Chapter 1 offers an in-depth, historically based discussion of the research on emoji and on matters of general concern regarding this unique type of visual character, along with a rationale for the need for a comprehensive treatment of emoji in education. The authors describe the reasons for focusing on higher education, particularly health professional education. They begin by examining the background work on emoji theory and research and offer initial insights into the discourse and semiotic functions of the emoji code. Such functions form the basis for considering the emoji code as a teaching tool that may be used to craft hybrid literacy-focused instruction (textual and visual). The discursive and recursive properties of emoji form the basis of semioliteracy, a theory that one of the authors (Petcoff) contends offers a basis for emoji use in developmental reading and writing and across several higher education academic fields. Specifically, the chapter addresses the potential use of emoji as a literacy instruction tool in both higher education and healthcare professional education.

Aristotle complained that though the original intention of the Laws was to institute a form of political system ‘more common’ to cities (presumably ‘more capable of being shared in’ by political communities generally), the social and political system Plato actually worked out in the dialogue turned out in the end not very different from the ideal articulated in the Republic. This chapter agrees with Aristotle’s identification of two projects in the Laws. But it argues that Plato makes it clear that the dialogue needs to develop (in relatively idealizing mode) a scheme for producing a citizenry educated for virtue as its primary aim, but that as a subordinate task it must also provide a constitutional framework that has sound empirical and historical credentials and a system of law providing for coercion as well as persuasion. There is just not much supply of persons eager to be as good as possible as fast as possible, and for the ‘tough eggs’ among them an elaborate penal system has to be devised. How Plato delivers on these two projects is then explored in some detail. The chapter concludes by sketching in summary the way both are fitted into a single plan.

Chapter 8 deals with the potential remedies available to protesters when their constitutional rights are violated. It focuses on damages remedies intended to make protesters whole for such injuries. The law of public protest severely restricts such remedies. Under principles of “qualified immunity,” the law generally immunizes all but the most incompetent officers from civil liability. Empirical evidence shows that in protesters’ First Amendment and Fourth Amendment cases, defendants’ qualified immunity claims are granted 60 percent of the time. Protesters also face nearly insurmountable obstacles in terms of holding municipalities liable for constitutional violations. The Supreme Court has recently limited protesters’ ability to bring First Amendment “retaliation” claims. Finally, the Court has all but sounded the death knell for First Amendment damages claims against federal officials. The chapter joins the chorus calling for qualified immunity reform. It also encourages states and localities to restrict officers’ ability to invoke qualified and other immunities, and to create causes of action against officials for violations of state constitutional law.

This chapter outlines and discusses different approaches to social ontology and locates Heidegger within a range of contemporary debates. I first discuss various accounts of the scope and method of social ontology by suggesting that social ontology has a restricted scope if it takes the social world to be a distinct domain among others and that, in contrast, has an unrestricted scope if it takes sociality to be an irreducible dimension of what there is. Discussing his general conception of fundamental ontology as well as the development of his early work, I then show that Heidegger’s social ontology is non-reductive and has an unrestricted scope. I then qualify this claim by arguing that Heidegger’s social ontological method can rightly be called transcendental in the sense that he argues that the irreducible social dimension of what there is depends not on empirical social formations but on transcendental relations to others.

The chapter lays a roadmap for the Handbook on Shareholder Engagement and Voting. It defines shareholder engagement as shareholders’ involvement with their investee companies, using their shareholder rights and powers, both formal and informal (such as voting rights), to influence corporate affairs inside and outside general meetings of shareholders. The chapter further discusses the Handbook’s overall methodological considerations, that is, a sophisticated functionalist approach, with a combined use of doctrinal and empirical methods. The chapter proceeds to elaborate on the framework of research questions that guide the Handbook’s chapter contributions on 19 jurisdictions around the globe. The framework comprises three groups of questions: general jurisdictional features, legal means of shareholder voting and engagement, as well as shareholder voting and engagement in practice. The chapter concludes with a brief outline of the Handbook’s structure.

This chapter explores the preceding theory-based propositions, concerning the narrative roles of personal bioinformation, in light of people’s attitudes to and experiences of encountering three categories of bioinformation about themselves, as reported by empirical studies. These three categories are: information revealing conception using donor gametes, results from genetic tests indicating disease susceptibility, and findings from mental health applications of neuroimaging. These findings help illustrate the theory-based claims presented in Chapter 4 while also sense-testing and refining these claims with the benefit of insights into information subjects’ lived experiences. This chapter first outlines a sample of relevant findings, casting the net wider than those that explicitly frame subjects’ experiences in terms of identity. It then analyses these findings through the lens of embodied and relational narrative self-constitution, highlighting the range of positive and detrimental impacts that bioinformation can have on recipients’ identity narratives. These impacts include playing enabling, explanatory, practical, revisionary, and restrictive roles. The chapter concludes by identifying common and divergent themes across the three examples. This equips us better to understand diversity amongst recipients’ reactions to different information and also to extrapolate beyond specific observations relating to the three illustrative examples.

The starting point is the observation that some states are and have been unhappy with certain BITs that include ISDS provisions. Based on a dataset on renegotiated and terminated BITs, the authors ask if this is the case. The initial evidence indicates that states have not made a systematic effort over the years to recalibrate their BITs for the purpose of preserving more regulatory space. In fact, most renegotiations either leave ISDS provisions unchanged or render them more investor-friendly. Nevertheless, the authors find that this is beginning to change, as recent renegotiations are more likely to circumscribe ISDS in ways that preserve more state regulatory space.

