. All testified about the practical value of Tacitus in the present, as they struggled with the internal contradictions and the fact that their author had produced the texts many centuries ago, in a different, pagan world. The counsel of historical experience was tirelessly advocated in reason-of-state discourse, and this chapter shows that the call was answered in practice as the Tacitists in various capacities engaged with the problem of the Dutch Revolt. The chapter argues that although they were well aware of change, they had no scruples in using anachronism and historical analogies, or using the ancients as rhetorical tools to express their ideas and further their political aims. Memorials and pieces of counsel were written from the perspective of events from recent history and could effortlessly be placed alongside Tacitean phrases. Yet the ancient past was also a safe space that could be used to criticize present policies or express warnings, without infringing on the domain of Providence.

This chapter introduces the distinctive character of Spanish reason of state and gives a sense of its broader contribution to the study of political thought. It develops the relationship between reason of state and history, and outlines the relevance of reason of state to recent work on the early modern uses of the past, developments in early modern historical scholarship and methods of coping with so-called ‘information overload’. This chapter introduces how this book explores reason of state in a number of theoretical and practical contexts in the seventeenth-century Spanish monarchy, by focusing on individuals who used the act of organizing information – drawn from classical and recent history, their own experience and analyses of current circumstances – to rhetorically present the condition of necessity. Furthermore, the chapter highlights the paradox that although reason of state as a discourse was closely entwined with political practice, no attempt has been made to systematically trace how the discourse functioned in political action. It also points out that Spain tends to be left out of discussions of seventeenth-century political thought, arguing that the Spanish monarchy’s context is especially valuable for advancing the historiography on the interaction between political ideas and concrete contexts.

This chapter narrates the beginning of an international dispute. In Paris, we meet Filibert N’Diaye, a senior associate at Burnham & Hutz LLP, and his boss, law firm partner Lionel Blum, as they receive the mandate to represent a state before the ICJ. The newly-formed legal team is trying to develop a persuasive litigation strategy and to manage its delicate relationship with the client. Meanwhile, the chapter reflects on the profound transformations of the global legal services market in the last few decades. Yesteryear’s international litigators were an élite club of white Western men, who came to international law late in their careers and handled only a few disputes at a time. In recent years, many multinational law firms have established dedicated practice areas in the world’s dispute settlement capitals. The creation of a specialized ‘bar’ around each international court fostered the mutual acquaintance between counsel and the bench, thereby deeply affecting the substance, tone, and ethos of international litigation.

This chapter takes a break from ICJ proceedings and turns to international trade litigation. In Brussels, Commission lawyers Jasper Schoonraad and Duncan Doyle are preparing the European Union’s defence in a WTO dispute about imports of palm oil. The chapter is devoted to the difficult business of making a persuasive case before an international court, and reviews the building blocks of a good written brief. The skilful collection and organization of factual evidence, the ability to formulate legal arguments that resonate with the judges’ sensibilities, and the reputation of counsel in their professional environment are the elusive hallmarks of success as an international litigator. However, what distinguishes an excellent brief is its internal logic. To make a truly strong case, the counsel must develop a tight and coherent narrative that provides the court with the means to comfortably rule in their client’s favour.

This chapter considers the close relationship between child rulership and innovative political and administrative adaptation between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Cases of child kingship prompted adaptations to some of the tools of governance, but the boy king’s presence and active contribution were often still crucial. The chapter turns first to the documentary evidence and the diversity of administrative experimentation before focusing on the enduring significance of children’s participation in rule. The third and final section examines practical adjustments to and contemporary representations of counsel, a fundamental instrument of royal rule which could be even more crucial when a boy was king. Overall, the chapter presents an alternative narrative of child rulership which stresses aspects of innovation, adaptation and co-operation. Considering shifts in documentary culture, royal government and consilium by the thirteenth century also reveals the extent to which many of the practical solutions adopted during a period of child kingship differed much more profoundly across time than they did geographically.

