Penalties For Violations Research Articles

The Infringement of Deepfake Technology on Personal Privacy and Legal Protection: A Discussion Based on Article 1032 of the Civil Code

The rapid development of deepfake technology has infringed upon personal privacy in the form of the disclosure and misuse of personal information, infringement upon the peace of people's life, and damage to personal image and reputation. The disclosure and misuse of personal information should be analysed from the perspectives of personal use and commercial use of information data; infringement upon the peace of people's life should be examined from the perspectives of fraud and harassment, and malicious pursuit using deepfake technology; and damage to personal image and reputation should be discussed from the two levels of initial damage to personal image and reputation and aggravated damage to personal reputation after dissemination through the media. Article 1032 of the Civil Code clearly defines the scope of privacy protection as the peace of people's private life, private space, private activities and private information, as well as the infringement of privacy rights through means such as spying, intrusion, disclosure and publication, which reflects the legislative inertia to strengthen the protection of privacy and personal information. Article 1032 of the Civil Code, the Personal Information Protection Law, the Provisions on the Administration of Deep Synthesis of Internet-based Information Services, and other laws and regulations together form the current personal privacy protection system. However, existing laws do not provide specific explanations for key terms such as 'leakage', 'intrusion' and 'damage', which leads to uncertainty in the application of the law and makes it difficult to effectively protect personal privacy in actual operations. At the same time, there is a lack of clear definitions of the scenarios and specific standards of behaviour that the technology may involve, which has exacerbated public concerns about personal privacy security. Strengthening legal protection against deepfake technology requires refining legal concepts and drawing on knowledge from comparative law: 'leakage' can be considered the illegal acquisition and dissemination of unauthorised data and information, 'intrusion' can be defined as behaviour that disrupts the normal order of others and causes mental distress, and 'damage' can be understood as behaviour that causes negative evaluation or loss to the image, reputation or property of others. The legislative department should take the lead and cooperate with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in formulating specific standards for evaluating behaviour. The deterrent effect of the law should be strengthened by refining relevant legal provisions in the Civil Code and the Personal Information Protection Law and increasing the penalties for violations of the law. This will better balance technological development and personal privacy protection and improve China's personal privacy protection system.

Development and application of a risk analysis methodology for road traffic accidents

Collision, rollover, swerving, and vehicle fire are road traffic accidents (RTAs) caused by driver, vehicle, and environment-related factors, resulting in diverse severity levels, such as property damages, injuries, and fatality. In addition, vagueness in detectability, e.g., close circuit television and driver admittance, culminates RTAs' risk analysis into a multifaceted problem. The present study performed root cause analysis to investigate RTAs, where the fishbone diagram categorized RTAs (e.g., collision and swerving) and identified primary (e.g., driver and environment) and secondary (e.g., overspeeding and tire burst) root causes. For 1158 km of intercity highways in Qassim (Saudi Arabia), fuzzy-failure mode and effect analysis evaluated 171 failure modes using 3500 RTAs' recorded over three years and knowledge of practice and experts. The study highlights collision, driver-related issues, and property damage as the leading category, root cause, and consequence. Comparing the baseline with the first realistic mitigation (speed camera installation) acknowledged a 53 % reduction in risk probability number. Automated driver assistance systems, rumble strips, variable speed limits, and increasing penalties for traffic violations hypothetically dropped 76 % of cumulative risk. The methodology handles limited data and subjective risk factors to help decision-makers minimize RTAs in Saudi Arabia and other jurisdictions.

Drivers’ Knowledge, Attitude and Practices Towards Traffic Rules and Regulations

Research frequently reports that the majority of crashes (up to 80%), are the fault of drivers. Further, the WHO reports that most fatal crashes occur in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). In LMIC, including Pakistan, most drivers have low levels of knowledge about traffic rules and regulations, have negative attitudes towards rules and regulations and often violate road safety rules. This study used a structured survey of drivers in Karachi, Pakistan (n=260). Most respondents were aware that helmet use for motorbike riders is compulsory (74.6%), agreed it was important to follow road signs (74.2%) and wear a seat belt (64.6%). However, over half did not know the speed limit in residential areas (54.6%) and almost half considered drug use when driving was not dangerous or were against the penalty or fine for violation of traffic laws (45.4%). In addition, 45.8% of all drivers thought driving licenses were unnecessary. This study suggests there may be low levels of driver knowledge of certain road rules (e.g. speed limit), negative attitudes about certain safe driving practices (drug driving), and low levels of value placed on driving license in Karachi, Pakistan. Analysis suggest that knowledge and attitude affect driver practices in Karachi, Pakistan. Strengthening enforcement and related public communication measures about traffic rules and greater penalties that are sufficiently deterring for the violators of the traffic rules is needed. There must also be a formal mechanism to issue the driving licence after a proper test of the knowledge of road rules and driving following those rules.

