The Introduction starts by exploring three varieties of constitutional theory: normative, conceptual and positive. It then offers an account of the basic concept of a constitution, noting how it differs from its various conceptions. This section also defends the analytical structure of this volume into values, modalities and institutions as part of the basic concept of a constitution. The third section turns to constitutional norms, both written and unwritten, and their role within even a codified constitution. Finally, we look at the variety of constitutionalisms as a product of the essential contestability of the values, modalities and institutions of any conception of the constitution, be that conception theorised normatively, conceptually or positively (or draw on elements of all three approaches). This diversity is exemplified by the contrasting views of the contributors to this volume.

The chapter considers unwritten constitutional conventions (CCs). They are best known from Westminster systems, where they are embedded in ordinary jurisprudence. They can also be identified in the United States, France (both in the ancien régime and today), and Norway. In these countries their existence and causal efficacy can be shown by historical and current practices. The aim of the chapter is positive (explanatory), not normative. It discusses how CCs arise and evolve and the mechanisms by which they influence decision-makers.

This introductory chapter presents the aims of the book and its rationale in Section 1.1, including some insight into the author’s experience of teaching sign language for many years. Next, Section 1.2 provides some suggestions for how you can best use the book to advance your learning and provides explanation for some of the terminology and conventions used in the book. This section also provides some awareness of the systemic barriers faced by many sign language teachers and the limited amount of research on BSL teaching and learning. The following section, Section 1.3, then gives some details about the research and evidence basis of the book in order to provide the reader with some awareness of current research and understanding of this visual nature of the language. Lastly, Section 1.4 addresses a few questions that students commonly ask and expels some common myths around learning BSL.

This chapter describes the journey that the scientific assessment travels from author nomination through to the drafting and reviewing of the emerging report, and explores the social scientific order that structures and imprints on the IPCC’s writing of climate change through the process. It is in the initial stages of the scientific assessment, in the government nomination and author selection processes, that asymmetries in global knowledge of climate change and their effects become apparent. While developed countries have institutionalised processes for identifying and nominating experts, the majority of developing countries do not submit any author nominations. Once compiled, it is scientific conventions and measures of authority that are used to select and appoint the expertise necessary to fulfil the government approved outline of the report. However, when these activities are situated in broader patterns and practices of knowledge production, it becomes apparent that these reproduce the structures and exclusions of the existing global knowledge economy. These asymmetries are also apparent in the order of relations in the author teams and the submission of government review comments, which reduces the space for more diverse understandings and knowledges of climate change that are relevant to and reflect the interests and needs of all IPCC member governments. The IPCC has attempted to address these asymmetries through selection criteria and other mechanisms to shape the social order of authorship, which to date have proven more successful in broadening gender representation than ensuring the full participation of developing country authors in the assessment.

The feeling of shame (aischunē) is a dramatic key of the Gorgias, notably revealed by Callicles, who accuses both the master of rhetoric Gorgias and Polus of surrendering to Socrates’ refutation out of shame, before yielding himself to the feeling he declared himself immune to. But shame is not only a literary pattern in the dialogue: its function is closely connected to the kind of refutation of each interlocutor. It can be minimally said that shame is a natural effect of refutation, and optimally that it is an essential lever for Socrates to make his interlocutors acknowledge their deep moral commitments. This chapter aims at distinguishing several levels, rather than kinds, of shame among the interlocutors of the Gorgias: shame as sensitivity to others’ opinion, shame as an indication of the beliefs and values we are committed to, and shame as a potential step towards a better understanding of the real good. Though these levels sometimes overlap in the narrative, such distinctions may aid in understanding the role of shame for each interlocutor. Shame remains, for Plato, an ambiguous emotion, which must be used in a certain way to perform purification of wrong opinions.

Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the present book, by outlining its objectives, providing a working definition for ritual, and introducting the concept of the ritual perspective. The chappter also introduces the conventions used in this book and overviews its contents.

