Merchant power was underpinned by state support. European rulers knew that helping their national merchant group take over control of market segments, especially internationally, would bring revenues to the state and enrich the population, for instance craftsmen manufacturing goods for exports. The resulting mercantilist policies included well-known systems of privileges encouraging imperial preference and corporate long-distance ventures such as the East India Companies, but also policies aiming at mitigating deflationary tendencies harmful to credit, or encouraging manufactures for export through guild regulations such as quality controls. In a context of early modern markets monopolized by merchant rings, the resulting Mercantilist theories and policies were much more practical and rational than claimed by later classical economists, with complex debates over what means to choose to encourage national merchant groups, and to whose benefit these policies would mainly redound. Legal regimes were also mobilized, with both Common law and Continental (Roman) law providing extra protection to merchant groups in bankruptcy proceedings, partnership protection and legal evidence.

International organizations perform activities in areas in which states can no longer operate effectively in isolation, and in which there is a common interest in cooperation within a permanent international framework. This chapter will examine international organizations primarily from a legal perspective. The chapter aims to present a general overview of the law of international organizations. This chapter discusses the legal status, privileges, and immunities of international organizations. The chapter further deals with membership issues, powers, and institutional structures. The chapter also looks at decisions of international organizations: the way in which they are taken and the different types of decisions. The chapter briefly examines the finances of international organizations. There has been an exponential increase in the activities of international organizations over the years. Not all of these activities have been successful, however, and there have been failures and wrongdoings. In recent years, a much-debated issue is to what extent international organizations and/or their members may be held responsible for such failures and wrongdoings.

International law on immunities consists of a body of procedural rules that limit when a state may exercise jurisdiction within its territory. International law bars the exercise of jurisdiction in such situations either because the exercise of jurisdiction would threaten the equality of sovereign states or because the capacity of the individual or organization to carry out their functions would be compromised. This chapter begins with the law on state immunity, which has evolved over the centuries from an absolute doctrine to a more restrictive one, which permits exceptions, in particular when states engage in commercial activities. The chapter introduces the immunities that apply to all individuals who serve as state officials, whether they serve as relatively low-level civil servants or as the president or prime minister. The chapter also deals with two special regimes, one governing diplomatic and consular agents who serve abroad, and the other governing international organizations.

What were rights in seventeenth-century France, within the kingdom and its possessions? The French word ‘droits’ (rights) was rarely used. Jurists and claimants talked about liberties, privileges, exemptions, franchises. Liberties were understood in terms of entitlements, which were collective rather than personal. Subjects were granted different privileges depending on the order or estate to which they belonged. The clergy and the nobility enjoyed privileges denied to the common people (they did not, for example, pay taxes) because of the specific social roles they performed. People also enjoyed additional privileges and exemptions to the ones attached to their orders. They belonged to other groups, whether they were provinces, cities, communities, corporations, that granted specific privileges which the sovereign had to respect.

This chapter takes the province of Normandy, a pays détat with its own provincial estates and bailiwick assemblies, to demonstrate how political language and vocabulary evolved in the sixteenth century from an emphasis on the common good (le bien public) to a more royalist language of the good of the state (bien dÉtat). The crown had given the province a Charter outlining its rights and privileges in the fourteenth century. The crown also gave the provinces principal city, Rouen, a charter. Becasue of customary law, however, consenting to taxation by the Estates of Normandy had become established custom in the province by the sixteenth century even though it ws not mentioned specifically in the Norman Charter. Thus, royal efforts to emphasize the nation State in its vocabulary challenged the custom of consent to taxation.

In August 1989, on the occasion of the bicentennial of the French Revolution, Le Monde published an interview with Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In that interview Thatcher, in France at the time as an honored guest of French President François Mitterrand, asserted that claims that the notion of subjective rights originated with the French Revolution, and specifically with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of August 1789, are nonsense. The socialist French Prime Minister Michel Rocard criticized Thatcher vocally, and her arrival at the bicentennial celebrations was met with jeers, yet many historians today would agree with her, whatever their preferred origin point(s) for a concept of subjective rights. What is more controversial is Thatcher’s alternative account of the origins of the notion of subjective rights: to her, they had been invented by the Greeks, and were already foundational to Athenian democracy.

Finally, Chapter 6 reveals and analyzes the extensive rewards that ladies-in-waiting earned for fulfilling their normal duties as well as for loyally serving their mistresses during periods of national importance and political tension. Elite female servants benefitted from their positions at court, both in terms of material rewards and their ability to ease themselves into political situations. All female attendants earned some form of in-kind benefit, with room and board included for their service and formal clothing allowances distributed. Some servants garnered significant financial remuneration, through land grants assigned in perpetuity, expensive jeweled gifts, or extravagant annuity stipends. Others earned more modest wages, annuities, or gifts of secondhand clothing. When ladies and damsels scored patronage that offered nonmonetary privileges, they ranged from minor legal exemptions to significant pardoning of major crimes. Gift-giving redistributed wealth from monarch or aristocratic employer through lesser-status ranks in the household, but at the same time the theatricality of gift-giving and the allocation of sumptuous clothing linked to the royal or noble household enhanced the prestige of the bestower as they demonstrated their numerous, loyal servants and the affluence that allowed them to grant such gifts.

