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What is the future of international law?

With the 10th European Society of International Law (ESIL) Anniversary Conference just around the corner some key thinkers share their thoughts on what they think the future of international law looks like.

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“International law traditionally flourishes with liberal hegemony, shared interests, or balance-of-powers parity. The first condition is visibly waning. The second and third conditions support regional and functional islands of multilateralism. While those islands may sometimes be shaky, they will continue to provide work for international lawyers. Beyond that, in the rough waters of war, peace, and even justice, the language of international law will also continue to pervade international relations. But it increasingly risks being perceived as an imprudent distraction. That is unless civil societies can unsettle the present monopolies that shape the terms of international legal discourse.”

— Ingo Venzke, Research Fellow and Lecturer, Amsterdam Center for International Law, University of Amsterdam, author of How Interpretation Makes International Law: On Semantic Change and Normative Twists, and co-author of In Whose Name? A Public Law Theory of International Adjudication

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“The future of international law will be somewhat as with its present: we will witness the continued expansion of international law’s reach into new and emerging areas of common concern, wrought by climate change, technology, and continued processes of international and regional integration that are changing the nature of State-to-State relations. I do hope, however, that there will be continued and sustained critical reflection in scholarship on the impact of law on the international space—on who it empowers and excludes, on the nature of legalisation and its purposes—for it is only through heightened scrutiny, and not unquestioned application, that international law may serve as a progressive force.”

— Gleider I. Hernandez, Lecturer in Law, Durham University, author of The International Court of Justice and the Judicial Function

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“In my opinion, the international law of the future will be less influenced by the ‘Westphalian model’, for at least two reasons: the increasing role played by non-state actors, in particular armed groups and multinational corporations, which challenges existing state-centred rules of international law, and the emergence of cyberspace as a separate domain, that will entail a rethinking of traditional concepts like territory, sovereignty, and jurisdiction. With regard to the future of international institutions, it remains to be seen whether the United Nations will be able to survive in its outdated structure.”

— Marco Roscini, Reader in International Law, University of Westminster, author of Cyber operations and the use of force in international law

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“The future of international law is likely to be as its past: a vital, though often misunderstood, medium through which social actors at various levels and in various forms can structure and order their interactions, reflect their desires and manifest their concerns. It is neither static nor predictable. Following a period in which there have been high expectations of what international law can achieve, the next few years may be times of challenge as it struggles to deliver solutions which have become expected of it. But this is merely part of the endless re-calibration necessary to reflect the tasks to which it is being put and the realities which need to be faced. If international law does not disappoint from time to time it will cease to be a source of aspiration – and that would make for a far bleaker future.”

— Malcolm Evans, Professor of Public International Law, University of Bristol, author of International Law and Blackstone’s International Law Documents

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Vienna, AT. Photo by Luca Sartoni. CC BY-SA 2.0 via lucasartoni Flickr.

“International law has undergone dramatic change in the past fifty years, with issues from human rights to the environment to trade now the subjects of a wide range of hard and soft law instruments. Yet, many of the principles encapsulated within these documents remain unrealized due to the inability of international law to influence domestic law and national political priorities. Oftentimes, international law seems to remain distinct from domestic systems, treated with suspicion by national institutions.

“In the twenty first century, the national and international cannot be so easily separated. In areas such as refugee flows, arms proliferation, environmental degradation and combatting impunity, domestic initiatives and capability hold the key to international security. Agreement on and adherence to international standards is essential if global threats with national origins are to be managed effectively. International law must become not only the standard setter but the enabler and enhancer of domestic capacity. One of the key challenges will be to alter perceptions of international law itself. Rather than being viewed as something to be resisted or resented, side-stepped or paid lip service to, international legal standards must become part of domestic legislative and political agendas. The challenge is enormous, but essential, because, in the words of Anne-Marie Slaughter, the future of international law is domestic.”

— Alison Bisset, Lecturer of Law, University of Reading, author of Blackstone’s International Human Rights Documents

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“In the security regime, the future of international law looks increasingly dim. Attributability is a prerequisite for accountability, and powerful governments are discovering new ways to mask innovative forms of coercion behind a veil of anonymity. “Little green men” with no visible identification, untraceable drone strikes, “NATO” bombings that conceal belligerents’ identities, cyber-attacks masked by false flags—these sorts of intrusions all erode the rule of law by making it difficult if not impossible to impute responsibility. Should this trend continue, the security regime could look increasingly like Ferguson, Missouri—a juridical black hole where lawless police hide their badges.”

— Michael J. Glennon, Professor of International Law, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, author of National Security and Double Government

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“In my opinion, the future of international law in the coming decades will continue to be shaped by the continued tensions between sovereignty and other interests of the international community, such as the protection of the environment, the development of the Responsibility to Protect and more broadly human rights.

“On the one hand, states will obviously have to continue to accept that the traditional Westphalian model of international law is facing challenges and that things cannot be as they were in the past.

“But on the other hand, activists in various fields need to accept that the world is not changing as fast as they would like everyone to believe and that sovereignty remains a key feature of the international legal order. To a certain extent, as a feature of any given community, sovereignty is in fact conceptually unavoidable in one shape or another, whether at the domestic or the international level. Testimony to this is the continued relevance in international affairs of national(istic) claims which find their legal cristalisation in concepts such as statehood, self-determination and the prohibition of the use of force in international law.

“Accepting this reality is key in shaping realistic, effective and intellectually sound policies that not merely focus on individual rights, however important they are, but also take into account the collective dimensions and interests of any human society.”

