Papal pronouncements on legitimate lordship and the formulation of nationhood in early fourteenth-century Scottish writings
Early fourteenth-century Scotland produced some of the period's clearest expressions of nationhood, most famously with the so-called Declaration of Arbroath of 1320. Despite the letter's fame, its conceptual language and that of related Scottish texts has not hitherto been entirely recognised. The present article demonstrates that these writings are closely informed by contemporary legal ideas concerning lawful jurisdiction and just war. Their use of legal ideas can be shown to have been inspired by the concerns and outlook of the papacy, particularly with regard to its temporal lordship in Italy. It is this inspiration that can explain the clarity and force with which the Scottish texts of these decades present the kingdom as specifically Scottish and the nation as a political force, for which they have since become renowned.
Two Notes on Nationalism in the Middle Ages
In an excellent article, ‘Pro patria mori in Medieval Political Thought,’ Ernst H. Kantorowicz has recently called attention to the importance of the concept of patria in the rise of the national monarchy and state in the later Middle Ages. No correction is needed, nor, perhaps, any addition. But since he modestly admits that he did not mean to exhaust the subject and does not examine the two laws, and since I had begun to note occasional remarks in the canonists and legists about the patria in association with theories of public law and the state, I wish to add some illustrations of the legal thought on the subject in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. These illustrations will supplement, moreover, the essay by Halvdan Koht on nationalism in the Middle Ages.
Enabling next generation airborne communications [Guest Editorial]
Due to the increased needs for sharing information among airborne platforms (both manned and unmanned) as well as the desire to use an airborne infrastructure to rapidly deploy communications capabilities to ground-based users in disaster areas, there has been a renewed interest in the research, design, and development of airborne communications networks. Airborne networks are mobile networks characterized by their high aircraft speeds and platform dynamics, long line-of-sight transmission ranges, and significant cost of integration for communication systems. This Feature Topic, Enabling Next Generation Airborne Communications, considers several types of airborne communications systems including air traffic management (ATM) systems, networks of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and military airborne tactical networks.