This chapter examines the permissible limitations on the right to science under Art. 4 ICESCR, emphasising the delicate balance between protecting scientific freedom and safeguarding broader societal interests. It first situates the right within the ICESCR’s general limitations framework, distinguishing it from rights-specific limitation clauses in instruments like the ICCPR. The chapter analyses key criteria governing legitimate limitations – legality, compatibility with the nature of the rights, necessity, proportionality and promotion of general welfare in a democratic society – and clarifies their application specifically to the right to science. It further distinguishes limitations from related concepts, such as progressive realisation and retrogressive measures. Moving beyond the human rights limitations framework, the chapter critically assesses the role of scientific self-regulation, arguing that ethical norms governing research should not merely be voluntary or professional standards but rather grounded in international human rights obligations.

This chapter shows how Percy Shelley moves from taking negative positions on others’ beliefs to exploring how to hold and encourage hopeful beliefs without absolutes. The first section examines Shelley’s developing argument, in his philosophical prose, for the value of the malleable mindset he calls “persuasion” within the framework of necessity. The abiding appeal of rigid convictions, and of literary genres that might impose them, comes to the fore in his “Satire upon Satire” and Julian and Maddalo. The chapter then shows how, in Prometheus Unbound, Shelley reimagines persuasion as a matter chiefly of craft: of rearranging what we think we know or leaving it open-ended. Shelley’s main graphic, rhythmical, and rhetorical instrument for this, it is argued, is the ellipsis, serial dots that perform the same disruptive function as the vacancies that he describes in his prose as the most important sites of cognitive and collective reform.

Chapter 2 further articulates the normativist view, but its central task is to demonstrate its effectiveness; that is, to illustrate the eliminativist aspect of normativism by showing how normativists dissolve three central problems in the philosophy of mathematics. It first deals with the problem of the specialness of mathematical propositions, traditionally considered necessarily true. Then it tackles the so-called Benacerraf dilemma, the (supposed) difficulty of knowing mathematical truths – but before that, it clarifies the notion of a pseudo-problem as understood by Wittgenstein. In the last sections, the chapter dissolves a third problem, the traditional ontological question ‘do mathematical objects exist?’ More concretely, it tackles three incarnations of realism: traditional platonism, Fregean logicist realism, and the species of realism due to Quine and defended on the basis of indispensability considerations.

A juridical commentary to this provision further states: ‘[t]hat which is protected is to be worth more than that which is harmed and the danger is not to be avoidable through any other means’ (Anonymous, 2025, see: https://lagen.nu/1962:700#K24).

In this chapter I argue that the norm against intentional killing is a moral absolute, identifying an action never to be done. On this ground, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and other allied bombings in World War II, are shown to have been morally unjustified.

Defences play a critical role in tort law by allowing courts to balance individual rights with broader considerations of justice and social policy. For example, a person who acts in self-defence or under necessity may interfere with another’s rights in a way that would ordinarily be unlawful, but their actions may be justified by the circumstances. Similarly, defences like consent or statutory authorisation reflect the idea that liability should not arise where the plaintiff has permitted the interference or where the defendant is acting in accordance with the law. Without defences, the law would be overly rigid, punishing conduct that, in context, may be entirely reasonable or socially acceptable.

In this chapter we begin by discussing the distinction between a denial of liability and a defence. A denial of liability challenges whether the plaintiff has proven the elements of the tort, whereas a defence assumes that the elements are satisfied but provides a justification or excuse for the defendant’s actions.

This chapter argues that we must interpret the meaning of Kant’s conception of transcendental idealism from his arguments for it. It argues that the popular contrast between “one-world” and “two-world” interpretations of transcendental idealism is misleading, because Kant (and his contemporaries) always recognize an ontological distinction between things outside us and our representations of them (thus, two worlds) – the question is, rather, whether Kant leaves it open that things as they are in themselves might be spatio-temporal or actually denies that they are. This chapter argues that his main argument for transcendental idealism is clearly intended to prove that things as they are in themselves are not spatio-temporal, and cannot be interpreted as leaving that question open. It also argues that Kant’s argument for this assertion is not sound; rather, it depends on an assumption that the general propositions about space and time made in his “metaphysical expositions” of those concepts as well as the specific propositions of geometry are necessarily true of whatever objects they are true of at all, to which he is not entitled. Thus the chapter argues that we can accept Kant’s transcendental theory of experience without accepting transcendental idealism.