— Dov Jacobs, Associate Professor in International Law at the Grotious Centre, Leiden University, contributor to “Targetting the State in Jus post Bellum: Towards a theory of Integrated Sovereignties” in Jus Post Bellum: Mapping the Normative Foundations

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Doing things with verve

It occurred to me to write a short essay about the word verve by chance. As a general rule, I try to stick to my last and stay away from Romance etymology, even though the logic of research occasionally makes me meddle with it. About two months ago near the street where I live (for a story to win confidence, it usually has to contain a few superfluous references to time, place, and exact numbers), I noticed an ad by a realty called “Verve” and decided that, if not only producers of energy drinks and admirers of female beauty but also real estate agents find it possible to adopt such a pompous name, there would be little harm in devoting a few lines to its use and history in this blog.

Verve goes back to Old French. It surfaced there in the eleven-hundreds, occurred rarely (as a rule, in the plural), and seems to have meant “talk” or perhaps “fantasies” before, in the seventeenth century, it acquired its modern sense “high spirits, animation, enthusiasm.” (More about this word’s original sense will be said below.) Also close to the end of that century verve appeared in English, endowed with an almost technical meaning “special bent, vein, or talent in writing” (OED). “Intellectual vigor, especially as manifest in literary productions; great vivacity of ideas and expression” became common from approximately 1870. In general use the word signifies “energy, vigor, spirit.”

For a long time verve must have been unintelligible to the English public. The OED quotes Ouida, who italicized the word as late as in 1863. But Ouida’s first language was French, and, her bizarre habits and penchant for ostentation notwithstanding, she may have been wary of sounding snobbish. It is certainly a high-flown word. (I am pleased to report that the house was sold in a week. This is what it means for a business to have an appealing name.) Today verve often graces reviews and articles dealing with music and all kinds of performances, and is expected to demonstrate their authors’ mastery of the language.

English lexicographers first treated verve as an intruder. It is absent from the early editions of Webster. The etymologists Mueller and Wedgwood ignored it, and Skeat featured it only in the fourth (last) edition of his dictionary. Sometimes verve appeared marked as an exclamation with a single reference: French. Modern English dictionaries, when they do not copy the “standard” etymology from French sources, often say: “Of dubious (uncertain, unknown) origin,” and indeed, as we will see, some doubts about its derivation remain. In 1886, after all the opinions on this matter had been offered and the best one seemingly agreed upon, August Scheler, an outstanding French etymologist, did not object to the solution rejected by most. In searching for the origin of a difficult word, it pays off to consult more reference works than one.

As usual, some conjectures have no justification. Such is tracing verve to fervor, because the initial consonants do not match. The same holds for such improbable etymons of verve as German werfen (Dutch verpen) “to throw,” Latin vertere “to turn” (here even the meanings are too remote), French vertige “dizziness; vertigo,” and French vertu “courage, valor; virtue.” But the oldest conjecture, though it was wide of the truth, found a curious justification in later scholarship. The first great French linguist of the post-medieval period was Gilles Ménage (1613-1692). He derived verve “enthusiasm” from Verbe Divin “Divine Word,” associated with The Son of God (filius Dei), the second person of the Trinity.

Doing it with real verve. (People jumping at sunset. © RossellaApostoli via iStock)

A serious exploration of the etymology of verve, as of so many other French words, began with Friedrich Diez, the founder of Romance comparative philology. He cited Latin verva “ram’s head used as an ornament on the wall.” This may have been a so-called popular word, mot populaire, because it occurred only in an inscription. Readers of Latin prose may remember vervex “wether, castrated ram.” The connection between the animal name and verve was allegedly provided by words like Italian capriccio. Capriccio, caprice, capriole, and in English its abbreviated form caper refer us to Latin caper “goat,” an animal famous for its leaps and “capers.”

To buttress Diez’s conclusion, a clever argument has been offered. “Ram” designated not only the animal but also a siege weapon used to beat down walls, that is, a battering ram. The way from an efficient weapon to force and vigor is short. Diez’s explanation was accepted by some of his illustrious contemporaries, including Littré, the author of a celebrated French dictionary. However, all the words listed above, both French and Italian, have suffixes. A change from an animal name to an abstract noun would be unusual. Verve was also approached from Latin verber (or rather from its more frequent plural verbera) “lash, whip, flogging, blow.” The loss of final -r between Latin and French does not appear troublesome.

Diez also considered another derivation of verve, which he rejected but which despite his rejection ultimately won the day. In Old French, verve meant “talk” (sometimes “insincere talk” or possibly “fantasies”) and “proverb.” Definitive conclusions about its meaning in the medieval period are hard to draw, for Old French verve has been attested in few places, and it was traditionally coupled with serve. In some places, it had no other justification except as being a filler for rhyme. In the other Romance languages, verve has no cognates. Those who paid special attention to “talk” and “proverb” set up Latin verba “words” (the plural of verbum) as the etymon of verve. The sense development was reconstructed approximately so: from “words” to “(empty) talk,” further to “fantasies,” and finally to “animation.”

To accept this reconstruction (and the same holds for verbera), one should account for the change of the group -rb- to -rv- between Latin and French. Such a change occurred, but most rarely. The only credible example is verbena “sacred foliage,” whose Spanish and Portuguese reflex is verbena, but the French name of the plant is verveine; hence Engl. vervain. However, the idea that in Vulgar Latin rb tended to become rv is, in principle, acceptable. Franz Settegast (the scholar mentioned in the post on baron), who set up verbera as the etymon of verve and reconstructed the path from “blow” to “verve,” thought of some metaphor like the lashing of the tongue (his examples are French).

