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Critique, and especially radical critique of reason, is under pressure from two opponents. Whereas the proponents of "post-critical" or "acritical" thinking denounce critique as an empty and self-righteous repetition of debunking, the decriers of "post-truth" accuse critique of having helped to bring about our current "post-truth" politics. Both advocate realism as a limit critique must respect, but I will defend the claim that we urgently need radical critiques of reason because they offer a more precise diagnosis of the untruths in politics the two opponents of critique are rightfully worried about. Radical critiques of reason are possible, I argue, if we turn our attention to the practices of criticizing, if we refrain from a sovereign epistemology, and if we pluralize reason without trivializing it. In order to demonstrate the diagnostic advantage of radical critiques of reason, I briefly analyze the political and epistemic strategy at work in two exemplary untruths in politics.
Background and Aims: Vitamin D has an inhibitory role in the inflammatory signaling pathways and supports the integrity of the intestinal barrier. Due to its immunomodulatory effect, vitamin D plays a role in chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and a deficiency is associated with an increased risk for a flare. We aimed to investigate to what extent the 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D3) level correlates with disease activity and whether a cut-off value can be defined that discriminates between active disease and remission. Methods: Patients with IBD, treated at the University Hospital Frankfurt were analyzed retrospectively. The 25(OH)D3 levels were correlated with clinical activity indices and laboratory chemical activity parameters. A deficiency was defined as 25(OH)D3 levels <30 ng/mL. Results: A total of 470 (257 female) patients with IBD were included, 272 (57.9%) with Crohn’s disease (CD), 198 (42.1%) with ulcerative colitis (UC). The median age of the patients was 41 (18–84). In 283 patients (60.2%), a vitamin D deficiency was detected. 245 (53.6%) patients received oral vitamin D supplementation, and supplemented patients had significantly higher vitamin D levels (p < 0.0001). Remission, vitamin D substitution, and male gender were independently associated with the 25(OH)D3 serum concentration in our cohort in regression analysis. A 25(OH)D3 serum concentration of 27.5 ng/mL was the optimal cut-off value. Conclusion: Vitamin D deficiency is common in IBD patients and appears to be associated with increased disease activity. In our study, vitamin D levels were inversely associated with disease activity. Thus, close monitoring should be established, and optimized supplementation should take place.
The multifaceted p21 (Cip1/Waf1/CDKN1A) in cell differentiation, migration and cancer therapy
(2019)
Loss of cell cycle control is characteristic of tumorigenesis. The protein p21 is the founding member of cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors and an important versatile cell cycle protein. p21 is transcriptionally controlled by p53 and p53-independent pathways. Its expression is increased in response to various intra- and extracellular stimuli to arrest the cell cycle ensuring genomic stability. Apart from its roles in cell cycle regulation including mitosis, p21 is involved in differentiation, cell migration, cytoskeletal dynamics, apoptosis, transcription, DNA repair, reprogramming of induced pluripotent stem cells, autophagy and the onset of senescence. p21 acts either as a tumor suppressor or as an oncogene depending largely on the cellular context, its subcellular localization and posttranslational modifications. In the present review, we briefly mention the general functions of p21 and summarize its roles in differentiation, migration and invasion in detail. Finally, regarding its dual role as tumor suppressor and oncogene, we highlight the potential, difficulties and risks of using p21 as a biomarker as well as a therapeutic target.
Introduction: Definitive chemoradiation (CRT) followed by high-dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy (BT) represents state-of-the-art treatment for locally-advanced cervical cancer. Despite use of this treatment paradigm, disease-related outcomes have stagnated in recent years, indicating the need for biomarker development and improved patient stratification. Here, we report the association of Polo-like kinase (PLK) 3 expression and Caspase 8 T273 phosphorylation levels with survival among patients with cervical squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC) treated with CRT plus BT.
Methods: We identified 74 patients with FIGO Stage Ib to IVb cervix squamous cell carcinoma. Baseline immunohistochemical scoring of PLK3 and pT273 Caspase 8 levels was performed on pre-treatment samples. Correlation was then assessed between marker expression and clinical endpoints, including cumulative incidences of local and distant failure, cancer-specific survival (CSS) and overall survival (OS). Data were then validated using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset.
