Stressing that fully declared atheism was illegal throughout the Romantic period and beyond, the chapter gives a brief survey of some philosophical Enlightenment ‘isms’ which could sometimes be seen as connected to it, such as materialism, pantheism, necessitarianism, idealism, scepticism, and deism. It then moves from such abstractions into the world of active, sometimes dangerous debates about atheism itself, focusing on specific clashes between such figures as Joseph Priestley, Edward Gibbon, Thomas Paine, Richard Carlile, C. F. Volney, Erasmus Darwin, and their critics. The final section looks more closely at ways in which the atheism debate impinged on some of the period’s canonical poets, particularly the anxiously Christian Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the firmly atheist Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Dealing in Virtue, which Yves Dezalay and I published in 1996,1 was an effort to understand the origins of international commercial arbitration, its rise to become the default dispute resolution process for transnational disputes, how the arbitrators gained their positions and earned the legitimacy to be selected in high-stakes disputes, and how the rise of international commercial arbitration affected dispute resolution within national States. We interviewed some 400 members of the international commercial arbitration community. One of the most noted findings was that there was a tension between what we termed the “grand old men” of international commercial arbitration and a group of arbitration technocrats who both challenged them and preserved and defended their world. The grand old men were senior arbitrators who had made their careers in academia or practice or in the judiciary, arbitrated part-time (at least until the boom in arbitration in the 1980s), and in Weberian terms told to us in an interview of a technocrat, relied on their charisma for legitimacy.

Not simply the persistence of Greek and Roman comedy and tragedy, drama of the modern era had its rebirth in the liturgical performances within the church. Once the miracle and morality plays were moved out of the church, literally pro-fane, their secularized forms were soon suspected of degeneration, and the antitheatrical prejudice was promulgated. To control the possibly disruptive effects of the drama, censorship was introduced to spare leaders of Church or state from being maligned on stage. The Church of England may have been protected but Gothic melodrama found its villains and victims among the monks and nuns. Methodists, Quakers, Jews, dissenters, and nonconformists were targets for theatrical ridicule or abuse. Circumventing the proscriptions of the Licensing Act (1737), Shakespeare’s history plays provided a model for representing religious conflict on stage.

While Roman Catholicism has not traditionally figured prominently in Romantic studies, this essay traces the emerging sense of its cultural, historical, and political importance in the period. With William Wordsworth’s “The world is too much with us” as a case study, it outlines the political struggle over Catholic Emancipation, transnational contact with Ireland and France, anti-Catholic and philo-Catholic strands of British Romanticism, and contested religious historiographies.

It is often affirmed that international arbitration does not have a forum. This statement can be seen as one of the manifestations of the doctrine that considers arbitration as a purely international phenomenon, detached from national laws. I have criticised this doctrine in many writings and will not repeat my arguments here.1 What this chapter deals with is one specific aspect, namely the significance for international arbitration of the arbitration law of the country in which the arbitral tribunal has its formal seat, the lex arbitri. The analysis will show that the statement according to which arbitration has no forum cannot de understood to mean that the lex arbitri has no significance for arbitration.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) is an international organisation with 122 Contracting Parties, established to facilitate arbitration and other forms of dispute resolution. The PCA is a creation of the first Hague Peace Conference of 1899, and at the same time, a modern centre for the resolution of disputes involving States. It is a pre-cursor to creation of permanently constituted international courts and historically important in the development of international dispute resolution, yet is also more active in its own right today than at any point in its history.

The issue of corruption is exemplary for the role of public policy in arbitration. Corruption is a “bilateral” criminal act involving the briber and the taker of the bribe, with varying nuances of solicitation on both sides.1 Both sides have an interest in keeping corrupt activities secret. Yet, regardless of the intentions of the parties, there is a universal consensus that corruption cannot be tolerated in international business relations. When international business transactions tainted by corruption are submitted to international arbitration, the notion of party autonomy finds its limits in the transnational public policy against bribery and corruption. No award can be allowed to take effect if it is seen to condone corruption. International arbitration derives its legitimacy from applying the law, including public policy rules prohibiting corruption.

The link between religion and Romantic poetry has long and recurrently been recognized. The present chapter, however, argues that this link is philologically comprised, with Romantics poetically investing in global religious traditions via acts of linguistic recovery. Invoking Robert Lowth’s lectures on biblical poetry as its precedent, this chapter explores three representative case studies of Romantic poetic engagement with sacred literatures from the Middle East, as well as later Middle Eastern-language renditions of Romantic poets, surveying William Blake’s Hebrew prophecies, Thomas Moore’s Islamicate receptions, and Lord Byron’s Armenian pilgrimages.

This essay explores the intersection of religion and literature in sermons and lectures during the British Romantic period. The essay traces the advance of elocutionary advice in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literature and demonstrates how interest in orality proliferated the printing of both sermons and lectures on religious themes. In addition to noted figures such as S. T. Coleridge, William Hazlitt, and Edward Irving, women’s voices emerged during the time, as women in dissenting religious circles set the stage for the first public lectures by women in Britain.

The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (“ICSID” or “the Centre”) is the world’s leading institution devoted to international investment dispute settlement. It was established in 1966 by the Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States (the “ICSID Convention”),1 a multilateral treaty proposed by the Executive Directors of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the “World Bank”). ICSID provides a unique treaty framework, procedural rules and independent facilities for the settlement of disputes between foreign investors and host States.

When an international commercial dispute arises, the cost of resolving it may be as important to the parties as the merits of the claims themselves. Indeed, the cost of resolving a dispute may suffice, in some circumstances, to discourage a claim’s prosecution in a formal proceeding or to thwart its proper defense.1

This essay addresses developments in religious life writing in the Romantic period through examination of auto/biographies, journals, and letters in both print and manuscript. Particular interests include the genre of the spiritual conversion narrative, literary uses of confession and conversion, life writing and religious historiography, and women’s auto/biographical practices and place within this tradition.