The most authoritative dictionaries of French offer only the verba-verve etymology. If it is correct, Ménage, as mentioned earlier, has been partly vindicated, for he may have pointed to the word that did ultimately yield verve. What then is the end result? It is true that an abstract noun cannot go back to an animal name without some suffixes added to it (sheepish, from sheep, is fine, but sheep for “shyness” is not), so that reference to goats probably misses its target. But the now almost universally accepted etymology does not look like a revelation either. Although verbera is a bit too long to have yielded verve, Settegast’s hypothesis does not look hopeless.

We may perhaps ignore the phonetic difficulty (rb to rv), but the semantic path from “words” to “verve” or, for that matter, from “blow” to “verve,” is not straight, even though “fantasies” provides an intermediate stage and castigate could imply both moral and physical punishment. Yet those who say that verve is “of unknown origin” need not do so. “Unknown” is a strong word. It suggests that no information on the subject is available. With regard to verve this is clearly wrong, and, since in this case English etymologists contributed nothing to the discovery of the truth, it would be fair to reproduce the verdict of the most reliable French dictionaries and add a caveat. Nor should it be recommended to repeat the derivation of verve from verba without a caveat. The main aim of a good etymological dictionary should be discussion rather than perpetuating dogma.

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Aspirin the wonder drug: some food for thought

So far it has been an unusually warm and sunny summer in the United Kingdom, but unfortunately this clement weather has not been matched by the news coverage of world events, which for months has been overcast and stormy as war and tragedy have stalked Europe and the Middle East. But there was a break in the cloud — the combined British broadcast and print media rejoiced in the news (reported in Annals of Oncology) that an international group of academics have shown that consuming low doses of aspirin from middle age onwards can reduce the risk of dying of cancer, heart attack, or stroke. This is certainly not the first time that aspirin as a prophylactic wonder-drug has taken centre stage, but, a curious thing, amongst all of the coverage there has been no consideration of what aspirin is, or indeed why it might have these beneficial effects.

Aspirin, or acetylsalicylic acid to give it its more formal name, is the acetylated form of salicylic acid — the acetylation simply serves to help the compound bypass the stomach before it is absorbed in the small intestine. Salicylic acid itself is an intriguing molecule. It’s found across all plants where it acts as a hormone, making a major contribution to the hormonal cross-talk that dictates the plant’s response to environmental stresses and attacks by other organisms. The plant’s primary defensive hormones are the ‘jasmonates’, and one key role of salicylic acid is to try to reduce the cellular effects of the jasmonate hormones. In effect, salicylic acid tries to switch the plant’s response from one suited to abiotic stressors and defence against herbivores toward a longer-term “immune” response suited to resisting biotrophic and viral pathogens.

The fascinating thing is that the jasmonate system is a genetically-conserved ortholog of the mammalian prostaglandin system. Both were inherited from a distant common unicellular ancestor of plants and humans. Jasmonates and prostaglandins are therefore closely related structurally and they trigger similar cellular responses in their respective taxa, with the exception that the mammalian response includes multiple inflammatory cascades whereas the plant manufactures a palette of chemicals that help it deal with the stressors. One key activity of salicylic acid when consumed by humans is the antagonism of the prostaglandin system in the same manner that it would have targeted the plant’s jasmonate system. It’s this property which gives aspirin the celebrated anti-inflammatory and blood thinning effects that contribute to its cardiovascular benefits. Similarly, salicylic acid’s potential anti-cancer effects are liable to be predicated on it inducing programmed cell death in tumour cells in a process that closely resembles the ‘hypersensitive response’ that it coordinates in plants in response to microbial pathogens.

Whilst this ‘cross-kingdom’ transfer of salicylic acid’s cellular effects is fascinating, the more important point is that salicylic acid, as a ubiquitous plant chemical, is also a natural part of our diet. Research shows that humans exhibit circulating levels of salicylic acid that correlate with their consumption of plant derived foods, and that the highest concentrations achieved via this natural route can be greater than the concentrations seen in individuals that regularly take aspirin. This is nothing new; we and our prostaglandin system have evolved in the continuous presence of salicylic acid, probably at much greater concentrations than seen in modern man. Taken in this context the exhortation of medical practitioners for us to take aspirin looks like yet another case of the unnecessary medicalization (as also seen recently with regards sterols) of an issue that can be tackled simply by modifying the poor diets now enjoyed by the populations of developed nations. Surely it would be much better if we simply shifted our consumption of fruit and vegetables towards the levels enjoyed by our distant ancestors and took advantage of dietary salicylic acid’s natural properties?

Headline image credit: Pills (cropped). Original photo by Jill Watson. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via jillwatson Flickr.

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What can old Europe learn from new Europe’s transition?

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive


But to be young was very heaven!


– William Wordsworth on the French Revolution

I was not that young when New Europe’s transition began in 1989, but I was there: in Poland at the start of the 1990s and in Russia during its 1998 crisis and after, in both cases as the resident economist for the World Bank. This year is the 25th anniversary of New Europe’s transition and the sixth year of Old Europe’s growth-cum-sovereign debt crisis. Old Europe can learn from New Europe: first, about getting government debt dynamics under control if you want growth. Second, about implementing the policy trio of hard budgets, competition and competitive real exchange rates to keep debt dynamics under control and get growth. The contrasting experiences of Poland and Russia underline these lessons (Andrei Shleifer’s take on the transition lessons can be found here).

