Building upon the ambiguous status of gold as both a monetary asset and a commodity, this chapter interrogates the plural veridictions that support industry claims to responsible business conduct. Through a chronicle of the political and legal struggles surrounding the “true” provenance of gold imported to Switzerland, it suggests that responsibility claims rely on a regime of discrete transparency. Transparency practices in the gold trade are both discreet in their efforts to preserve the secrecy of business operations, and discrete in the legal processes through which they separate normative orders to establish different veridictions on the “true” provenance and ownership of gold. Rather than opposing notions of transparency and secrecy, these veridictions seek to assemble the values associated with both terms. Challenging these veridictions supposes a disentanglement of gold from its status either as money or as commodity, and a shift from an ontology of individuals-as-consumers to one of individuals-as-citizens. A third veridiction emerges once imported gold is considered part of a stream of information owned by the sovereign rather than in terms of its relation to a consumer.

This chapter discusses the provisions of the Act that address character evidence. The term ‘character evidence’ is not defined in the legislation, so some recourse to the common law is required. However, pt 3.8 of the Act provides a simple mechanism allowing evidence of character to be adduced in criminal proceedings, as follows. (1) Exclusionary rules that would prevent a defendant from adducing evidence of good character (the hearsay, opinion, tendency and credibility rules) do not apply. (2) If the defendant adduces evidence of good character (whether by giving evidence or through the testimony of another witness) then the prosecution, or another defendant, can respond with evidence of bad character (because the same exclusionary rules also do not apply).

This chapter also deals with the interaction of character and credibility evidence, and concludes with a discussion of evidentiary and procedural rules relating to character evidence about complainants and victims, addressed mainly in legislation outside the Act.

Directors’ duties can be classified into two themes: duties in relation to care and skill, and duties in relation to loyalty and good faith. This chapter is the first of two chapters addressing the duties of loyalty and good faith. These duties fall into two categories: those concerned with the way in which directors exercise the powers and discretions vested in them, and those concerned with the standard of conduct expected from directors. This chapter will focus on the first category, which includes the duty to act bona fide in the best interests of the company and for proper purposes, its counterpart in s 181 of the Corporations Act, and the limitations on directors not to fetter the future exercise of their discretions.

This chapter starts with a discussion of the general law in relation to the duty to act bona fide in the best interests of the company and for proper purposes. The discussion examines how the law developed historically and how it exists today. It then considers s 181 of the Corporations Act, before moving to consider alternative approaches to this area of law, which demonstrate a development of the stakeholder approach to corporate theory.

The ethos of responsibility promoted by Muslim leaders of the UOIF assumes a particular flavor in the context of tight secular constraints. In France, the renewal of public discussions on laïcité since the 1990s has resulted in the consolidation of a hard, exclusivist understanding of secularism. Against the backdrop of such constraints and aligned with the revivalist tradition of contextually adapted Islamic rulings, Muslim leaders emphasize the importance of low-profile, unobtrusive forms of religiosity over more public forms. They exhort their coreligionists to practice discretion and self-restraint, whether in their sartorial practices, in the architecture of their mosques, or during the celebration of Ramadan. This requirement for discretion goes hand in hand with the celebration of an “intelligent” reading of the Scriptures. This class-layered exercise goes against the “ignorant” interpretations of migrant workers and Salafi followers while being aligned with the Islamic tradition of moderation (wasaṭiyya). The chapter concludes by delving into the case of Tareq Oubrou, a renowned Muslim scholar in Bordeaux, who advocates for a “theology of acculturation” in harmony with French republicanism. Oubrou’s theological endeavors further exemplify the reflective, intellectualized approach to religion promoted by UOIF leaders, as well as their middle-class sensibilities.