Enforcement of international sanctions as the third pillar of the anti-money laundering framework. An unannounced effect of the AML reform and the Sanctions Directive

The recently adopted Sanctions Directive harmonises definitions and penalties for violations of restrictive measures with the aim of ensuring that criminal law can be used to enforce international sanctions in the European Union. It has also made violations of restrictive measures a predicate offence of money laundering. In parallel, the anti-money laundering (AML) framework is undergoing a significant reform, which includes the adoption of the first AML Regulation (previous legal acts being directives) containing AML duties of obliged entities as well as the establishment of an EU AML Authority. Also, for the first time, due diligence obligations as regards international sanctions will be included among these duties. The combined reading of the Sanctions Directive and the AML Regulation indicates that those duties will be even greater, which will have an outstanding impact on obliged entities, in particular of the financial sector. In fact, the extent of those obligations would justify calling enforcement of sanctions the third pillar of the AML framework. Yet, this aspect – and its consequences – remained fully under the radar of the legislative process. The objective of this article is, first, to examine the role of the AML framework in the enforcement of international sanctions, especially after the Sanctions Directive and the AML Regulation start to be applied and, second, to analyse the impact of including enforcement of international sanctions in the AML framework, on the entities subject to its duties and other actors affected by this framework.

Examining the impact of knowledge, supervision, and work fatigue on unsafe actions among warehouse workers

Unsafe actions are dangerous behaviors that can cause work accidents, resulting in injury or death. Warehouses are high-risk areas for such incidents due to the presence of unsafe actions during work processes. This study aims to explore the relationship between knowledge, supervision, and work fatigue with unsafe actions among warehouse workers at PT Cipta Krida Bahari Samarinda. This quantitative study employs a cross-sectional design, with a sample size of 50 workers using the total sampling technique. The independent variables are knowledge, supervision, and work fatigue, while the dependent variable is unsafe action. Data analysis utilized univariate and bivariate (chi-square) methods. Results indicated that 54 percent of workers engaged in unsafe actions, 60 percent had good knowledge, 56 percent reported good workplace supervision, and 54 percent experienced fatigue. Bivariate analysis showed no significant relationship between knowledge (p=0.203) and work fatigue (p=0.168) with unsafe actions. However, a significant relationship was found between supervision (p=0.019) and unsafe actions. It is recommended that the company enhance supervision practices and enforce strict penalties for violations to minimize unsafe actions among workers.

STABILITY OF THE DYNAMIC MODEL OF SVPR SEXUAL VIOLENCE CASES

In this study, the stability of the equilibrium points of the Susceptible Violent Punishment Recovered (SVPR) model in the spread of sexual violence cases is analyzed. The model assumes that sexual violence can spread similarly to the transmission of infectious diseases. The constructed model is a system of nonlinear differential equations. The model has two equilibrium points: the equilibrium point with sexual violence-free and the endemic equilibrium point with sexual violence. Stability analysis is then carried out for both fixed points, indicating that the violence-free equilibrium is asymptotically stable if the basic reproduction number . Meanwhile, the endemic equilibrium is asymptotically stable if the condition and four other conditions are satisfied. Numerical simulations are required to observe the implementation of the model using MAPLE software. As for this research, we conclude a model that shows the spread of sexual violence is not widespread because it was found that .

Ефективність заходів щодо запобігання дорожньо-транспортним пригодам: огляд сучасних стратегій та підходів

This article investigates the problem of road traffic accidents (RTA) and reviews current strategies and approaches to prevent and reduce them. The significance of this problem is that the health of road users and the safety of vehicle traffic on roads is one of the most important global societal issues, especially with the continuous growth in the number of vehicles and the pace of urban activity. The article examines various aspects of road traffic accident prevention, including legal, technical, psychological and educational measures. It analyzes current trends in the development and implementation of road safety programs, as well as successful practices to reduce the number of accidents and injuries on the roads. Based on a study of the effectiveness of various strategies and programs aimed at reducing the number of accidents and casualties in traffic accidents, the article provides information on which measures are most effective and how they can be implemented in different contexts. In addition, it emphasizes the importance of cooperation between the authorities, public organizations and citizens in implementing road safety. The article also discusses in detail the importance of preventive measures, which may include educational campaigns and awareness-raising activities on vehicle safety on the roads. It also analyzes the legal norms and penalties for violations of traffic rules and the possibility of studying and using the experience of other countries, in particular Poland, in ensuring the safety of vehicles on the roads. The concluding part of the article discusses the prospects for the future development of road safety systems and the challenges that may arise in the future. The findings of this study can be useful for policy makers, researchers, and road safety professionals to improve road safety and reduce the number of road traffic accidents.