Poland started with a big bang in 1990, but ran into political roadblocks on the privatization of large state enterprises. It achieved single-digit inflation only in 1998. Between 1995 and 1998, Russia did the opposite. By early 1998, privatization was done and single-digit inflation achieved. But while Poland started growing in 1992 and has one of the most enviable growth records in Europe, Russia suffered a huge crisis in August 1998 after which it was forced to adopt the same policy agenda as Poland.

The first difference is that Poland quickly established fiscal discipline and capitalized on the debt reduction it received from the Paris and London Clubs to get government debt dynamics under control. Russia lost control over its government debt dynamics even as the central bank obsessively squeezed inflation out.

The second difference is that Poland instantly hardened budgets by slashing subsidies to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and subsequently restricting bank lending to loss-making SOEs. It summarily increased competition by liberalizing imports, but was careful to avoid a large real appreciation by devaluing the zloty 17 months after the big bang, and then moving to a flexible exchange rate. The first two elements of this micropolicy trio, hard budgets and competition, forced SOEs to raise efficiency even before privatization. The third, competitive real exchange rates, gave them breathing space. Indeed, SOEs were in the forefront of the economic recovery which began in late 1992, ensuring that debt dynamics would remain sustainable. This does not mean privatization was irrelevant: SOE managers were anticipating it and expecting to benefit from it; but the immediate spur was definitely the micropolicy trio.

Economic balance, © denisenko, via iStock Photo.

In contrast, Russia’s privatized manufacturing companies were coddled by budgetary subsidies and large subsidies implicit in the noncash settlements for taxes and energy payments that sprouted as real interest rates rose to astronomical levels. Persistent fiscal deficits and low credibility pushed nominal interest rates sky high even as the exchange rate was fixed in 1995 to bring inflation down. The resulting soft budgets, high real interest rates and real appreciation made asset stripping easier than restructuring enterprises, killing growth. Tax shortfalls became endemic, forcing increasingly expensive borrowing that placed government debt on an explosive trajectory and made the August 1998 devaluation, default and debt restructuring inevitable. But this shut the country out of the capital markets, at last hardening budgets. The real exchange rate depreciated massively, leading to a 5% rebound in real GDP in 1999 (against initial expectations of a huge contraction) as moribund firms became competitive and domestic demand switched from imports to domestic products. This policy mix was maintained after oil prices recovered in 2000, ensuring sustainable debt dynamics.

Old Europe, especially the periphery, can learn a lot from the above. Take Italy. By 2013, its real exchange rate had appreciated over 3% relative to 2007, while real GDP had contracted over 8%. The government’s debt-to-GDP ratio increased by 30 percentage points (and is projected to climb to 135% by the end of this year), while youth unemployment went from 20% to 40% over the same period! Italy has no control over the nominal exchange rate and lowering indebtedness through fiscal austerity will worsen already weak growth prospects. Indeed, Italy has slipped back into recession in spite of interest rates at multi-century lows and forbearance on fiscal austerity.

The counter argument is that indebtedness and competitiveness don’t look that bad for the Eurozone as a whole. However, this argument is vacuous without debt mutualisation, a fiscal union and a banking union with a common fiscal backstop, the latter to prevent individual sovereigns, such as Ireland and Spain, from having to shoulder the costs of fixing their troubled banks; the recent costly bailout of Banco Espirito Santo by Portugal is a timely reminder. Besides, Germany has to be willing to cross-subsidize the periphery. Even then, this would only be a start. As a recent IMF report warns, the Eurozone is at risk of stagnation from insufficient demand (linked to excessive debt), a weak and fragmented banking system and stalled structural reform required for increasing competition and raising productivity. Debtor countries are hamstrung by insufficient relative price adjustment (read “insufficient real depreciation”).

The corrective agenda for the Eurozone has much in common with the “debt restructuring-cum-micro policy trio” agenda emerging from the Polish and Russian transition experience. The question is whether the Eurozone can have meaningful growth prospects based on banking and structural reform without an upfront debt restructuring. The answer from New Europe’s experience is “No.” Debt restructuring will result in a temporary loss of confidence and possibly even a recession; but it will also lead to a large real depreciation and harden budgets, spurring governments to complete structural reform, thereby laying the foundation for a brighter future. The key is not the debt restructuring, but whether government behaviour changes credibly for the better following it. As the IMF report observes, progress “may be prone to reform fatigue” with the rally in financial markets. In other words, the all-time lows in interest rates set in train by ECB President Draghi’s July 2012 pledge to do whatever it takes to save the euro is fuelling procrastination even as indebtedness grows and growth prospects dim. Rising US interest rates as the recovery there takes hold and the growing geopolitical risk over Ukraine, which will hurt the Eurozone more than the US, only worsen the picture. The Eurozone has a stark choice: take the pain now or live with a stagnant future, meaning its youth have fewer jobs today and more debt to pay off tomorrow.

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Special events and the dynamical statistics of Twitter

A large variety of complex systems in ecology, climate science, biomedicine, and engineering have been observed to exhibit so-called tipping points, where the dynamical state of the system abruptly changes. Typical examples are the rapid transition in lakes from clear to turbid conditions or the sudden extinction of species after a slightly change of environmental conditions. Data and models suggest that detectable warning signs may precede some, though clearly not all, of these drastic events. This view is also corroborated by recently developed abstract mathematical theory for systems, where processes evolve at different rates and are subject to internal and/or external stochastic perturbations.