By the end of the eighteenth century the plural language of liberty was under widespread attack, denounced by radicals as a denial of innate human rights and a tool of monarchical despotism. This evolution was partly powered by the consolidation of nation-states that picked up speed in the sixteenth century, but this centralization was long incomplete. In this situation the terms “liberties” and “privileges” were almost universally regarded as equivalents, even by so radical a movement as the English Levellers of the seventeenth century. The dissolution of this equivalence took place in France, first as the monarchy’s political and fiscal shenanigans sapped people’s faith in the system, and then as the Revolution mounted a full-scale attack on privilege as a source of inequality and despotism. Supporters of the Revolution followed its lead, but the old language still played a role in Britain and Germany, a reminder that the old language, even with its equivalence of liberties and privileges, long persisted in fostering self-government and resisting oppression.

The Tridentine Decree on the religious life reflected long-standing ecclesial disaffection and aspirations for reform. The product of a lively conciliar debate, it was neither innovative nor theologically sophisticated but narrowly disciplinary. In the aftermath of the Council, several of its prescriptions concerning male religious went unheeded.

This chapter investigates why a competitor would want to become a member of one of the ecumenical synods. What could the associations do for them after they had paid the relatively high entrance fee? A major preoccupation of the synods was obtaining and safeguarding privileges for their members. There were three main types: privileges providing personal security, financial privileges and honorary privileges. A special category were the so-called opsonia, pensions granted to victors in a select category of games. Another aspect was the legal status of synod members. There are indications that synodic lobbying protected their members from the Roman infamia laws that targeted people performing in shows. The second section of this chapter focuses on the support offered by the synods during festivals. They ensured, for instance, that their members were well lodged and fed. This chapter argues that in securing privileges and offering local support, the synods relied on their extensive social networks, which reached out to local elites as well as to Roman administrators and the imperial court.

International organizations perform activities in areas in which states can no longer operate effectively in isolation, and in which there is a common interest in cooperation within a permanent international framework. This chapter will examine international organizations primarily from a legal perspective. The chapter aims to present a general overview of the law of international organizations. It discusses the legal status, privileges, and immunities of international organizations. The chapter further deals with membership issues, powers, and institutional structures. The chapter also looks at decisions of international organizations: the way in which they are taken and the different types of decisions. The chapter will briefly examine the finances of international organizations. There has been an exponential increase in activities of international organizations over the years. Not all of these activities have been successful, however, and there have been failures and wrongdoings. In recent years, a much-debated issue is the extent to which international organizations and/or their members may be held responsible for such failures and wrongdoings.

International law on immunities consists of a body of procedural rules that limit when a state may exercise jurisdiction within its territory. These procedural rules could prevent a domestic court from exercising jurisdiction in a case involving a foreign state, a foreign state official, or an international organization. These rules could also prevent a police officer from exercising jurisdiction by arresting and detaining a foreign diplomat or a minister of foreign affairs. International law bars the exercise of jurisdiction in such situations, either because the exercise of jurisdiction would threaten the equality of sovereign states or because the capacity of the individual or organization to carry out their functions would be compromised. This chapter begins with the law on state immunity, which has evolved over the centuries from an absolute doctrine to a more restrictive one, which permits exceptions, in particular when states engage in commercial activities. The chapter introduces the immunities that apply to all individuals who serve as state officials, whether they serve as relatively low-level civil servants or as the president or prime minister. The chapter also deals with two special regimes, one governing diplomatic and consular agents who serve abroad, and the other governing international organizations.

International organizations perform activities in areas in which states can no longer operate effectively in isolation, and in which there is a common interest in cooperation within a permanent international framework. This chapter will examine international organizations primarily from a legal perspective. The chapter aims to present a general overview of the law of international organizations. It discusses the legal status, privileges, and immunities of international organizations. The chapter further deals with membership issues, powers, and institutional structures. The chapter also looks at decisions of international organizations: the way in which they are taken and the different types of decisions. The chapter will briefly examine the finances of international organizations. There has been an exponential increase in activities of international organizations over the years. Not all of these activities have been successful, however, and there have been failures and wrongdoings. In recent years, a much-debated issue is the extent to which international organizations and/or their members may be held responsible for such failures and wrongdoings.

