This paper considers the relationship between litigants in person (LiPs) and conspiracy theories and seeks to answer two questions: how, and why, do some LiPs come to be conspiracy theorists? The majority of LiPs, of course, do not become conspiracy-minded. There is also no evidence that LiPs are more likely than anyone else in legal proceedings to be conspiracists, only, perhaps, that it is more obvious when they are. But there continue to be individuals who have conspiracist explanations for difficulties or failures they experience throughout legal proceedings. And while it is widely held that some LiPs hold eccentric beliefs about the law, there has been little attempt to understand how and why LiPs may come to acquire or articulate these beliefs. This is presumably because it has not been considered important to interrogate the views of people already often assumed to be ‘difficult’ or eccentric. This paper contends, however, that trying to understand how and why these conspiracist beliefs are acquired matters very much. This is because conspiracy theories can give us a critical insight into how negative experiences of litigation can result in a loss of faith or trust in legal institutions.

We use sheaves of spectra to quantize a Hamiltonian $\coprod _n BO(n)$-action on $\varinjlim _{N}T^*\mathbf {R}^N$ that naturally arises from Bott periodicity. We employ the category of correspondences developed by Gaitsgory and Rozenblyum [A study in derived algebraic geometry, vol. I. Correspondences and duality, Mathematical Surveys and Monographs, vol. 221 (American Mathematical Society, 2017)] to give an enrichment of stratified Morse theory by the $J$-homomorphism. This provides a key step in the work of Jin [Microlocal sheaf categories and the $J$-homomorphism, Preprint (2020), arXiv:2004.14270v4] on the proof of a claim of Jin and Treumann [Brane structures in microlocal sheaf theory, J. Topol. 17 (2024), e12325]: the classifying map of the local system of brane structures on an (immersed) exact Lagrangian submanifold $L\subset T^*\mathbf {R}^N$ is given by the composition of the stable Gauss map $L\rightarrow U/O$ and the delooping of the $J$-homomorphism $U/O\rightarrow B\mathrm {Pic}(\mathbf {S})$. We put special emphasis on the functoriality and (symmetric) monoidal structures of the categories involved and, as a byproduct, we produce several concrete constructions of (commutative) algebra/module objects and (right-lax) morphisms between them in the (symmetric) monoidal $(\infty, 2)$-category of correspondences, generalizing the construction out of Segal objects of Gaitsgory and Rozenblyum, which might be of independent interest.

Before the July 2022 amendment to the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules which removed a like-for-like replacement of an oil-fired boiler from List B, the PCC resolved on such a replacement for their church's defunct boiler. However, before the work was undertaken, the Rules were amended to require a faculty for such a replacement, and to require the Diocesan Advisory Committee to advise the court on whether the petitioners’ explanation of how they have had due regard to the Church Buildings Council's net zero guidance was adequate. While the petitioners had taken some steps to justify the decision they had taken by reference to the net-zero guidance, the DAC's pre-petition advice was that the petitioners’ explanation was not adequate, and the grant of a faculty was not recommended. Nevertheless, the petitioners issued the petition; but before the petition could be considered, and in the knowledge that such a course was unlawful, the petitioners procured the installation of the new boiler.

During the course of a judgment in which the court granted a faculty for the introduction of a memorial outside the Churchyard Regulations, the court made the following observation concerning the legal basis of such Regulations:

Law and society scholars have long studied rights mobilization and gender inequality from the vantage point of complainants in private workplaces. This article pursues a new direction in this line of inquiry to explore, for the first time, mobilization from the vantage points of complainants and those accused of violating the rights of others in public-school workplaces in the United States. We conceptualize rights mobilization as legal, quasilegal, and/or extralegal processes. Based on a national random survey of teachers and administrators, and in-depth interviews with educators in California, New York, and North Carolina, we find an integral relationship between gender inequality and experiencing rights violations, choices about rights mobilization, and obstacles to formal mobilization. Compared to complainants, those accused of rights violations – especially male administrators – are more likely to use quasilegal and legal mobilization to defend themselves or to engage in anticipatory mobilization. Actors in less powerful status positions (teachers) most often pursue extralegal mobilization to complain about rights violations during which they engage in rights muting as a means of self-protection; when in more powerful status positions, actors use rights muting as a means of self-protection and to suppress the rights claims of others. This paper concludes with implications for future research on rights mobilization in school workplaces amidst changing political and demographic conditions.

This article brings to light a previously unedited short treatise, the Masʾalatān (Two Questions), attributed to Avicenna (d. 1037). While the earliest witness to the text is the Ayasofya 4853 manuscript, containing a substantial portion of Avicenna's Nachlass, some of which is integrated into the Mubāḥaṯāt and Taʿlīqāt, the Masʾalatān has remained a standalone work with limited circulation. Consequently, the primary concern revolves around the verification of its authenticity and its feasibility given the available data. This article presents a critical edition of the text alongside a parallel translation but it also serves as a case study on the possibilities of authorship verification. It also compiles information from codicology, nevertheless, it primarily focuses on the commentary that analyses and compares the arguments to Avicenna's unquestionably authentic solutions. The first question addresses whether every existent is spatially located, while the second explores the impossibility of an actual infinite body. The commentary endeavors to interpret the text against the cultural and theological background that may have inspired such inquiries, meanwhile also seeks to address its later influence. In addition to unveiling a hitherto unseen text to the scholarly community for further research, it also offers an insight into the limitations of authorship attribution.

The present article examines the particular role that cities have played, and should play, in global social history. It notes that many of the historiographical discussions that in the past years have addressed the reach and limits of the bourgeoisie and the middle class as a globalized social formation have implicitly focused on cities. It also notes that these discussions have often not been very forthcoming in explicitly acknowledging this urban focus. From this starting point, the present article ponders the implications and ramifications of making this focus more explicit. What do we conclude from the observation that the ‘global bourgeoisie’ or the ‘global middle class’, inasmuch as they existed at all, were quintessentially urban formations? And what do these conclusions, conversely, entail for the field of urban history? Highlighting density and differentiation as key traits of the urban form, the article ultimately argues for greater attention to the spatiality and to the built environment of class formation in global history.