This chapter provides an account of ways that experimental methods can be used to uncover and identify decision-making biases. Investment arbitration tribunals derive their legitimacy from different normative, sociological and political processes than standing courts. In great part, these tribunals rely on tacit norms of behaviour among arbitration professionals. Understanding what factors affect how arbitrators make decisions in these kinds of adjudicative settings is essential in assessing critiques concerning the quality or correctness of their decisions and especially their independence and impartiality. The authors describe a promising alternative empirical strategy that utilizes survey experiments conducted on arbitration professionals to test bias claims. It discusses also how researchers can design experimental vignettes to mimic specific aspects of the arbitration process that are difficult to observe or manipulate in the real world context.

The legitimacy of ISDS appears to depend in part on an expectation that it benefits smaller businesses, not just large multinationals and the super-wealthy. This chapter collects data on size and wealth of the foreign investors that have brought claims and received monetary awards due to ISDS. Categories for the size and wealth of foreign investors are compared to the size of damage awards, which helps determine that the primary beneficiaries in ISDS cases have been companies with annual revenue exceeding US$1 billion and individuals with net wealth in excess of US$100 million. The main finding is that the beneficiaries of ISDS-ordered financial transfers, in the aggregate, have overwhelmingly been wealthy individual investors and large companies – and especially extra-large companies. The authors also note that the awards gained by small companies are not so different from their legal costs.

Supporters of ISDS often justify the continued existence of ISDS on the basis that disputes are denationalized, thus keeping foreign investors out of domestic courts which may lack independence, be less efficient, or are biased against foreigners. This justification, unwittingly perhaps, strengthens a perception that foreign investors proceed directly to the international sphere. However, this chapter finds that many investors do avail themselves of domestic courts prior to an ISDS case and asks why this is the case. Looking at two states with transitional judiciaries and two states with well-functioning judiciaries, the author uncovers a rich data on the impressive scope of claims brought by foreign investors in the host states where they are investing; and Gáspár-Szilágyi concludes with some reflections on the role of domestic litigation in the legitimation of ISDS. (This abstract needs development)

The rapid growth in investor–state dispute settlement has sparked a decades-long legitimacy crisis in the international investment regime. The upshot is that concerns over foreign investor success in arbitration proceedings, from levels of compensation to lack of arbitral diversity and independence, has prompted wide-ranging reform efforts and even calls to abolish this treaty-based system. In the context of this historical and contemporary debate, the authors describe the importance of assessing empirically the claims and counter-claims about the regime’s absence of legitimacy. The chapter begins with an overview of the different types of legitimacy (normative, sociological, legitimation) and discusses how and to what extent empirical research can contribute to assessing legitimacy claims. The different chapters of the book, which is structured largely according to legitimacy categories, are then introduced and the piece concludes with some reflections on the overall themes and way forward for empirical research.

There is a critique that investment arbitration undermines or hampers the development of national legal institutions. By providing a forum for foreign investors separate and distinct from local courts, critics argue, ISDS removes any incentive for foreign investors to promote the development of local legal institutions. This chapter sets out an account of how investment arbitration might affect development of local legal institutions, in particular international commercial arbitration and, perhaps, domestic arbitration. The authors find that while both the number of investment agreements and investment arbitration proceedings to which a state is a party is negatively related to the rule of law in the state, the presence of an indicator for support for international commercial arbitration – adoption of the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration – essentially offsets that negative relationship.

Critics have raised concerns that investment arbitration tribunals treat like cases differently – raising problems of consistency – and different cases the same – creating problems of correctness. Using network analyses of case citations, this chapter examines an observable selection of what a tribunal considers to be ‘relevant’ precedent. The author finds that tribunals are more concerned with consistency than correctness, with many tribunals citing precedents based on textually dissimilar treaties. However, this is contrary to what states consider the priority in ISDS reform debates – in which correctness is higher than consistency in the hierarchy of policy preferences. The chapter concludes that states can resolve that mismatch by hard-coding their policy preferences into institutional design. It is argued that, as part of the ISDS reform, states should make the ordering between correctness and consistency considerations explicit when reshaping adjudicatory authority in future ISDS institutions.

Any assessment of the international investment regime and its legitimacy crisis requires a preliminary understanding of their important and relevant features. However, the sprawling nature of both defies most doctrinal and qualitative attempts at description. The regime is based on a decentralized network of legal instruments, different procedural mechanisms and ad hoc proceedings, while the accompanying chorus of critique and counter-critique is populated with multiple actors and interests across the world. This chapter seeks to capture this distinct and fragmented universe. First, the authors map consent to arbitration, not on a generic per signed bilateral investment treaty basis, but rather by tracking multilateral, bilateral and unilateral consents in force. Second, they provide a description and overview of the over 1,100 registered cases up to January 2020, focusing inter alia on case outcomes, rules, cases types, institution, parties, economic sector and legal basis. Third, they trace discontent with regime, charting the origin of legitimacy crisis and its maturing over time. It ends by discussing both state-led efforts at reform and the extent to which arbitrators themselves have adjusted reflexively to the backlash.

A key response to legitimacy concerns over investment arbitration has been to point to the contribution of investment treaties to significant increases in in-bound foreign investment. The authors return to this vexed question of whether treaties offer material benefits and the large literature on the topic. Through a mixed methods approach and heightened awareness of the synergies and tensions within and between methodological approaches, they: (1) analyse econometrically the impact of ISDS provisions on inbound FDI; (2) present new qualitative research on investor and host state practices and attitudes; and (3) argue that social psychological research on cultural risk cognition is useful for both framing and presenting research questions and findings. They conclude that whatever the results that emerge from empirical research findings, the form of presentation will determine whether they will be accepted by the public or fall victim to growing polarization in perceptions and positions.