One main idea to derive warning signs is to monitor the fluctuations of the dynamical process by calculating the variance of a suitable monitoring variable. When the tipping point is approached via a slowly-drifting parameter, the stabilizing effects of the system slowly diminish and the noisy fluctuations increase via certain well-defined scaling laws.

Based upon these observations, it is natural to ask, whether these scaling laws are also present in human social networks and can allow us to make predictions about future events. This is an exciting open problem, to which at present only highly speculative answers can be given. It is indeed to predict a priori unknown events in a social system. Therefore, as an initial step, we try to reduce the problem to a much simpler problem to understand whether the same mechanisms, which have been observed in the context of natural sciences and engineering, could also be present in sociological domains.

Courtesy of Christian Kuehn.

In our work, we provide a very first step towards tackling a substantially simpler question by focusing on a priori known events. We analyse a social media data set with a focus on classical variance and autocorrelation scaling law warning signs. In particular, we consider a few events, which are known to occur on a specific time of the year, e.g., Christmas, Halloween, and Thanksgiving. Then we consider time series of the frequency of Twitter hashtags related to the considered events a few weeks before the actual event, but excluding the event date itself and some time period before it.

Now suppose we do not know that a dramatic spike in the number of Twitter hashtags, such as #xmas or #thanksgiving, will occur on the actual event date. Are there signs of the same stochastic scaling laws observed in other dynamical systems visible some time before the event? The more fundamental question is: Are there similarities to known warning signs from other areas also present in social media data?

We answer this question affirmatively as we find that the a priori known events mentioned above are preceded by variance and autocorrelation growth (see Figure). Nevertheless, we are still very far from actually using social networks to predict the occurrence of many other drastic events. For example, it can also be shown that many spikes in Twitter activity are not predictable through variance and autocorrelation growth. Hence, a lot more research is needed to distinguish different dynamical processes that lead to large outburst of activity on social media.

The findings suggest that further investigations of dynamical processes in social media would be worthwhile. Currently, a main focus in the research on social networks lies on structural questions, such as: Who connects to whom? How many connections do we have on average? Who are the hubs in social media? However, if one takes dynamical processes on the network, as well as the changing dynamics of the network topology, into account, one may obtain a much clearer picture, how social systems compare and relate to classical problems in physics, chemistry, biology and engineering.

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Alice Paul, suffragist and activist, in 10 facts

Ninety-four years ago today, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States took effect, enshrining American women’s right to vote. Fifty years later, in the midst of a new wave of feminist activism, Congress designated 26 August as Women’s Equality Day in the United States. The 1971 Joint Resolution read, in part, “the women of the United States have been treated as second-class citizens and have not been entitled the full rights and privileges, public or private, legal or institutional, which are available to male citizens of the United States” and women “have united to assure that these rights and privileges are available to all citizens equally regardless of sex.” For that reason, Congress was prevailed upon to declare 26 August a day to commemorate the the Nineteenth Amendment as a “symbol of the continued fight for equal rights.”

Alice Paul was a pivotal and controversial figure in the last years of the American battle to win the vote for women. Her first national action was to organize a grand suffrage procession in Washington, DC on 3 March 1913. She organized the parade on behalf of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), the only group working to win women the vote on a national scale. She later founded her own organization, the National Woman’s Party, and charted a surprisingly aggressive course of social protests to convince Congress to pass a woman suffrage amendment to the Constitution.

Alice Paul lived long enough to see Women’s Equality Day established; she died in 1977. She did not live to see the project which consumed the remaining years of her life ratified — an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. In 2014, a renewed effort emerged to pass the ERA.

As Women’s Equality Day is celebrated around the country today, here are a few things you may not know about suffrage leader and ERA author Alice Paul:

Alice Paul. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

1.  Alice Paul was proudly a birthright Quaker, but as she became interested in politics, she became frustrated with her faith’s reluctance to actively work for woman suffrage. We often associate Quakers with political activism, but in the late nineteenth century, the vast majority of Quakers disapproved of such efforts.

2.  Paul loved dancing and sports. Indeed, her love for physical activity was a factor in drawing her into social protest, first in England, then in America. In her high school and college years, she played softball, basketball, hockey, and tennis, and also ice skated when she could. She learned to dance while attending Swarthmore College near Philadelphia and regretted her few opportunities to attend dances in her later years.

3.  Paul was arrested seven times in England for her suffrage activism, but only once in America. The longest sentence she served in Britain was one month. In the United States, she was sentenced to seven months, but only served one.

4.  Paul endured forced feeding fifty-five times in London’s Holloway Prison in 1909 and perhaps another twenty-five times while at the District of Columbia’s Jail in 1917. Authorities used forced feeding to break the hunger strikes initiated by suffrage prisoners. Some women suffered health problems as a result. Alice Paul struggled with digestive issues for years after and may have lost her sense of smell.

5.  Paul is often portrayed as eager to leave NAWSA to found her own militant suffrage group. In fact, she did so only when her hand was forced. Divisions over strategy or tactics are nothing new to any political group and NAWSA itself came about only in 1890 after two long-estranged suffrage organizations compromised in order to present a united front. The 1914 effort to oust the controversial Alice Paul from NAWSA arose from multiple sources, including the current NAWSA president, Anna Howard Shaw and once-and-future president, Carrie Chapman Catt.