International law on immunities consists of a body of procedural rules that limit when a state may exercise jurisdiction within its territory. These procedural rules could prevent a domestic court from exercising jurisdiction in a case involving a foreign state, a foreign state official, or an international organization. These rules could also prevent a police officer from exercising jurisdiction by arresting and detaining a foreign diplomat or a minister of foreign affairs. International law bars the exercise of jurisdiction in such situations, either because the exercise of jurisdiction would threaten the equality of sovereign states or because the capacity of the individual or organization to carry out their functions would be compromised. This chapter begins with the law on state immunity, which has evolved over the centuries from an absolute doctrine to a more restrictive one, which permits exceptions, in particular when states engage in commercial activities. The chapter introduces the immunities that apply to all individuals who serve as state officials, whether they serve as relatively low-level civil servants or as the president or prime minister. The chapter also deals with two special regimes, one governing diplomatic and consular agents who serve abroad, and the other governing international organizations.

This chapter outlines a "feudal transformation" in medieval Europe, in which originality and creativity became activities to be protected and encouraged through grants of legal privileges. A Venetian statute that many have seen as Europe's first patent law is here placed in the context of legal and religious reforms overseen by Carolingian bishops and rulers. The trajectory of these reforms is traced through the development of medieval universities and legal education, which are linked, in turn, to an idealizing social vision of law as a morally binding force, drawing people together into communities through legal promises and oaths. With the birth of the European legal profession, Roman and Biblical legal traditions are synthesized into the legal foundation for medieval city-states, guilds, and universities, together with the prebend system that provides material support for clerics of various kinds. In the medieval city-state of Venice, these legal traditions become the basis for a transformation in legal privileges, emphasizing the value of novelty and creativity for legal communities and providing early precursors for later patent and copyright law.

A similarity in the diplomatic practice of American and Irish foreign services at this time was the use of the respective nation’s culture, its political values and its foreign policies to promote national interests. The chapter recreates the social circles of the Irish diplomat in Roosevelt’s America. It is argued that the Irish representatives and their spouses assisted in establishing Irish national identity separate from that of Britain and the commonwealth, more Americans became interested in Irish literature, language and music and came to see Ireland as a place to visit. But de Valera’s on-going aim to secure official America’s assistance with resolving the Anglo-Irish economic war and the partition problem, improving the economy and combatting anglophile views in the Roosevelt administration were difficult for the diplomats to realise. By the 1930s Ireland’s problems were of less interest to US politicians and public alike.

This chapter challenges competing accounts of the privileges or immunities clause propounded by other scholars such as Kurt Lash, Michael Kent Curtis, Akhil Amar, and Randy Barnett. It argues that the privileges or immunities clause likely does not incorporate the Bill of Rights nor does it guarantee unenumerated fundamental rights. It argues that the privileges or immunities clause was instead an antidiscrimination provision with respect to state-defined civil rights.

This chapter surveys the legal history of privileges and immunities provisions, from early international treaties and the Wales Act of 1535–36 to the Articles of Confederation and the Comity Clause of the U.S. Constitution. It argues that these provisions were all antidiscrimination provisions: they did not guarantee any particular set of rights, but required equality in the provision of civil rights to those for whose benefits the privileges and immunities provisions were written.

Patents as “exclusive privileges” were introduced in India in 1856 when it was a colony of the British Empire. Many developed countries, then as now, used patent systems as policy levers to encourage importation and adoption of inventions in order to strengthen their technological capabilities. Yet even under the influence of British patent law, by the time of its independence in 1947 India was technologically far behind. This chapter examines this issue by focusing on patent policy and policy making in colonial India to highlight how colonial constraints on the political and legislative freedom of the Government of India had an adverse effect on choosing a patent policy conducive to India’s cultural interest. The analysis draws from the empirical evidence of inventors’ experiences of obtaining and enforcing patent rights in British India, and the role of various stakeholders in influencing the patent policy. It specifically outlines the case of patentees Messrs Thomson & Mylne, whose efforts led to the first large-scale commercialization of an Indian patent and reassessment of the proposed patent law vis-à-vis the needs of the Indian agricultural sector.

The co-construction of “industrial property” law and the culture of invention in Greece occurred most prominently from the first patent law of 1920 up to World War II. I unravel the political and industrial contexts of the emergence of Greece’s first patent law, focusing on the role of engineering figures both in framing patent rights as a privilege conferred upon inventors and in pressing toward new legislation. The resulting 1920 patent law was an incomplete attempt to represent the legal status of patents in terms of rights rather than of privilege. The new Greek law that emerged was thus a compromise between ideological pressures for homogenization and the need to innovate through imitation. Overall this chapter contextualizes this development within the impact of transnational patent legislation in constructing a culture of propertization of knowledge and more particularly in techno-science in Greece. The research is based mainly on published archival material most importantly on technical and legal journals, public press, and legal books of the period.