How should we perceive the relationship between Athenians and Boiotians in the Archaic and Classical periods (550–323 BCE)? Previous scholarship regarded it as rife with hostility, perpetually locked in mutual fear, only rarely interspersed with times of peace or alliance. In this introduction, the speech given by the Boiotian general Pagondas prior to the Battle of Delion (424 BCE) will be used to argue that his arguments about moralistic behaviour, commemoration and borderland interaction between the neighbours were an exception, rather than the rule, unlike conclusions of previous scholars. Following this speech, the chapter turns to a description of the geographical layout of both regions and how these were intertwined and connected. After this description, the three themes of the book – norms of interstate relations, geopolitical considerations and commemorative practices – are elaborated upon to show what the current state of scholarship on these issues is. It stresses that human experience and nature are complex and multifocal and should therefore treated as such, rather than aim for an overarching framework to capture the lived experience.

Constitutions come in shapes and sizes. What do we actually mean by a constitution? Does this conception encompass all fundamental legal practices and norms for organising political societies’ legal and leadership systems – commonly denoted as ‘small c constitutions’? Or are we only referring to the so-called ‘large C’ constitutions: the official, formal legally binding document that countries proclaim as ‘Constitution. This chapter explores the different concepts, definitions and elements thereof. Whatever the definition or character of the document, a constitution will have to have a higher status than other forms of written law, Hans Kelsen held, otherwise it would not be a real constitution. Does that always hold true. The chapter also discusses constitutions as a belief system, and constitutionalism.

In this chapter we start by defining an intergenerational game and its equilibria. We then discuss conventions of behavior, their relationship to intergenerational-game equilibria, and what it takes to make such conventions stable. This is followed by describing the relationship between our use of the term “social learning” and what standard economic theory interprets it to mean. At the end of the chapter we discuss two other types of games, dynastic games (Anderlini, Gerardi, and Laguno, 2008) and overlapping generations games (Kandori, 1992), which also have generational structures.

This is a book on advice, its importance for decision making, and its influence on the evolution of conventions of behavior. The idea is simple. As societies progress, old generations of social agents die and are replaced by new ones. We are interested in what happens in this transition as the old guard instructs the new arrivals about the wisdom of their ways. Do new entrants listen to and follow the advice of their elders or dismiss it? Is intergenerational advice welfare-improving or can it be destructive? Many times wise advice is rejected only to have new generations repeat the mistakes of their parents instead of learning from them. The advice offered from one generation to the next allows for a type of social learning that leads to the creation of conventions of behavior.

With reelection secure, Lincoln calls for US House approval of Thirteenth Amendment, and campaign launched in early 1865 to win passage. Lincoln also suggests Reconstruction policy may change when war is over, and efforts to enact Reconstruction legislation is revived. Black political convention in New Orleans in January 1865 calls for political and legal equality, but also reveals tensions within free black community. Tennessee convention, although contentious, drafts amendments to state constitution abolishing slavery and creating loyalist government, but refuses to implement racial equality, despite petition from black Tennesseans. US House passes Thirteenth Amendment in late January.

Under Andrew Johnson’s policy, Mississippi begins process of Reconstruction, while governments of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana extend and solidify their authority. Freedpeople mobilize and organize to articulate and instantiate freedom, underscored by black convention in Nashville in August 1865 that calls for political and legal equality. Mississippi Reconstruction convention in August is the first such convention held by unreconstructed state under Johnson’s policy. Convention highlighted by acrimonious debate over abolition of slavery. Some delegates express view – articulated by conservative Unionists – that Emancipation Proclamation had only freed slaves but had not abolished slavery, and that Mississippi is under no obligation to abolish slavery as a condition of restoration to the Union. Mississippi abolishes slavery, but process bodes ill for Johnson’s policy.

A list of conventions and notations.

Conventions are ubiquitous in human life. Conventions are certain regularities in human actions and interactions, such as commonly observed practices, customs, and traditions. Conventions also reflect the less observable, namely, the underlying beliefs and implicit theories about the world that people come to share. They are often taken as conventional wisdom or common sense. What is attempted in the chapter is an exploration of conventions as knowledge commons; conventions will be presented as the necessary consequence of the human predicament of decision making in the face of uncertainty given the human ability to imagine, learn and communicate. The exploration of the nature of convention attempted here turns upside down the theory of the dominant tradition in economics, focusing on the logic of choice, taking as given the ends and means. Instead, we take the logic of choice as given (as non-problematic) and focus on how human beings cope with uncertainty (with the knowledge problem).