Results: PLK3 expression levels were associated with pT273 Caspase 8 levels (p = 0.009), as well as N stage (p = 0.046), M stage (p = 0.026), and FIGO stage (p = 0.001). By the same token, pT273 Caspase 8 levels were associated with T stage (p = 0.031). Increased PLK3 levels corresponded to a lower risk of distant relapse (p = 0.009), improved CSS (p = 0.001), and OS (p = 0.003). Phospho T273 Caspase 8 similarly corresponded to decreased risk of distant failure (p = 0.021), and increased CSS (p < 0.001) and OS (p < 0.001) and remained a significant predictor for OS on multivariate analysis. TCGA data confirmed the association of low PLK3 expression with resistance to radiotherapy and BT (p < 0.05), as well as increased propensity for metastasis (p = 0.019). Finally, a combined PLK3 and pT273 Caspase 8 score predicted for decreased distant relapse (p = 0.005), and both improved CSS (p < 0.001) and OS (p < 0.001); this combined score independently predicted distant failure (p = 0.041) and CSS (p = 0.003) on multivariate analyses.
Conclusion: Increased pre-treatment tumor levels of PLK3 and pT273 Caspase 8 correspond to improved disease-related outcomes among cervical cancer patients treated with CRT plus BT, representing a potential biomarker in this context.
Introduction: Our aim was to highlight the characteristics of pediatric Meckel's diverticulum with a special focus on its complications.
Methods: We report a group of seven patients with Meckel's diverticulum and its resection from the Department of Pediatric Surgery between 2012 and 2017. We reviewed all patient records, clinical presentation, and intraoperative findings. The diagnosis was confirmed by surgery and pathology. For a systematic literature review, we used PubMed, Medline and Google Scholar search engines to locate articles containing terms such as Meckel's diverticulum, children, pediatric, complications and symptomatic. We included article reporting on case series in English and German on pediatric patients only.
Results: All included patients (n = 7) were symptomatic. Some patients showed isolated symptoms, and others presented with a combination of symptoms that consisted of abdominal pain, bloody stool or vomiting. The median age of our seven cases was 3.5 years, including 4 male and 3 female patients. Intestinal obstruction was the most common complication; it was seen in 5 out of 7 patients (intussusception in 4 cases, volvulus in 1 case). Ectopic gastric tissue was identified in 3 cases, and inclusion of pancreatic tissue was observed in 1 case. The literature review identified 8 articles for a total of 641 patients aged between 1 day and 17 years and a male:female ratio of 2.6:1. From this group, 528 patients showed clinical symptoms related to Meckel's diverticulum. The most common symptom was abdominal pain and bloody stool. The most common surgical finding in symptomatic patients was intestinal obstruction (41%), followed by intestinal hemorrhage (34%). Complications such as perforation (10%) and diverticulitis (13%) were less frequently reported. Heterotopic tissue was confirmed on histopathology in 53% of all patients enclosing gastric, pancreatic, and both gastric and pancreatic mucosae. In one case, large intestine tissue could be found. Overall, one death was reported.
Conclusion: The presented case series and literature review found similar clinical presentations and complications of Meckel's diverticulum in children. Intestinal obstruction and bleeding are more frequent than inflammation in pediatric Meckel's diverticulum. Bowel obstruction is the leading cause for complicated Meckel's diverticulum in patients younger than 12 years.
About 200 years ago, legal concepts based on the idea of formal equality prevailed. Over the last 150 years, however, the law has tried on a large scale to establish substantive equality, or at least to alleviate social and economic imbalances. To this day, the law which has undertaken this task has grown in scope and become increasingly differentiated. It has become one of the most important components of modern legal systems and has a history with its own distinctive contours. The terms used to summarise the corresponding legal materials are manifold: law of the welfare state, law of the provident state (état providence) (François Ewald), social law, social welfare law, etc. ...
