The Case of William Dick: Ransom County, North Dakota

In May 2009, a decision of the United States Supreme Court with North Dakota roots turned fifty years old. A case unique in the annals of the law, Dick v. New York Life Insurance Company ¹ still fascinates lawyers today. Factually, the case presented a strange question: could an experienced hunter accidentally shoot himself not once, but twice? Some of North Dakota's finest lawyers, including Philip Vogel, Donald Holand, and Norman Tenneson, aimed to get to the bottom of that matter. The judges were equally impressive: Judge Ronald Davies of the federal district court; Judge John Sanborn of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit; and Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justice Felix Frankfurter. Finally, as a matter of Supreme Court jurisprudence, Dick may have been the last time the High Court granted a petition for certiorari in a case that turned almost exclusively on questions of fact. In honor of its golden anniversary, this article recounts the captivating story of Dick v. New York Life.     

中国史学的遗产、传统和当前发展趋势

我国是一个史学大国,我国史学的特点是:历史记载和历史撰述的连续性;传世的历史文献十分丰富;历史编纂形式的多样性;重视人事、重视经世致用的社会性。中国史学在长期的发展中,为我们留下了丰富的史学遗产,形成了一些优良传统。近年来我国史学有了很大的发展,但也存在一些问题。有造诣的史学工作者,应该关注史学发展趋势,关注有倾向性的史学现象,促进中国史学沿着正确的方向健康地发展,这是我们史学工作者的社会责任和历史使命。     

Sociability,Perfectibility and the Intellectual Legacy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Abstract

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the concept of sociability was used mainly to refer to the putative range of primary human qualities or capabilities that preceded—or existed independently of—the formation of political societies. This article is an examination of the impact of Rousseau's thought on this then standard usage. Its initial focus is on Rousseau's concept of perfectibility and its bearing on the thought of Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, and Friedrich Schlegel. Its broader aim is to show how their respective responses to Rousseau were part of a more deep-seated transformation of the concept of sociability itself.     

Unions,Parties, and the Politics of State Government Legacy Cost

Many American state governments have made extensive promises to pay for employees’ health care and other benefits in retirement. Currently estimated at over $1 trillion in unfunded liabilities, these other postemployment benefits (OPEB) are creating a major fiscal problem for state governments. In this article, we examine the politics of OPEB. We seek to explain the variation in the generosity of OPEB across U.S. states. We argue that party competition theories do not adequately explain the outcomes we observe. Instead, we draw on the emerging Schattschneiderian approach to the politics of public policy to show that public union strength conditions a party's incentives to represent unions’ interests. In states where public sector unions are strong, unions can find their way into either party's coalition. We find that Republicans are more responsive to public union interests than either their ideological brand or prior research would suggest. It is only in states where public employees are weak that Republicans can act unilaterally and enact their preference for less government spending. To test our theories, we carry out an empirical analysis using a newly assembled data set of per capita OPEB liabilities across 49 states.     

The Lion Salt Works,Northwich: A Legacy of the Cheshire Salt Industry

The Lion Salt Works are the last standing buildings of the open-pan salt industry that dominated the mid-Cheshire valleys of the rivers Weaver and Wheelock in North-West England. The site had been in the hands of the Thompson family from 1856, when the first works the Alliance Salt Works began. The Lion Salt Works occupied an adjacent land plot and ran from 1894 until their closure in 1986. The site opened with a small museum, but despite the continued campaigning of the Lion Salt Works Trust over the next 25 years the majority of the buildings remained in a dilapidated state. The site was closed between 2009 and 2015 as the buildings were restored and reopened as a museum, conference facilities and café as part of a project funded by a combination of the Heritage Lottery Fund, Cheshire West and Chester Council, Manage+, WREN and Historic England. Archaeological and historical research was conducted as part of the project. This paper describes the results of this research, detailing how salt was made at the site, the development of salt-making in Cheshire, the archaeology uncovered on site and the Thompson family business. It finally concludes by examining the Lion Salt Works place in a wider landscape of the Cheshire salt industry and the chemical industry in North-West England.     

Palestine,Israel, Gaza,and the West Bank: the muddled mental maps of French and Israeli students

ABSTRACT

The Palestinian–Israeli Conflict is perceived by many – observers and parties to the conflict alike – as a struggle of two peoples over the same land. Yet, through this century-long conflict (and more so as Israel has expanded and deepened its occupation), what was once, perhaps, imagined as a single land has become an assortment of territories. These territories bear multiple names and different legal statuses, and their boundaries are often blurred. In light of the jumbled patchwork that Palestine–Israel has become, we examine the ways that the conflict’s territorial dimensions are imagined and represented. We study the mental maps of the region held by higher education students from Israel, both Jewish and Arab-Palestinian, as well as with university students from Montpellier, France. The representations indicate that while the French students were almost completely at a loss regarding the conflict’s spatial dimensions, the students from Israel were also confused, especially regarding the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We argue that these findings stem from a wider process of deterritorialization, linked to the conflicting relations between state and nation and intensified by a policy of chaotic spatial arrangements.