As its name indicates, algorithmic regulation relies on the automation of regulatory processes through algorithms. Examining the impact of algorithmic regulation on the rule of law hence first requires an understanding of how algorithms work. In this chapter, I therefore start by focusing on the technical aspects of algorithmic systems (Section 2.1), and complement this discussion with an overview of their societal impact, emphasising their societal embeddedness and the consequences thereof (Section 2.2). Next, I examine how and why public authorities rely on algorithmic systems to inform and take administrative acts, with special attention to the historical adoption of such systems, and their impact on the role of discretion (Section 2.3). Finally, I draw some conclusions for subsequent chapters (Section 2.4).

Chapter Two explores the declaration of colonial peace through the amnesty offered to rebels in the Queen’s Proclamation of 1858. While this document has already piqued the interest of historians and political theorists of liberalism and “indirect rule,” I turn to this document as an instrument of post-conflict resolution. Comparing and contrasting the variety of strategies used by the state to temper forgiveness, this chapter tracks the creation of an uneven hierarchy of colonial subjecthood organized along lines of relative loyalty and disloyalty. In exploring the wider importance of amnesty at this juncture, this chapter examines this offer as a founding political bargain presented to the defeated. This promise of mercy, in this instance, had been contingent on the full surrender of Indian political agency.

This chapter addresses the suggestion that for a special regime to exist, community members must be engaged in a joint enterprise. In the context of international law, to claim that a group of international law specialists is engaged in a joint enterprise is to assert that they do what they do based on the idea that some certain state of affairs is desirable. As Chapter 4 argues, in the context of international law, the existence of such a presupposition can be inferred from the actual pursuit of those specialists of a distinct state of affairs, and the way in which they perform assignments.

Chapter Four focuses on how the colonial judiciary and the local government wielded the discretion available in the IPC to manage the punishment of capital crimes. The chapter begins by studying the implications of the new High Courts Act of 1861. I then explore sentencing practices for the crimes of domestic murder and infanticide to consider when and why decision-makers passed more or less severe punishments. I argue that the decision to save some subjects from the gallows helped the law build vital but ultimately fragile alliances between local elites as colonial authorities sought access to the most intimate and politicized areas of Indian life. This process also sharpened colonial terror by regulating the decision to send certain subjects to their death.

This chapter will briefly describe the outcomes of a coroner’s inquest: the findings available to the coroner, and the types of concerns that they can express. It will also explain Regulation 28 (Prevention of Future Death) reports.

Chapter 3 focuses on the application of the reasonable person in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The chapter begins by considering why the reasonable person is frequently placed on means of public transport. It argues that the reasonable person’s presence on the omnibus means that others can see it and that the reasonable person itself sees others. The chapter then considers whether the standard of the reasonable person was meant to be an empirical standard or a standard controlled by the courts. It does so by asking whether the idea was that one could actually encounter the reasonable person on the Clapham omnibus. Contrasting the concept of the reasonable person with the concept of the average human person proposed by the Belgian sociologist and astronomer Adolphe Quetelet, the chapter establishes that the reasonable person was meant to be a court-controlled standard. Finally, the chapter shows how the standard has historically been construed exclusively in male terms. It addresses the discriminatory potential of the standard and acknowledges that the reasonable person concept has often been applied in a manner that excludes anyone who does not share the characteristics of the male, white, middle-aged judge who applies the standard.

A core impediment to refugee applicants providing a credible narrative account of their claims to protection is the profound fragmentation and unpredictability of the structure, content and conduct of the oral hearing. This chapter argues that the conduct of the oral hearing severely fragmented applicants’ testimony in three key ways: reverse-order questioning; decision-makers’ abrupt subject switching during the hearing; and questions pertaining to time, sequencing and precise dates of events. This leads to the conclusion that applicants were both expected to present their oral evidence in a form that fulfilled the credibility criteria and the demand for narrative, and actively impeded in their efforts to do so. Further, where applicants displayed an ability to present evidence in a narrative form, in all but a minority of hearings this was done despite, rather than because of, the structure and setting of the hearing.