The use of contractual engineering to create channels of credit intermediation outside of the realm of banking regulation has been a recurring activity in Western financial systems over the last 50 years. After the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, this phenomenon, at that time commonly referred to as ‘shadow banking’, evoked a large-scale regulatory backlash, including several specific regulatory constraints being placed on non-bank financial institutions (NBFI). This paper proposes a different avenue for regulators to keep regulatory arbitrage under control and preserve sufficient space for efficient financial innovation. Rather than engaging in the proverbial race between hare and hedgehog that is emerging with increasingly specific regulation of particular contractual arrangements, this paper argues for a normative approach to supervision. We outline this approach in detail by showing that regulators should primarily analyse the allocation of tail risk inherent in the respective contractual arrangements. Our paper proposes to assign regulatory burdens equivalent to prudential banking regulation, in case these arrangements become only viable through indirect or direct access to an (ad hoc) public backstop. In order to make the pivotal assessment, regulators will need information about recent contractual innovations and their risk-allocating characteristics. According to the scholarship on regulatory networks serving as communities of interpretation, we suggest in particular how regulators should structure their relationships with semi-public gatekeepers such as lawyers, auditors and consultants to keep abreast of the real-world implications of evolving transactional structures. This paper then uses the rise of credit funds as a non-bank entities economically engaged in credit intermediation to apply this normative framework, pointing to recent contractual innovations that call for more regulatory scrutiny in a multipolar regulatory dialogue.
The article analyses how the decrees of the Council of Trent regarding marriage were used by the Church of Rome as a tool to contrast mixed marriages in Early Modern Europe. It investigates how these decrees were evaded by local churches in order to administer a practice of confessional coexistence impossible to eradicate, and how they were manipulated by actors – even Protestants – to put an end to undesirable unions. It also presents the interpretation that the Church of Rome made of the Tametsi to resolve the age-old issue of mixed marriages in the Low Countries, issuing the Benedictine Declaration, later applied to other contexts with a strong Protestant presence – above all out-side Europe. Although the Council of Trent claimed to have fixed a homogeneous and flawless nuptial ritual, the various local practices did not always adapt to it. Indeed, they bypassed it; sometimes refused it. This led parish priests and missionaries to turn to Rome for the resolution of concrete cases. The decisions taken for individual cases became a normative reference point. It was produced by the continuous interaction and negotiation with local churches and went on in fact to profoundly influence the sacramental rituality of marriages, which Tametsi had claimed were fixed and immutable.
Worldwide, academics and practitioners are developing ‘planning-oriented’ approaches to reduce the negative impacts of car traffic for more sustainable urban and transport development. One such example is the design of car-reduced neighborhoods, although these are controversial issues in the hegemonic ‘system’ of automobility. Despite the reduction of emissions and frequent recognition as ‘best practice examples’, ‘planning-critical’ research questions the underlying objectives and narratives of such sustainable developments. Our study contributes to this research perspective by improving the understanding of narratives that emerge along with car-reduced housing developments. For this purpose, we analyze two car-reduced neighborhoods in the City of Darmstadt (Germany) by conducting interviews with different actors involved in the planning and implementation processes. Our investigation reveals that the development of car-reduced neighborhoods (i) is consciously embedded in the context of sustainability, (ii) is characterized by power relations, (iii) follows normative indicators, and (iv) does not always correspond to lived realities. Altogether, the traced narratives of car-reduced neighborhoods are embedded in the overarching debate on sustainability, while at the same time revealing the dependence of society on the automobile. Thus, the hegemonic ‘system’ of automobility—although it is beginning to crack—continues to exist.
The 100th anniversary of the Weimar Constitution’s promulgation has brought a number of new stimuli to a historiography that has for a long time focused largely on the Weimar Republic’s failure. Two prominent recent publications – Udo Di Fabio’s study and a collective volume edited by Horst Dreier und Christian Waldhoff – are reviewed in this issue by the Brazilian constitutional historian Marcelo Neves. His review and the last months’ public debate on the merits and flaws of the Weimar Constitution in Germany, which was framed by current concerns about the state of Western democracies, show to what extent constitutional history is always also a conversation about the present. ...
Background: We aimed to investigate the potential effects of a 4-week motor–cognitive dual-task training on cognitive and motor function as well as exercise motivation in young, healthy, and active adults.
Methods: A total of 26 participants (age 25 ± 2 years; 10 women) were randomly allocated to either the intervention group or a control group. The intervention group performed a motor–cognitive training (3×/week), while the participants of the control group received no intervention. Before and after the intervention period of 4 weeks, all participants underwent cognitive (d2-test, Trail Making Test) and motor (lower-body choice reaction test and time to stabilization test) assessments. Following each of the 12 workouts, self-reported assessments (rating of perceived exertion, enjoyment and pleasant anticipation of the next training session) were done. Analyses of covariances and 95% confidence intervals plotting for between group and time effects were performed.