6.  Paul’s persona as a leader combined stereotypically feminine and masculine traits in a way that invited fervent loyalty or deep-seated antipathy. Her dislike of the spotlight and ingrained modesty lent her a vulnerability which undercut concerns about her militant past and her powerful drive. Others found her charismatic authority threatening.

7.  Though the protests of Paul’s National Woman’s Party are often described as “civil disobedience,” Paul believed all of her actions were completely within the law. Before Paul initiated picketing to protest the lack of a suffrage amendment in 1917, picketing was largely the province of labor organizations. After consulting with attorneys about the legality of the practice, Paul adapted the silent vigil of two earlier protests and sent “silent sentinels” to picket the White House. While labor picketing often prompted violence on both sides, Paul gave her troops strict instructions to remain non-violent. Violence was, however, visited upon them by bystanders outraged by the women’s insistence on pressing for suffrage while the country was engaged in World War I.

8.  Paul’s most colorful protests occurred after the House of Representatives passed the suffrage amendment bill. It took another eighteen months to convince the Senate to pass the amendment. To maintain pressure on Congress, Alice Paul crafted watchfire protests across from the White House in Lafayette Square, during which suffragists burned President Wilson’s words about his much-celebrated belief in democracy. They even burned Wilson in effigy to urge him to use his political power to sway the Senate.

9.  Alice Paul was not present during the frenzied effort to make Tennessee the ratifying state for the suffrage amendment. She longed to be at the Tennessee statehouse, but NWP lobbying required a constant input of cash. Her ability to raise funds surpassed anyone else’s, so she chose to stay in Washington to keep the money flowing. Paul’s ability to raise funds was a key factor in the success of the NWP.

10.  Alice Paul bequeathed us the iconic images of the battle for the ballot: photographs of the 1913 procession, the 1917 White House pickets, the 1918 watchfire protests. These images speak to the courage, the persistence and the fortitude of all the women who fought to gain the most fundamental right of citizenship: the right to consent.

Featured image: Alice Paul. Public Domain via Library of Congress.

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Alice Paul, suffragette and activist, in 10 facts

Ninety-four years ago today, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States took effect, enshrining American women’s right to vote. Fifty years later, in the midst of a new wave of feminist activism, Congress designated 26 August as Women’s Equality Day in the United States. The 1971 Joint Resolution read, in part, “the women of the United States have been treated as second-class citizens and have not been entitled the full rights and privileges, public or private, legal or institutional, which are available to male citizens of the United States” and women “have united to assure that these rights and privileges are available to all citizens equally regardless of sex.” For that reason, Congress was prevailed upon to declare 26 August a day to commemorate the the Nineteenth Amendment as a “symbol of the continued fight for equal rights.”

Alice Paul was a pivotal and controversial figure in the last years of the American battle to win the vote for women. Her first national action was to organize a grand suffrage procession in Washington, DC on 3 March 1913. She organized the parade on behalf of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), the only group working to win women the vote on a national scale. She later founded her own organization, the National Woman’s Party, and charted a surprisingly aggressive course of social protests to convince Congress to pass a woman suffrage amendment to the Constitution.

Alice Paul lived long enough to see Women’s Equality Day established; she died in 1977. She did not live to see the project which consumed the remaining years of her life ratified — an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. In 2014, a renewed effort emerged to pass the ERA.

As Women’s Equality Day is celebrated around the country today, here are a few things you may not know about suffrage leader and ERA author Alice Paul:

Alice Paul. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

1.  Alice Paul was proudly a birthright Quaker, but as she became interested in politics, she became frustrated with her faith’s reluctance to actively work for woman suffrage. We often associate Quakers with political activism, but in the late nineteenth century, the vast majority of Quakers disapproved of such efforts.

2.  Paul loved dancing and sports. Indeed, her love for physical activity was a factor in drawing her into social protest, first in England, then in America. In her high school and college years, she played softball, basketball, hockey, and tennis, and also ice skated when she could. She learned to dance while attending Swarthmore College near Philadelphia and regretted her few opportunities to attend dances in her later years.

3.  Paul was arrested seven times in England for her suffrage activism, but only once in America. The longest sentence she served in Britain was one month. In the United States, she was sentenced to seven months, but only served one.

4.  Paul endured forced feeding fifty-five times in London’s Holloway Prison in 1909 and perhaps another twenty-five times while at the District of Columbia’s Jail in 1917. Authorities used forced feeding to break the hunger strikes initiated by suffrage prisoners. Some women suffered health problems as a result. Alice Paul struggled with digestive issues for years after and may have lost her sense of smell.

5.  Paul is often portrayed as eager to leave NAWSA to found her own militant suffrage group. In fact, she did so only when her hand was forced. Divisions over strategy or tactics are nothing new to any political group and NAWSA itself came about only in 1890 after two long-estranged suffrage organizations compromised in order to present a united front. The 1914 effort to oust the controversial Alice Paul from NAWSA arose from multiple sources, including the current NAWSA president, Anna Howard Shaw and once-and-future president, Carrie Chapman Catt.

6.  Paul’s persona as a leader combined stereotypically feminine and masculine traits in a way that invited fervent loyalty or deep-seated antipathy. Her dislike of the spotlight and ingrained modesty lent her a vulnerability which undercut concerns about her militant past and her powerful drive. Others found her charismatic authority threatening.

