Public ceremony and private belief: the role of religion in the Scots law of marriage

Historically, religion has played an important role in the legal regulation of marriage in Scotland, with canon law prior to 1560 governing the personal aspects of marriage: formation of marriage, capacity to marry and issues relating to nullity. Following the Reformation in 1560, the control of the Roman Catholic church over marriage was abolished to be replaced in 1563 by the Commissary Court which took over responsibility for all actions arising from marriage. Throughout this period the rules and principles of the canon law continued to be applied "except in so far as altered by statute or inconsistent with the reformed religion" and, therefore, although the Church no longer had direct control over family law, its influence to some extent continued. The 20th Century, a period of substantial statutory reform, brought more radical reforms of Scots family law with marriage becoming increasingly secularised and nowhere is this more evident than in the Marriage (Scotland) Act of 1939 which introduced civil marriage as an alternative form of regular marriage. Since 1940, Scots law has permitted the constitution of regular marriage by either civil or religious ceremony, with the system being further modernised by the Marriage (Scotland) Act 1977. Not only have the legal ties between religion and marriage been loosened, but also religious influence on the traditional roles of husband and wife has decreased in the face of developing economic equality between men and women and growing social acceptance of unmarried cohabitation and children born out of wedlock. In recent years and, in keeping with the general decline in church attendance and formal religious affiliation in Scottish society, it might have been expected that there would have been further steady decline in the influence of religion in legal marriage. Although as a general trend the connections between the secular and the religious have weakened, analysis of some recent developments highlights their ongoing and at times uneasy relationship within the legal context of marriage

The consistency of empirical comparisons of regression and analogy-based software project cost prediction

OBJECTIVE - to determine the consistency within and between results in empirical studies of software engineering cost estimation. We focus on regression and analogy techniques as these are commonly used. METHOD – we conducted an exhaustive search using predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria and identified 67 journal papers and 104 conference papers. From this sample we identified 11 journal papers and 9 conference papers that used both methods. RESULTS – our analysis found that about 25% of studies were internally inconclusive. We also found that there is approximately equal evidence in favour of, and against analogy-based methods. CONCLUSIONS – we confirm the lack of consistency in the findings and argue that this inconsistent pattern from 20 different studies comparing regression and analogy is somewhat disturbing. It suggests that we need to ask more detailed questions than just: “What is the best prediction system?

"The Economic Consequences of Weintraub's Consumption Coefficient"

In this paper we show that Weintraub:s consumption coefficient (the ratio of total consumption to wages) can elucidate trends in the sectoral and functional distributions of income We also show that, in a Kaleckian model, it simplifies and add precision to Kaleckian macroeconomics. Using a Kaleckian definition of profits, empirical estimates of the coefficient are presented for the UK 1972-1990. From a level of around 1.1 in the 1970’s, the coefficient rose to around 1.3 in the mid-1980s from which it has started to fall back to its 1970's levels. During the 1980s, the coefficient indicated a marked redistribution of income in favour of profits along with a rise in capitalists' propensity to consume. This confirms the evidence that the economic boom of the 1980s was driven principally by an expansion of demand for luxury goods rather than fixed capital investment. This will have been a factor in the slump after 1990.

Events and sustainability: why making events more sustainable is not enough

The special issue dedicated to events and sustainability is introduced here. We provide synopses of the papers, preceded by an introductory essay that examines how event studies has approached the relationship between events and sustainable development. Existing work too often assumes that sustainability means reducing negative environmental impacts with other aspects of the sustainability paradigm neglected. And whilst social issues have risen to prominence in events research generally, this work is usually considered outwith sustainability debates, and without considering environmental and economic interrelationships. We argue that event scholars should examine how events might contribute to sustainable development, rather than merely exploring how individual events could be made more sustainable. Accordingly, there needs to be further work addressing how events might change attitudes and behaviours by promoting sustainable lifestyles, communities and technologies. Following this discussion, we justify the focus on social sustainability in the special issue, clarify what this actually means, and question whether this is always the most appropriate way of framing research on the social impacts of events. Given the timing of the special issue, there is also a short review of how the coronavirus crisis affected the events sector, and what the implications might be for sustainability