Results: Data from 24 participants were analysed. No pre- to post-intervention improvement nor a between-group difference regarding motor outcomes (choice-reaction: F = 0.5; time to stabilization test: F = 0.7; p > 0.05) occurred. No significant training-induced changes were found in the cognitive tests (D2: F = 0.02; Trail Making Test A: F = 0.24; Trail Making Test B: F = 0.002; p > 0.05). Both enjoyment and anticipation of the next workout were rated as high.
Discussion: The neuro-motor training appears to have no significant effects on motor and cognitive function in healthy, young and physically active adults. This might be explained in part by the participants’ very high motor and cognitive abilities, the comparably low training intensity or the programme duration. The high degree of exercise enjoyment, however, may qualify the training as a facilitator to initiate and maintain regular physical activity. The moderate to vigorous intensity levels further point towards potential health-enhancing cardiorespiratory effects.
During the drafting process from the 1920s to 1940s, the Weimar Constitution (WRV) played a decisive role in shaping Chinese social(-ist) con- stitutions, especially the part related to the social- economic issue. Through the lens of cultural trans- lation, this paper seeks to explain how the WRV was adapted, reinterpreted, and recontextualized throughout several rounds of constitution making in China. By focusing on the roles played by the translators, legislators, and interpreters, this paper discusses how the social rights created by the WRV were translated into the fundamental policy of the 1947 Constitution of the Republic of China. More- over, regarding »policy« as the legal instrument for regulating the social-economic life, and even broader fields, it triggers the modern transforma- tion of Chinese meritocracy and reinforces the national legal tradition depicted in its modern form. To some extent, this case study on cultural translation of constitutional law discloses the mechanism, both temporarily and spatially, for the intercultural communication of the normative information.
Background: Although anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear-prevention programs may be effective in the (secondary) prevention of a subsequent ACL injury, little is known, yet, on their effectiveness and feasibility. This study assesses the effects and implementation capacity of a secondary preventive motor-control training (the Stop-X program) after ACL reconstruction.
Methods and design: A multicenter, single-blind, randomized controlled, prospective, superiority, two-arm design is adopted. Subsequent patients (18–35 years) with primary arthroscopic unilateral ACL reconstruction with autologous hamstring graft are enrolled. Postoperative guideline rehabilitation plus Classic follow-up treatment and guideline rehabilitation plus the Stop-X intervention will be compared. The onset of the Stop-X program as part of the postoperative follow-up treatment is individualized and function based. The participants must be released for the training components. The endpoint is the unrestricted return to sport (RTS) decision. Before (where applicable) reconstruction and after the clearance for the intervention (aimed at 4–8 months post surgery) until the unrestricted RTS decision (but at least until 12 months post surgery), all outcomes will be assessed once a month. Each participant is consequently measured at least five times to a maximum of 12 times. Twelve, 18 and 24 months after the surgery, follow-up-measurements and recurrence monitoring will follow. The primary outcome assessement (normalized knee-separation distance at the Drop Jump Screening Test (DJST)) is followed by the functional secondary outcomes assessements. The latter consist of quality assessments during simple (combined) balance side, balance front and single-leg hops for distance. All hop/jump tests are self-administered and filmed from the frontal view (3-m distance). All videos are transferred using safe big content transfer and subsequently (and blinded) expertly video-rated. Secondary outcomes are questionnaires on patient-reported knee function, kinesiophobia, RTS after ACL injury and training/therapy volume (frequency – intensity – type and time). All questionnaires are completed online using the participants’ pseudonym only.
Group allocation is executed randomly. The training intervention (Stop-X arm) consists of self-administered home-based exercises. The exercises are step-wise graduated and follow wound healing and functional restoration criteria. The training frequency for both arms is scheduled to be three times per week, each time for a 30 min duration. The program follows current (secondary) prevention guidelines.
Repeated measurements gain-score analyses using analyses of (co-)variance are performed for all outcomes.
Trial registration: German Clinical Trials Register, identification number DRKS00015313. Registered on 1 October 2018.