Chapters 6 and 7 dealt with the substantive requirements of the torts of trespass to the person and trespass to property and goods. This chapter deals with the defences and remedies available to those actions.Defences to trespass based on self-help include the defences of self-defence or defence of another, defence of property, necessity or abatement. Defences based on justification are consent and the exercise of disciplinary powers. There is a fault-based defence of inevitable accident. Provocation, mistake, contributory negligence and the incapacity of the defendant are not defences to trespass.The remedies available for trespass to the person include damages (nominal, compensatory, aggravated and exemplary) and injunctions.

This chapter takes a relatively broad approach to defences, covering a range of factors that might serve to exculpate a defendant who might otherwise appear to have committed an offence. The defences examined here are arranged into two, imperfectly realised, categories. The first group have been termed ‘mental state defences’ and the second ‘self-help defences’. The group titled ‘mental state defences’ are so categorised because they depend to a greater or lesser extent on the contention that the accused did not possess the requisite mens rea to commit the offence. In assessing whether an accused may be able to rely on a defence a number of subjective and objective elements have to be applied and analysed. It is important to understand that the considerations informing the development of each of the defences are often very different and sometimes controversial. The groupings are far from perfectly realised and the rationales and doctrines of each of the defences may manifest as many dissimilarities as they do similarities. It is hoped that the arrangement of the material in this chapter will aid understanding by drawing comparisons across different aspects of the criminal law.

This Chapter proposes a coherent approach to the review of security exceptions under international trade and investment agreements by international adjudicators. The contribution of this Chapter is two-fold. First, it examines whether the clarification of the scope of the existing security exception clauses and their coherent application by international adjudicators under both regimes could help restrain the securitization of states’ trade and investment policies. Secondly, and conversely, it aims to draw some conclusions about the extent to which existing security exception clauses provide sufficient policy space for WTO members to protect their national interests.

This Chapter examines whether and to what extent WTO members can be accountable for applying security measures before international adjudicators and how the invocation of security exceptions can impact the international courts’ or tribunals’ proceedings. The idea of balancing free trade and national security is bound to substantiate itself in a compression of the right to sovereignty, which can be assessed through the good faith review or the use of a necessity test. The investigation of the meaning and mechanisms of these tests and the scope of discretion that should be granted to the decisions of WTO members in their national security matters allows for establishing the framework for reviewing security exceptions.

The chapter argues for a reading of Parts of Animals I.1, 639b11–640a9 as a continuous argument, divided into 3 main sections. Aristotle’s point in the first section is that teleological explanations should precede non-teleological explanations in the order of exposition. His reasoning is that the ends cited in teleological explanations are definitions, and definitions – which are not subject to further explanation – are appropriate starting points, insofar as they prevent explanations from going on ad infinitum. Aristotle proceeds in the following two sections to criticize certain non-teleological accounts offered by his predecessors on the grounds that they are explanatorily defective: those accounts – unlike teleological explanations – neither begin from appropriate starting points nor entail the phenomena that they purport to explain. Along the way, the chapter proposes an alternative way to understand what “hypothetical necessity” refers to, for Aristotle.

This chapter explores the three levels of material constitution presented in the Part of Animals: (a) elemental powers, (b) uniform and (c) nonuniform animate parts, in order to answer the question whether uniform materials that go into the constitution of animal bodies are produced for the sake of the organism. My answer is negative. At the bottom level, we encounter inanimate mixtures, not just elemental powers, that possess all the non-elemental material properties that may then be used by an animal nature. Aristotle’s chemistry (in the GC and Meteorology) exploits non-teleological processes that explain the dispositions of uniform material bodies. Such materials are then used by animal natures, through the teleological process of concoction, for the constitution of uniform and nonuniform parts of their bodies: the animal kind works within the confines set by the non-elemental material properties. This helps locate the difference between mixis and pepsis (concoction) and to understand why these conceptual tools are used in different contexts by Aristotle.

Chapter 4 delves deeper into the discussion around the torturous suffering inflicted in the name of the state and how that is legitimated. This chapter continues to find states to exhibit an existential interest in keeping the legality of some forms of suffering ambiguous and thus deniable (and non-justiciable to the extent possible), given the degree to which state authorities rely on them. Certain methods (solitary confinement, coercive interrogation and life imprisonment) have come to be bracketed away from the prohibition. This evokes the (often effaced) question of the formation of legality and legitimacy of state violence and brings into focus legal concepts, such as ‘lawful sanctions’, ‘minimum severity’, ‘inherent or incidental’, ‘discomfort’, ‘special stigma’, ‘triviality’ and ‘necessity’. These stand to be critiqued as being born out of political imperatives to exceptionalise so as to invisibilise and render deniable certain state practices. These categories, as will be argued, have worked to preserve the category of torture as aberrational and nearly unattainable.