Empirical analyses of domestic legal traditions in the social science literature demonstrate that common law states have better economic freedoms, stronger investor protection, more developed capital markets, and better property rights protection than states with civil law, Islamic law, or mixed legal traditions. This article expands upon the literature by examining the relationship between domestic legal traditions and human rights practices. The primary hypothesis is that common law states have better human rights practices on average than civil law, Islamic law, or mixed law states because the procedural features of common law such as the adversarial trial system, the reliance on oral argumentation, and stare decisis result in greater judicial independence and protection of individual rights in these legal systems. We also examine how the quality of a state's legal system influences repression focusing on colonial legacy, judicial independence, and the rule of law. A global cross-national analysis of state-years from 1976 to 2006 shows that states with common law traditions engage in better human rights practices than states with other legal systems. This result holds when controlling for the quality of the legal system and standard explanations for states' human rights practices (economic growth, regime type, population size, military regime, and war involvement).

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This article describes the use of limits in topics that are usually covered in a high school advanced placement chemistry course or a first-year college chemistry course. Such an approach supplements the interpretation of the graph of an equation since it is usually easier to evaluate the limit of a function than to generate its graph. In addition, the evaluation of the limit of an equation provides another viewpoint, which may solidify students' comprehension of concepts in the form of an equation.

Is the Kim Jong-un regime genuinely pursuing a peaceful solution, to eventually give up its nuclear arsenal, after a series of summits and negotiations with the US and South Korea? We examine how military and economic power networks on the peninsula are associated with the prospect of North Korea’s denuclearization. North Korea could use its nuclear weapons program, an internal tool designed to promote national security and power, to build up power in both military and economic power networks. Drawing lessons and speculation from the literature on states’ hedging behavior, and using agent-based models, we explain that denuclearization as part of a hedging strategy would be a viable policy option for North Korea.