You wait ages for a bus, the saying goes, and then two (or three) come along at once. A similar feeling set in when Oxford University Press published two volumes on legal history in its Oxford Handbooks series within the space of four weeks last year. They are a welcome addition to the prestigious and well-established series that now boasts hundreds of volumes, including around 50 on history and over three dozen on law. The latter do not only cover established sub-disciplines of legal studies, such as jurisprudence and philosophy of law (2002), comparative law (2006, 2nd ed. 2019), international trade law (2009), the law of the sea (2015), European Union law (2015), criminal law (2014) and intellectual property (2018), but also more recent and emerging fields, including international environmental law (2007), empirical legal research (2010), behavioural economics and law (2014), international adjudication (2013), international climate change law (2016) and law and economics (3 vols., 2017). The Handbooks have become increasingly specialised with titles focusing on narrow topics such as individual national constitutions (USA, 2015; India, 2016; Canada, 2017) and important, but nevertheless discrete legal issues, for example, US health law (2017) and the sources of international law (2017). The obvious question was why, nearly two decades after the launch of the series, there was such a thing as an Oxford Handbook of American Sports Law (2018) but still no volume on the history of law. The absence of such a title was all the more striking in light of the publication of books in the series dealing with individual fields of legal history, such as the Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law (2012), the Oxford Handbook of Roman Law and Society (2016), the Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt (2017) and the Oxford Handbook of English Law and Literature, 1500–1700 (2017). ...
Den Auftakt zum Oxford Handbook of European Legal History machen fünf Beiträge, die unter der Überschrift "Approaches to European Legal History: Historiography and Methods" versammelt sind. Um sie in Beziehung zu setzen, habe ich im Folgenden drei Fragenkomplexe formuliert, die die gemeinsamen Aspekte dieses Quintetts abbilden. Die Beiträge werden in der Reihenfolge ihres Auftretens im Handbuch referiert. Zur Vermeidung von Redundanzen haben die Nachgeordneten im Wiederholungsfalle der Argumente das Nachsehen und werden "nur" als Verweis genannt.
Light-matter interaction in the strong coupling regime is of profound interest for fundamental quantum optics, information processing and the realization of ultrahigh-resolution sensors. Here, we report a new way to realize strong light-matter interaction, by coupling metamaterial plasmonic "quasi-particles" with photons in a photonic cavity, in the terahertz frequency range. The resultant cavity polaritons exhibit a splitting which can reach the ultra-strong coupling regime, even with the comparatively low density of quasi-particles, and inherit the high Q-factor of the cavity despite the relatively broad resonances of the Swiss-cross and split-ring-resonator metamaterials used. We also demonstrate nonlocal collective interaction of spatially separated metamaterial layers mediated by the cavity photons. By applying the quantum electrodynamic formalism to the density dependence of the polariton splitting, we can deduce the intrinsic transition dipole moment for single-quantum excitation of the metamaterial quasi-particles, which is orders of magnitude larger than those of natural atoms. These findings are of interest for the investigation of fundamental strong-coupling phenomena, but also for applications such as ultra-low-threshold terahertz polariton lasing, voltage-controlled modulators and frequency filters, and ultra-sensitive chemical and biological sensing.
For reasons of curiosity, we perused the two recent Oxford handbooks on legal history looking for discussions of digital methods in legal history. One of the fundamental decisions to be made when organizing such a handbook is defining which methodological approaches deserve an article of their own and which ones are to be understood rather as cross-cutting themes to be discussed in the context of many articles dedicated to other things. In the case of digital methods in legal history, this decision seems to have been a tough one – at one point, you can find a curious reference to a "chapter on 'Legal History and Digital Humanities'" (OHBLH 354), but in the final publication there is no such text.
However, discussing digital methods in the context of other subjects has, in our opinion, the disadvantage that more systematic, methodological arguments cannot really be developed. Put more concretely, the most "substantial" contributions regarding digital methods are, for whatever reason, those on "The Intellectual History of Law" by Assaf Likhovski, on "Taking the Long View" by Paul D. Halliday, on "Quantitative Legal History" by Daniel Klerman, and on "Indian Law" by Mitra Sharafi, all of which are in the Oxford Handbook on Legal History. (Equally surprising, there is no mention of digital methods at all in Angela Fernandez’s "Legal History as The History of Legal Texts".) However, even these articles do not really "discuss" digital methods, rather they merely refer to them (and to some projects) as contributions of sorts to their respective fields of interest.
Thus, if you are looking for digital methods in those handbooks, you can hardly find more than some namedropping passages where things like "digital mapping […], network analysis […], text analysis" (OHBLH 845f.) are mentioned, together with references to example projects where they have been employed but without any explanation as to:
–why these methods are mentioned and not others,
–what they are doing, to which end and under what circumstances,
–what, possibly transformative, impact these methods have on the (respective sub-) field of legal history, and
–what a scholar considering to apply these methods should be aware of.