7.  Though the protests of Paul’s National Woman’s Party are often described as “civil disobedience,” Paul believed all of her actions were completely within the law. Before Paul initiated picketing to protest the lack of a suffrage amendment in 1917, picketing was largely the province of labor organizations. After consulting with attorneys about the legality of the practice, Paul adapted the silent vigil of two earlier protests and sent “silent sentinels” to picket the White House. While labor picketing often prompted violence on both sides, Paul gave her troops strict instructions to remain non-violent. Violence was, however, visited upon them by bystanders outraged by the women’s insistence on pressing for suffrage while the country was engaged in World War I.

8.  Paul’s most colorful protests occurred after the House of Representatives passed the suffrage amendment bill. It took another eighteen months to convince the Senate to pass the amendment. To maintain pressure on Congress, Alice Paul crafted watchfire protests across from the White House in Lafayette Square, during which suffragists burned President Wilson’s words about his much-celebrated belief in democracy. They even burned Wilson in effigy to urge him to use his political power to sway the Senate.

9.  Alice Paul was not present during the frenzied effort to make Tennessee the ratifying state for the suffrage amendment. She longed to be at the Tennessee statehouse, but NWP lobbying required a constant input of cash. Her ability to raise funds surpassed anyone else’s, so she chose to stay in Washington to keep the money flowing. Paul’s ability to raise funds was a key factor in the success of the NWP.

10.  Alice Paul bequeathed us the iconic images of the battle for the ballot: photographs of the 1913 procession, the 1917 White House pickets, the 1918 watchfire protests. These images speak to the courage, the persistence and the fortitude of all the women who fought to gain the most fundamental right of citizenship: the right to consent.

Featured image: Alice Paul. Public Domain via Library of Congress.

The post Alice Paul, suffragette and activist, in 10 facts appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesThe road to hell is mapped with good intentionsHistorical memory, woman suffrage, and Alice PaulMoral pluralism and the dismay of Amy Kane 

Celebrating Julie Andrews

This month marks the 50th anniversary of Disney’s beloved film Mary Poppins, starring the legendary Julie Andrews. Although Andrews was only twenty-nine at the time of the film’s release, she had already established herself as a formidable star with numerous credits to her name and performances opposite Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, and other leading actors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Mary Poppins would earn Andrews an Academy Award for Best Actress and serve as a milestone in a career that continues today. Herewith are some of our favorite songs from Andrew’s illustrious career.

“I Could Have Danced All Night”


Andrews belted out this song in the 1956 Broadway performance of My Fair Lady. Andrews proved her singing capabilities playing Eliza Doolittle opposite Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins, although she was replaced in the film version (with Audrey Hepburn acting and Marni Nixon dubbing).

“Camelot”


Andrews performed the play’s title track during its 1960 performance on Broadway. The actress played Queen Guenevere – a title she was apparently comfortable with, later playing Queen Renaldi in Disney’s Princess Diaries – opposite Richard Burton as King Arthur.

“Impossible; It’s Possible”


Starring in another royal role, Andrews played the title character in CBS’ 1957 production of Cinderella, written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein.

“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”


People are still reciting this tongue twister performed by Andrews in Disney’s 1964 hit film Mary Poppins. In addition to earning her an Oscar, Andrews’ role as the angelic English Nanny cemented her name in silver screen history.

“My Favorite Things”


Hot on the heels of her success from Mary Poppins, Andrews starred as Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music, expanding her international fame and branding herself as a singer to be reckoned with in Hollywood and on Broadway.

Headline image credit: Mary Poppins Movie Poster via Panhandle Post.

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Is America generous? [infographic]

Being a generous person and donating a part of one’s income is something many people—and many religions—believe is important. In their Science of Generosity Survey, Christian Smith and Hilary Davidson took a closer look at this practice, particularly concerning Americans, to find not only how much of their income they donated, but how much they said they donated, as illustrated in this infographic.

Download a jpg or PDF of the infographic.

Headline image credit: Photo by 401(k) 2012, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

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The road to hell is mapped with good intentions

Antebellum Americans were enamored of maps. In addition to mapping the United States’ land hunger, they also plotted weather patterns, epidemics, the spread of slavery, and events from the nation’s past.

And the afterlife.

Imaginative maps to heaven and hell form a peculiar subset of antebellum cartography, as Americans surveyed not only the things they could see but also the things unseen. Inspired by the biblical injunction to “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction… and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:13-14 KJV), the maps provided striking graphics connecting beliefs and behavior in this life to the next.

“Mah-tan’-tooh, or the Devil, standing in a flame of fire, with open arms to receive the wicked.”

As early as the 17th century, Catholic missionaries were using didactic visuals of heaven and hell to surmount a language barrier with indigenous North Americans. Such illustrations probably influenced the cosmological map of Neolin, the Delaware Prophet. Born around 1762 near Lake Erie, Neolin experienced a series of otherworldly visions that he turned into a map for his followers. The image here, copied by a white observer, was published some years later in a volume of captivity narratives. The rectangle at the bottom of the map represented the earth and its inhabitants. Those who avoided temptation would proceed directly to future bliss on the path labeled “D,” while those who followed paths A, B, and C would undergo various purgation processes before receiving their reward. The wicked, on the bottom left of the rectangle, would go straight to a fiery hell guarded by the Devil. Neolin warned his followers that the vices Europeans brought, like alcohol consumption, had made the path to future bliss more perilous.

