Britain’s capital? (c. AD 80–90)

This chapter describes London’s later Flavian architectural development, elements of which may have marked and celebrated the political maturity of the city. London’s first forum was probably built around the time of Agricola’s long governorship of Britain. Circumstantial evidence suggests that this building was erected c. AD 79/80. It could have accompanied the grant of formal urban status and the creation of the institutions of local self-government, although this remains uncertain. The contents of a legal judgement inscribed on a writing tablet suggests that London did not hold autonomous status in AD 76. Other public buildings and works included large public baths, one probably built c. AD 84 that has alternatively been identified as part of the governor’s palace. London may have benefitted from the architectural patronage of the emperor Domitian, executed on his behalf by the procurator, intended to grace Britain’s capital city following the completion of the conquest of the British Isles.

Homosexuality and Indian Civil Society: Reading Mahesh Dattani After Decriminalization of Section-377

The Indian Supreme Court in the Navtej Singh Johar vs Union of India judgement (6th September 2018), decriminalized homosexuality. However, the space cleared by the legal judgement cannot be immediately availed of by those affected by it because legally determined/defined space doesn’t necessarily become social space. This essay looks at the formation of this social space and the perception of homosexuality in civil society. It will examine the impediments of communication that homosexuals encounter in the heteronormative world, and the ensuing misunderstandings regarding homosexuality. It argues that a proper medium is necessary to provide communication in a social space that would then treat homosexuality as ‘normal’. I argue that Mahesh Dattani’s plays enable the imagination and the construction of such an accepting civil society.

Knowledge from imagination

We start with the idea of the role of imagination in planning and in the formation of conditional beliefs. We then consider ways in which the process of belief-fixation by imagination can be unreliable, taking as my example a legal judgement. I argue that the role of the imagination in learning may be very restricted, and yet have conferred a selective advantage on those who possessed it, paving the way for an adaptive account of the imagination. The role of the imagination in the fixation of conditional belief suggests a role for it in thought experiments. It has been suggested that we should think of fictions such as novels as offering thought experiments, and hence as able to facilitate learning in the way that thought experiments in science and philosophy do. I argue that there are features of fictions-as-thought experiments which should make us pessimistic about their epistemic value.

A Revolutionary Feeling of Justice? Emotion and Legal Judgement in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia

This article explores the intellectual history of the concept of “feeling of justice” and related concepts and the attempts to make them central to legal practice in the context of early 20th century Russia. It starts by tracing the emergence of new modes of thinking about judicial emotion in fin-de-siècle Russian Empire and accounts for both international and local influences on these ideas. It further examines the development of these theories after the 1917 Russian Revolution and notes both continuities and ruptures across this revolutionary divide. Finally, the article explores the attempts to put these radical ideas into practice by focusing on the experimental legal model of “revolutionary justice” that was employed in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1922 which highlights the discrepancies between bold utopian projects and harsh material realities of the revolutionary period. Este artículo trata sobre la historia intelectual del concepto de “sentimiento de justicia” y conceptos relacionados, y los sitúa en el centro de la práctica del derecho en el contexto de la Rusia de principios del siglo XX. Comienza situando el surgimiento de nuevas formas de pensar sobre la emoción judicial en el imperio ruso de fin de siglo, y explica las influencias nacionales e internacionales en esas ideas. Además, examina el desarrollo de dichas teorías tras la Revolución Rusa de 1917, y hace notar continuidades y rupturas a lo largo de la fractura revolucionaria. Por último, el artículo analiza los intentos de llevar esas ideas radicales a la práctica, atendiendo al modelo jurídico experimental de “justicia revolucionaria” que se utilizó en la Rusia soviética entre 1917 y 1922 y que subraya las discrepancias entre los audaces proyectos utópicos y las duras realidades materiales del período revolucionario.

Love is Love

Trinidad and Tobago’s anti-gay laws can be traced back to British colonialism and European imperialism. Their existence today and their consequences for human lives in Trinidad and Tobago during the past one hundred years are a local entanglement of historic global hierarchies of power. On 12 April 2018, in the High Court of Port of Spain, capital of Trinidad and Tobago, Justice Devindra Rampersad, in a form of judicial activism, trod where local politicians have not dared and intervened in such coloniality by delivering a legal judgement upholding the challenge by Jason Jones to the nineteenth-century colonial laws in Trinidad and Tobago that criminalise homosexual relations and same-sex loving.