This chapter offers a new framework for theorizing about the roles of different types of actors who participate in processes of cross-fertilization. All of these actors have complex or mixed motives: while actors may place some value on the coherence of the international legal system, they weigh such systemic concerns against other, more immediate concerns. International judges, for example, may place value on the coherence of the international legal system, but they may place greater emphasis on the autonomy of their own specialized or regional legal order, on the normative values of that order and on their own authority within that order. Other actors, by contrast, may place little or no value on international legal coherence, but favor or oppose cross-fertilization as a function of its effect on the their likelihood of prevailing in a dispute. In a world of complex actor preferences, the process of cross-fertilization is likely to resemble, not a consensual process of management, but a constant struggle among a wide variety of actors, some of whom will champion cross-fertilization while others seek to prevent or limit it.

explores the origins and implications of the political marriage metaphor deployed by King James to buttress his growing prerogative and by godly ministers to articulate their principled resistance. Because women served as ideal surrogates for political subjects who merited “reasonable liberty” while accepting monarchical rule, domestic conduct guides such as William Whately’s offered coded discussions of political rights and duties, including a woman’s obligation to obey her conscience. In addition, oppositional uses of the passionate and militant female voice in the Song of Songs championed Christ’s independent jurisdiction over the faithful to the exclusion of earthly kings. Echoing the voice of the wife as political subject in marriage sermons, the desiring voice of the spouse as Church united male and female subjects seeking to be joined with an attentive Head committed to mutuality and recognition of her needs.

Global law firms and their prominent postion in the investment arbitration market is under-appreciated; yet there is a sound hypothesis that law firms seek to establish and maintain their social capital in the arbitration field in a similar manner as individuals such as arbitrators and counsel, as was captured in Dezalay and Garth’s pioneering study. Building on the social networks of arbitrators, this study focuses on the relationships between the most influential arbitrators and the most influential law firms in the system and how these relationships might create real or perceived conflicts of interest issues for the ISDS system. Using mixed methods – integrated network, statistical and doctrinal analyses – the chapter documents how the law firms have gained a central position in the ISDS network by establishing strong relationships to leading arbitrators. The author finds that the top law firms have positioned themselves as ‘gatekeepers’ to the ISDS system, in particular in terms of distribution of cases among potential arbitrators and the acceptance of new arbitrators, and discusses possible impacts on the perceived independence and legitimacy of the ISDS system.

The chapter explores the paradoxes of the abundant sources for the west, where only a limited proportion of the population understood the dominant written language of communication, Latin; and until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the reams of fiscal and judicial records which survive come mostly from a fairly narrow band of senior clerics. But the clergy were not monolithic, and their impact on the actual practice of governance varied north and south of the Alps. Much depended on the extent to which principles of Roman law and the habit of living in towns persisted. Yet there is striking consistency both in the prerequisite virtues of a ruler propounded by clerical writers and in the essentials of inauguration ritual. The law which a king swore to uphold at his coronation was not made at will: he was expected to govern consensually and heed good counsel. Who could give such counsel and what constituted reasonable constraints on the king’s volition changed over time. In some realms, assemblies developed the authority to approve taxes and become law-makers in the late middle ages: the monarch’s exercise of his authority was tempered by popular demand.

Stephen Pender explores the confected relationship between counsel, compassion and friendship – in doctor-patient relationships, in conceptions of ideal physicians as virtuous friends – in medical thought between c. 1500 and 1780. How does compassion condition bedside counsel as well as strictures about ideal medical practice? What inspires confidence in a physician at the bedside? What engenders trust and ‘friendship’? Drawing on early modern English texts, Pender argues that conversations between physicians and patients were characterised by trust and compassion, and offers several instances in which friendship is advanced as a framework, a structure of feeling, for exploring vulnerability, suffering, physical and psychic distemper. From antiquity on, ideal physicians and true friends shared virtue, care, timeliness, moderate candour; portraits of friends borrowed medical metaphors, while physicians mobilised the qualities of friendship to aid, and to describe, their care.

An important role for victims is one of the innovations of the Rome Statute. Victims may participate in the proceedings at virtually all stages. They may even adduce evidence under certain conditions and make motions to the Court. The Court may also award reparations to the victims. Reparations may be paid directly by the convicted person or out of the resources of the Trust Fund for Victims. The Trust Fund may also use its resources to assist victims as part of its assistance mandate, which operates alongside the reparations function and in a manner independent of the criminal proceedings.

The Introduction sets out the ‘problem’ and ‘paradox’ of counsel in regard to the ‘monarchy of counsel’ in England between the end of the Wars of the Roses and the English Civil War. On the one hand, it was a long-standing requirement that monarchs receive counsel in order to legitimize their rule. On the other, this condition had the potential to undermine their authority if the monarch was required to act on the counsel given. In other words, if counsel is obligatory, it impinges upon sovereignty. If it is not, it then becomes irrelevant and futile. The Introduction also provides justification of the scope of the study by providing some classical and medieval background.