While the space for this is limited, the present Forum contribution tries to mitigate the scarcity of such discussions by presenting and discussing a few textual analyses that make use – for demonstration purposes – of digital methods. Some other methods of analysis, network analysis, and geo-mapping (among others), cannot be covered here, but we provide a link to an online bibliography where you can find them applied to legal history or a related domain, and discussed critically. A general discussion of digital perspectives beyond concrete methods of analysis concludes this contribution.
State-of-the-art climate models contain, to a significant degree, empirical components. In particular, subgrid-scale (SGS) parameterizations are usually highly tuned against observations or high-resolution model data. While this enables the models to minimize the error during hindcasts, it is not guaranteed that it yields a benefit for climate projections because of climate change. In this thesis the Fluctuation-Dissipation theorem (FDT) is used to update the statistics of the system in the presence of an external forcing. If the empirical parameters are tuned objectively to the data (i.e., they depend on the statistics of the data), then they might be updated with the FDT. This ansatz is tested within a framework of a semi-empirical model (SEM) based on the leading variance patterns of a quasigeostrophic three-layer model (QG3LM) and supplemented by a purely data-driven parameterization. We show that the FDT is able to successfully update the tuning parameters of the data-driven SGS closure, resulting in a systematic improvement in model performance in comparison to an untreated SEM. Ideally, SGS parameterizations should contain little to no tuning parameters. Thus, complementary to the FDT approach we investigate a stochastic SGS closure constrained by first principles that is calculated using the stochastic mode reduction (SMR). The SMR allows for an analytic derivation of the SGS closure from the model equations while requiring only minimal tuning. We successfully apply the SMR to the QG3LM and construct the reduced stochastic model (RSM). Furthermore, we show that the RSM is more robust against an external forcing than the SEM. Additionally, we find that, under appropriate conditions, the FDT is able to update the empirical parts of the RSM. Yet, only for the response in mean streamfunction the RSM provides useful results, while the response in covariance of the streamfunction is incorrect for most cases. Nevertheless, we obtain a remarkably accurate response in both moments for the RSM in an idealized setting. In combination with the results of the FDT study this indicates that the considered RSM is too low dimensional and encourages us to investigate the response of larger RSMs in the future.
Five decades of US, UK, German and Dutch music charts show that cultural processes are accelerating
(2019)
Analysing the timeline of US, UK, German and Dutch music charts, we find that the evolution of album lifetimes and of the size of weekly rank changes provide evidence for an acceleration of cultural processes. For most of the past five decades, number one albums needed more than a month to climb to the top, nowadays an album is in contrast top ranked either from the start, or not at all. Over the last three decades, the number of top-listed albums increased as a consequence from roughly a dozen per year, to about 40. The distribution of album lifetimes evolved during the last decades from a log-normal distribution to a power law, a profound change. Presenting an information–theoretical approach to human activities, we suggest that the fading relevance of personal time horizons may be causing this phenomenon. Furthermore, we find that sales and airplay- based charts differ statistically and that the inclusion of streaming affects chart diversity adversely. We point out in addition that opinion dynamics may accelerate not only in cultural domains, as found here, but also in other settings, in particular in politics, where it could have far reaching consequences.
The presence of moral theology and scholasticism in the recently published Oxford Handbook of Legal History and Oxford Handbook of European Legal History is very limited. The first volume aims to be iconoclastic. It explicitly does not seek to provide a kind of global historical account but instead presents some of the innovative methodological perspectives guiding current legal historical research. Thomas Duve, writing about the contribution of the School of Salamanca to the theorization of a certain framework of "indigenous rights" during the period of colonial domination, is thus the only contributor to this volume who mentions moral theology. In the Handbook of European Legal History, there are two articles on important scholastic contributions to legal history that also deal with the influence of Salamanca and related scholastic authors to equally wide fields of legal thinking. Wim Decock discusses authors of the second scholasticism in the context of the law of property and obligations (611–632), and David Ibbetson writes on natural law (566–582). In the following, I will focus on Ibbetson’s chapter, which only partially matches the ambitious intended aims of the volume editors (Pihlajamäki, Dubber, Godfrey): to "chart the landscape of contemporary research" and to show the global impact that European legal systems had "from the fifteenth century onwards". ...