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This paper aims to look at the recent case of WW Gear Construction Ltd v. McGee Group Ltd (henceforth “WW Gear”) and the complex legal concept of a condition precedent in construction contracts.

The paper looks at the origin of a condition precedent and explores recent cases in which a condition precedent was involved as an issue. The wording of the relevant contract documents used in WW Gear is examined and the attitude adopted by the judiciary when dealing with an alleged condition precedent is explored in depth.

From the judgment handed down by the court it is clear that provided such a clause in a contract is correctly framed and the words used indicate a clear intention of the parties which is reasonable, then the English Courts will find that a condition precedent is enforceable.

When dealing with a condition precedent, the judges will interpret any condition precedent strictly but not so strictly that a minor drafting error makes the condition precedent unenforceable. The exact boundaries of strictness cannot be settled by WW Gear but will have to await further development of case law through future litigation. The implications of WW Gear for building surveyors and the wider construction industry are that considerable care must be taken in the administration of construction contracts where conditions precedent are present. The adjudicator was clearly incorrect in his finding that the relevant sub‐clauses were meaningless and could be safely ignored by the parties.

Whilst the legal concept of a condition precedent has featured in several modern construction law cases there is a paucity of literature dealing with the implications for building surveyors and construction professionals. This paper explores the importance of this often ignored legal concept not as abstract jurisprudence but in a succinct and practical way allowing practitioners to understand more fully the implications of a condition precedent on projects in which they are involved.

In this essay I discuss how law and legal precedent present a false or eschewed construction of the past. The Chicago Haymarket Riot in 1886 and the subsequent trial of eight rioters in Spies vs. People provide a dramatic illustration of the lasting consequences of privileging some historical narratives and silencing others. Occurring as it did at the dawn of the “Red Scare,” the miscarriage of justice in Spies vs. People acts as a landmark precedent in a tradition within the United States of extra-judicial lawlessness that stretches from this case through 100 years of labor turmoil, two World Wars, McCarthyism, the Cold War, and up to the current War on Terror. Moreover, these instances of lawlessness and extra-judicial activity, while not written into legal records, nonetheless resurface again and again to form patterns of behavior that amount to what I call precedents of injustice, and which I argue are as integral to law as any formal legal precedents. By way of conclusion I urge all sociolegal scholars to remain attentive to the wider historical contexts which over time are repeatedly silenced through the institutionalized legal processes of denial and forgetfulness.

Nowadays, experience bases are widely used by project companies in designing software-intensive systems (SISs). The efficiency of such informational sources is defined by the “nature” of modeled experience units and approaches that apply to their systematization. This paper aims to increase the efficiency of designing the SISs by the use of an ontological support for interactions with an accessible experience, models of which are understood as intellectually processed conditioned reflexes.

Both of the base of experience (BE) and ontological support in interactions with its units are oriented on precedents built in accordance with the offered normative schema when the occupational work is fulfilled by a team of designers. In creating the BE and the ontology as part of the BE, the team should use a reflection of an operational space of solved tasks on a specialized semantic memory intended for simulating the applied reasoning of the question-answer type.

If the occupational space of designing is reflected on the semantic memory with a programmable shell, then this environment can be adjusted on simulating the intellectual mechanisms flown in a human consciousness when designers ontologically interact with the BE and tasks being solved. The use of simulating the process in consciousness in accordance with their nature facilitates increasing the efficiency of designing the SIS.

An orientation on a precedent model as a basic type of experience unit and an ontological approach to their systematization are defined by the specificity of the study described in this paper. Models of precedents are constructed in accordance with the normative schema when the occupational work is fulfilled by a team of designers.

Investigated and developed means of ontological support are oriented on effective designing of the SISs with the use of the toolkit Working In Questions and Answers (WIQA) by the team of designers. The achieved effects are aimed at increasing the level of success in collaborative designing of SISs.

Offered solutions are applicable in designing the systems which supported different relations of a human with artificial and natural environment. They facilitate the naturalness in interactions of a human with computerized world.

An orientation on the precedent model as a basic type of experience unit and the ontological approach to their systematization are defined by the specificity of the study described in this paper. The novelty of this approach is defined by the framework for the precedent model, understood as the intellectually processed conditioned reflex, in which a reflection on the semantic memory (of the question-answer type) is programmable in a conceptually algorithmic language. The ontological support is implemented in the environment of programming.