SANKSI HUKUM TERHADAP PELAKU GAME ONLINE DITINJAU DARI HUKUM ISLAM DAN HUKUM NASIONAL

This paper aims to analyze legal sanctions for online game players, especially domino or scatter online games. Every act of gambling is prohibited by laws and regulations, as stipulated in Article 303 of the Criminal Code. The reasons for playing games are very diverse, some are to fill the void of time but can be haram (not allowed), if there is an element of betting (gambling). This research is a normative-juridical legal research, so to answer this question the author digs from literature and electronic media that discusses the intricacies of domino or scatter games, then analyzes from the point of view of Islamic law, about the elements why legal sanski does not run officially. The results of this study show that legal sanctions for online gambling players can be sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years (Article 30 of the Criminal Code). While Article 303 BIS regulates unlicensed gambling. "Any person who without permission holds or gives the opportunity to play gambling. A maximum prison sentence of 4 years or a maximum fine of Rp 10 million". Meanwhile, Law No. 7 of 1974 concerning the Regulation of Gambling affirms the prohibition of all forms of gambling and strengthens penalties for violations. Strengthen existing sanctions in the Criminal Code, including the possibility of additional penalties in accordance with the enforcement policy. While Law No. 11 of 2008 concerning Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) explains that Article 27 Paragraph (2) concerning the prohibition of distribution of electronic information containing gambling content. "Any person intentionally and without rights distributes and/or transmits and/or makes accessible Electronic Information that has gambling content. A maximum prison sentence of 6 years and/or a maximum fine of IDR 1 billion". While QS. Al-Baqarah Verse 219 and QS. Al-Maidah Verse 90 explains that the act of scatter type online games is strictly forbidden, because there are elements of ta'jir or maisir. It can be concluded that the legal sanctions made by the Government do not run according to the procedure, meaning that they have not had a deterrent impact on online gambling actors.

Game analysis on PPP model operation of abandoned mines ecological restoration under the innovation of central government's reward and punishment system in China.

There is a huge funding gap in the abandoned mines ecological restoration in China. It is of great research value to explore how PPP model can better introduce social capital into the low-profit ecological restoration of abandoned mines. Based on the innovation perspective of the central government's reward and punishment system, this paper constructs an evolutionary game model of "local government-social capital", analyzes the interaction and behavior mechanism of core stakeholders in the operation process of abandoned mines ecological restoration PPP mode, and discusses the influence of evolutionary equilibrium strategy and parameters change on evolutionary strategy under different scenarios by Matlab simulation. The research shows that the abandoned mines ecological restoration needs the support of the central government. When the local government lightly punishes the low-quality service of social capital, the central government needs to pay higher costs to promote all parties to actively participate in the operation and supervision of the PPP project. The revenue and cost of government supervision, the operating subsidy for social capital and the cost saved by social capital in providing bad service are the key factors affecting the evolution of the game between government and social capital. Punishment can effectively spur social capital to keep the contract and operate in the project, but the punishment effect will be ineffective without government supervision. Finally, some suggestions are put forward, such as establishing a long-term supervision mechanism and a reasonable income mechanism for PPP projects, increasing penalties for violations, attracting third parties to reduce supervision costs and strengthening communication between the two parties, so as to make the project take into account the economic performance of social capital and the social welfare of government departments, and achieve dual Pareto improvement.

Corporate noncompliance: Do corporate violations affect bank loan contracting?

We examine the effect of corporate violations on bank loan contracting and document that borrowers with higher corporate violation penalties have higher loan costs. Higher corporate violations are also associated with more restrictive covenants and a higher likelihood of a collateral requirement. The increasing effect of corporate violations on loan costs is concentrated in opaque firms or those subject to more competitive markets or ineffective monitoring. Firms with higher violation penalties have lower future performance and a higher number of future violations. Overall, our results demonstrate that banks factor corporate violations into their lending decisions, thus shedding new light on the economic consequences of corporate violations through the creditors’ lens.