Credit: In Archibald Loudon, A selection, of some of the most interesting narratives, of outrages, committed by the Indians, in their wars, with the white people… (Carlisle [Pa.]: From the press of A. Loudon (Whitehall), 1808-1811). Monroe Wakeman and Holman Loan Collection of the Pequot Library Association, on deposit in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Pequot L92. Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Catholic Ladder

Like earlier didactic devices, this Catholic Ladder (ca. 1840) was created by a French Catholic missionary for the purpose of evangelization. First carved into a large wooden stick, and then painted on a paper scroll measuring nearly five feet long, the Catholic Ladder served as a visual aid for Father Francis Norbert Blanchet and his associates to explain sacred history to the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest. Blanchet drew bars to represent the passage of centuries and dots to represent years in the life of Christ, and added simple pictures to illustrate sacred events. There is no sign of heaven or hell in this ladder, which simply ends with Blanchet’s mission in the present day. But this wasn’t just a neutral timeline: for Blanchet, there clearly is a wrong path to follow. In the detail shown here, Blanchet depicted the Protestant Reformation as a spindly branch off the main course of sacred history, with the three bars below it representing Luther, Calvin, and Henry VIII.

Credit: By Fr. Francis Norbert Blanchet, ca. 1840. 6 1/2 x 58 in. Section from middle of ladder, showing the Crucifixion to the Protestant Reformation. Courtesy of The Oregon Historical Society, Image Number OrHi 89315.

Protestant Ladder

Protestant missionaries Henry and Eliza Spalding, who also traveled to the Pacific Northwest, responded to the Catholic depiction of Reformation heroes with a ladder of their own. Six feet long and two feet wide, the ladder made explicit the biblical teaching about the wide and narrow paths. Painted by Eliza with ink and colored dyes made from berries and natural pigments, the ladder, like Blanchet’s, also illustrated sacred history beginning with Adam and Eve. But it divided this history into the good and the bad, and instead of ending in the present, it ended with the reward of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked. On the right (directionally and morally) path to heaven, the Spaldings included Moses, Paul, and Martin Luther. On the left and wider path to hell, they featured the Tower of Babel, the beheading of John the Baptist, and several scenes with the Pope, culminating with his headfirst fall into a fiery hell where a horned devil awaits.

Credit: By Henry H. and Eliza Spalding, ca. 1845. Section from top of ladder. Courtesy of The Oregon Historical Society, Image Number OrHi 87847.

Tableau-catéchisme/Pictorial catechism

If the colorful and dramatic Protestant Ladder was more visually exciting than Blanchet’s monochrome series of bars and dots, Albert Lacombe’s mass-produced version from the 1870s was even more so. Lithography techniques had improved by this time, making it possible to make tens of thousands of copies of the striking six foot by one foot scroll. Like the Spaldings, Lacombe embellished the idea of the two roads to heaven and hell, but his was a Catholic version that included a fiery Purgatory on the path to heaven. And, where the Spaldings had the Pope falling into the flames of hell, Lacombe featured the richly-clad Pope on a gilded throne, pointing the way to heaven. No surprise that the Pope himself endorsed the ladder, which saw use among Catholic missionaries worldwide.

Credit: By Reverend Albert Lacombe, O.M.I., 1874. Purgatory to the left, hell to the right, heaven above. Original at Missionary Oblates, Grandin Province Archives at the Provincial Archives of Alberta. Printed on four pasted panels glued together and backed with linen, attached to a stick, and rolled like a scroll. Electronic image courtesy of the Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Marquette University Libraries.

Frontispiece in John Cameron Lowrie, A Manual of Missions, or, Sketches of the Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church

On the face of it, this is not a guide to heaven or hell. It is a detailed map of the world, so rooted in the here-and-now that it is meticulously plotted along latitude and longitude. It seems fairly neutral at first glance. But the color-coded key tells a more partisan story. Each region of the world is colored according to religion. For John Cameron Lowrie, the corresponding secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, only the blue of Protestantism was salvific. The didactic moral of the map? Live in or move to a blue zone, and help to color the rest of the world blue by converting its inhabitants to Protestantism and hence saving them from eternal damnation.

Credit: Photograph by Nicholas Lum.

Temperance Map

The nineteenth-century temperance movement in the US sought to curtail alcohol consumption in a nation where it was widespread. Its reach extended to Hawaii, where sailors boozed in port towns and alcohol made its way to the indigenous population. At Lahainaluna Seminary on the island of Maui, Hawaiian students produced this Temperance Map, which depicted the ruinous consequences of alcohol and the rewards of temperance. They also printed a simplified version of the map in Hawaiian. Unlike the ladders, which showed fairly straightforward roads to heaven or hell, the temperance maps offered a tangle of choices that could lead in multiple directions. Viewers were cautioned to exercise constant vigilance. Even if one was happily floating on the Sea of Temperance, making stops at the isles of Longevity and Tranquility, the map showed how easy it was to get swept into Relapse Bay and the Gulf of Broken Pledges. And from there, the Gulf of Perdition was just one wrong turn away.

Credit: by C. Wiltberger Jr. (Published by L. Andrews, Lahainaluna, Maui, Republished in 1972 by the Hale Pa’i Printing Museum of the Lahaina Restoration Foundation, Lahainaluna, Lahaina, Hawaii, 96761). Photograph by author from personal copy. Detail shows the “Sea of Anguish” in the center and the “Sea of Temperance” above it, connected by the “Strait of Total Abstinence” and the “Gulf of Broken Pledges,” which also leads to the “Gulf of Perdition” to the right.

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