Spinoza to Freud: The unraveling of a psycho-analytical perspective on moral responsibility and law.

The status that Spinoza and Freud assign to law has some convergence, for both embrace the positivity, the mere conventionality and utility, of law and eschew any real or eternal moral norms (that is, they thoroughly reject the Natural Law tradition) that law might capture and embody. In addition, both put forth a biological account of human nature, rather than a theological one or even quasi-theological one, and that biological nature is the springboard in each case for defining the overall purpose of law. In addition, for both, human biology is a source of the sociality, the psychic attachments, that make an emotional union of individuals into a group possible. Nevertheless, it is in the specific elaborations of human biology that we can discern the beginning of a parting of the ways, for in their conceptions of human nature and the nature of nature Freud and Spinoza diverge in significant respects.

Images of welfare in law and society: the British welfare state in comparative perspective.

Designed by Beveridge and built by Attlee's post-war Labour government, the welfare state was created during the 1940s. Britain has been seen ­ in domestic debates and internationally ­ as a world first: the place where both the idea and the practice of the welfare state were invented. I draw together comparative welfare state analysis with law and society scholarship (previously largely developed in isolation from one another) ­ as well as using British political cartoons as a source ­ to develop a revisionist historical critique of this conventional wisdom. First, the British welfare state has always been comparatively parsimonious. Second, the idea of the welfare state seems to have its origins outside the United Kingdom and this terminology was adopted relatively late and with some ambivalence in public debate and scholarly analysis. Third, a large body of socio-legal scholarship shows that robust 'welfare rights' were never embedded in the British 'welfare state'.

Medical expertise as a historical phenomenon and academic discipline.

Based on secondary literature, a survey of particular forms of medical expertise over history is presented. The state-to-individual interaction in terms of personality and physical integrity protection, health care, etc., was observed. It was only after the 16th century that the development of anatomy was found to have become a decisive argument for convincing expertise in various trials. In Croatia, the course of medical expertise development was comparable to the close settings in the neighboring European countries. Major advances at the legislative, educational and professional levels took place in the second half of the 19th century. The subject of Forensic Medicine was introduced at Royal Academy of Jurisprudence as early as 1861; the book entitled Lecnicka izvesca (visa reperta) za prakticnu porabu lecnikov by Ivan Dezman (1841-1873) from 1868 offered the first systematic form of autopsy reports, whereas Kratka sudska medicina, a handbook in forensic medicine by Niko Selak (1861-1891) from 1889 denoted the beginnings of forensic medicine literature in Croatian language. It has been noted that medical expertise approach perceives man as a social being at the crossing of manifold impacts and influences, thus being always observed by physicians of various specialties. During centuries, medical expertise has been formed in conjunction with advances in medicine and science, and with the development of civil society. Medical expertise had gradually grown into a multidisciplinary field requiring high professionalism, ethical approach, continuous training and collaboration with various professions. This resulted in a compact and polyvalent discipline, in Croatia gradually formed as a special course in medical curriculum.

[Protomedicato and pharmacy in Castile at the end of the sixteenth century: "Catálogo de las Cosas que los Boticarios han de tener en sus Boticas" (Catalogue of the things that apothecaries must have in their shops), by Andrés Zamudio de Alfaro, Protomédico General (1592-1599)]. / Protomedicato y farmacia en Castilla a finales del siglo XVI: edición crítica del "Catálogo de las Cosas que los Boticarios han de tener en sus Boticas," de Andrés Zamudio de Alfaro, Protomédico General (1592-1599).

In this article we present a catalogue of medicinal products preserved in a manuscript copy among the papers of a druggist who died in Madrid in 1599. This catalogue, whose title expresses its normative character, contains 423 entries and is signed by Andrés Zamudio de Alfaro, Protomédico General of Castile from 1592 until his death in 1599. It was presumably issued by the Real Tribunal del Protomedicato during the last decade of the sixteenth century for the use of the protomédicos and examiners who carried out official visits to apothecaries under the aegis of the Tribunal, in accordance with the royal decrees of 1588 and 1593, and was also distributed among the apothecaries themselves and their suppliers, such as the druggist who possessed the copy edited here. The document offers valuable evidence of the policy of normalization of medical, and specifically pharmaceutical, practice imposed during this period by the State through the Protomedicato.

Correspondence of Charles Darwin on James Torbitt's project to breed blight-resistance potatoes.

The most prolific of Darwin's correspondents from Ireland was James Torbitt, an enterprising grocer and wine merchant of 58 North Street, Belfast. Between February 1876 and March 1882, 141 letters were exchanged on the feasibility and ways of supporting one of Torbitt's commercial projects, the large-scale production and distribution of true potato seeds (Solan um tuberosum) to produce plants resistant to the late blight fungus Phytophthora infestans, the cause of repeated potato crop failures and thus the Irish famines in the nineteenth century. Ninety-three of these letters were exchanged between Torbitt and Darwin, and 48 between Darwin and third parties, seeking or offering help and advice on the project. Torbitt's project required selecting the small proportion of plants in an infested field that survived the infection, and using those as parents to produce seeds. This was a direct application of Darwin's principle of selection. Darwin cautiously lobbied high-ranking civil servants in London to obtain government funding for the project, and also provided his own personal financial support to Torbit.

[Aspects of senile dementia in ancient Rome: literary fiction and factual reality]. / Aspekte der Altersdemenz im antiken Rom: Literarische Fiktion und faktische Lebenswirklichkeit.

Old people and their pecularities have been the object of writers since the beginning of Western literature. The aim of this study is to verify the social and juridical significance of senile dementia in ancient Rome. Among the few relevant sources the 10th satire of Juvenal attracts attention. It describes a demented patient who revises his succession in favour of a lady with bad reputation. Logically, we wonder whether such dispositions were possible and after all legally binding. Or did Juvenal exaggerate? A look at the Roman legislation shows: Since the Twelve Tablet Law there were instruments to control or to help demented people. This meant care in the sense of the today's curatorship or guardianship. These measures were supposed to prevent extravagancy or doing business and legal acts like marriages or last wills in the state of diminished responsibility. Nevertheless, it must be assumed that there was a considerable discrepancy between juridical theory and daily practice, because the position of the "pater familias" was virtually untouchable, the individual freedom of the full citizen was firmly underlined and the Roman civil law allowed only little executive interferences. Juvenal's bizarre example should not only be taken as good literary fiction. It might reflect the sad, but nevertheless probable reality of the people directly concerned. Apart from that it has to be said that senile dementia played only a minor role in Roman legislation. Mainly because there were considerably less very old people--and in particular people with senile dementia--than today.

Witchcraft, genealogy, Foucault.

This paper is a genealogical reflection on both the historiography of European witchcraft and the dynamics of witchcraft trials. I argue that traditional scholarly assumptions about the 'unsophisticated' nature of early modern European mentalities result in inadequate representations of accused witches and of the social contexts and processes of the trials. Genealogy, by contrast, problematizes fundamental notions such as reason, order, power and progress in ways that not only provide a different range of effective tools for the analysis of belief in witchcraft, but also underline its crucial significance for social theory. In the final section, an analysis of a typical trial is undertaken employing key genealogical insights into confession, torture, truth, governmentality, power, pleasure and pain.