Attempts to analyse the role of the judge in interpreting statute law. Looks at the traditional British rules of interpretation, presumptions and jurisprudential policy in the construction of statutes. Examines the dramatics change of attitude by British judges necessitated by European law and provides some thoughts on the interpretation and construction of enactments by judges. Continues by covering the judge’s interpretation of common law through the doctrine of judicial precedent, with regard to the hierarchy of the courts and persuasive precedents. Cites a number of case examples.

Fifty years ago the political scientist Robert Dahl concluded that courts are usually in sync with “the policy views dominant among the lawmaking majorities” and thus offer little help to aggrieved minorities (Dahl, 1957, p. 285). In recent years, Dahl's classic formulation has received renewed attention. This chapter uses the example of the Rehnquist Court's First Amendment decisions to analyze “regime politics” theory. On religion cases the Rehnquist Court was generally in sync with the socially conservative strain in the Republican Party, but in other First Amendment areas the pattern is far more complex, raising questions about the relationship between conservative judges and the political movements that brought them to office.

This paper explores the precedents for purchasing to contribute effectively to innovation exploration. We investigate how purchasing can become aware of innovation opportunities, their incentives or motivations to explore and capture innovation and the required capabilities.

Aiming for theory elaboration, we analyse an exemplar case study of a company developing leading-edge practices for involving purchasing in innovation exploration applying an Awareness-Motivation-Capability (AMC) framework.

This study elaborates on purchasing theory with a comprehensive set of AMC-based precedents for purchasing’s innovation exploration contribution that we categorise into three dimensions: motivations, capabilities and awareness. Our findings indicate interrelations between these and purchasing motivation as a precedent of capabilities and awareness.

We demonstrate the useful of applying AMC theory to researching purchasing’s contribution to innovation and how AMC needs to be adapted in this research context. We explore interrelations between awareness, motivation and capabilities but propose future research on the nature of these interrelations.

We suggest ways for managers to shape, adapt or redesign their purchasing organisations to better support innovation exploration.

This study proposes a framework for purchasing contribution to innovation based on AMC theory.

This chapter offers an explanation for the mixed record of the Supreme Court since the 1960s, and considers the implications of that record for the future. The chapter emphasizes that judicial power is connected to choices made by other political actors. We argue that conventional ways of measuring the impact of Court rulings and the Court's treatment of precedents are misleading. The Court cannot be understood as a counter-majoritarian protector of rights. In both past and future, electoral outcomes determine the policy areas in which the Court will be influential, and also the choices the justices make about how to portray their treatment of law and precedents.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the development of the 4Ps idea from the 1910s to the 1940s in the USA and explore its historical background.

The historical consideration of the precedents for the 4Ps idea is not only focused just on the idea, but also on the historical context in which it was produced. The analysis will include a re‐examination of the traditional “functional approach” to marketing thought, leading to different interpretations from previous research.

The 4Ps idea did not suddenly appear in the 1950s, but had precedents that could be traced back to the 1910s. Based on the separation of planning from implementation and ideas on management process, the precedents for the 4Ps appeared as various discussions on components of the planning function in sales management, sales/marketing policies and marketing management.

The research implies the historical study could enrich our knowledge. This investigation is limited to the USA: other studies could investigate the history of marketing and marketing thought in other countries.

Recognizing how previous marketers and marketing thinkers considered the issues could provide a broad and solid basis to explore how marketing strategy should be formed.

Identifying the antecedents of the 4Ps before the Second World War is a unique contribution to historical research in marketing. This paper provides a new interpretation of the development of marketing management and its thought.

This study aims to identify the precedents of compulsively using a credit card, analyzing the influence of the following factors: power–prestige, anxiety, distrust and materialism.

Data collection was performed by the survey method, while the structural equation modeling technique was used for data analysis, adopting the confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis.

The impact that anxiety has on compulsive use of credit cards was confirmed. Furthermore, the influence of materialism present in an individual on the compulsive use of a credit card was also proven.

As a limitation, the power–prestige construction did not obtain satisfactory average variance extracted in the modeling. Other limitations can be pointed out; for instance, it was a sample composed of university students and with geographic restrictions.

This study highlights the importance of promoting public policies oriented toward the conscious use of credit cards. Interference in the approach of financial institutions aimed at attracting new clients in universities is also necessary.

This study aggregates information about the buying behavior of university students, how the precedents affect credit card use behavior and the harmful effects of compulsive use of credit cards.

The originality of this study is in offering a new approach to credit cards by analyzing their usage behavior, more specifically, the compulsive use of credit cards.