Navigating Road Traffic Accidents in Jordan: A Retrospective Exploration of the Health and Economic Impacts.

Background Road traffic accidents (RTAs) are considered a major public health threat. The causes of RTAs are multifactorial, comprising both human and non-human factors. RTAs may result not only in detrimental health consequences but also in serious economic burdens. This study aimed to provide a retrospective overview of the health and economic impacts of RTAs in Jordan during the period 2013-2021, including the implemented multisectoral mitigation strategies. Methodology This study presents a retrospective chart review of the traffic reports published by the Public Security Directorate (PSD) in Jordan during the period 2013-2021. The examined variables were the total number of road accidents involving human injuries per year, average road accidents per day, annual deaths, average deaths per day, deaths per 100,000 population, annual number of injuries, average number of injuries per day, severity of human injury, number of registered vehicles, and the annual financial costs. Data were extracted from PSD reports and presented descriptively. Results The number of registered vehicles has risen from 1,263,754 in 2013 to 1,795,215 in 2021 with a 42.1% increase. This was also associated with an increase in the average RTAs per day from 28.0 in 2013 to 30.8 in 2021. The total number of RTAs that involved human injuries during the period 2013-2021 fluctuated with 8,451 in 2020 (lowest) and 11,241 in 2021 (highest). In the same period, annual deaths caused by RTAs peaked in 2013 with 768 deaths (highest) compared to 461 in 2020 (lowest). In the five years from 2017 to 2021, the total financial cost of RTAs in Jordan was nearly 1.561 billion Jordanian Dinars (~2.2 billion U.S. dollars) compared to 1.363 billion Jordanian Dinars (~1.92 billion U.S. dollars) in the five years from 2012 to 2016. Conclusions Targeting human and road infrastructure factors through effective government-society partnerships is crucial in mitigating the health and economic burden of RTAs in Jordan. More strict enforcement of traffic laws, along with incremental increases in the penalties for dangerous traffic violations, and regular road safety campaigns are expected to provide more control over the human factors of RTAs. Further research is needed to evaluate the impact of the recently amended traffic law on the trends of RTAs in the country.

Child Labor Bans, Employment, and School Attendance: Evidence from Changes in the Minimum Working Age

Abstract This paper investigates the effect of a unique child labor ban regulation on employment and school enrollment. The ban, implemented in Mexico in 2015, increased the minimum working age from 14 to 15, introduced restrictions to employing underage individuals, and imposed stricter penalties for violation of the law. Our identification strategy relies on a DiD approach that exploits the date of birth as a natural cutoff to assign individuals into treatment and control groups. The ban led to a decrease in the probability to work by 1.2 percentage points, resembling a 16 percent decrease in the probability to work relative to the pre-reform mean, and an increase in the probability of being enrolled in school by 2.2 percentage points for the treatment group. These results are driven by a reduction in employment in paid work, and in the manufacturing and services sectors. The effects are persistent several years after the ban.

Administrative Penalties for Building Violations in The Saudi System

General administrative penalties are a category of sanctions that have recently emerged to address certain offenses that do not merit criminal penalties due to their lesser severity and gravity in the view of society. Instead, these offenses are adequately addressed with a general administrative penalty imposed by administrative authorities without recourse to judicial proceedings. Within the context of construction-related infractions, Saudi law has established fines and demolitions as administrative penalties that are imposed by authorities responsible for overseeing and monitoring construction activities.

Legal safeguards for nature conservation and environmental preservation

The current situation with the surrounding natural environment has reached a critical point, making nature conservation questions highly relevant today. The research aims to examine the key legislative provisions regarding the protection of nature and the environment. The study utilizes methods of analysis, synthesis, scientific generalization, and formal-structural methods. The publication addresses the correlation between ecological and nature-resource law. It is stated that legal protection of nature and the environment in Ukraine operates on three levels: constitutional, legislative, and at the level of sub-legal normative legal acts. The content of the Law of Ukraine, "On the Protection of the Environment," has been analyzed. This approach allowed for the classification of the provisions of the law into two major groups: functionally competent and those intended to ensure the general mechanism of environmental protection implementation. The appropriateness of using the term "environment" rather than "natural environment" at the level of Chapter VIII of the Criminal Code of Ukraine is considered. After reviewing the content of Chapter VIII of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, the authors conclude that most criminal offenses in this Chapter are characterized by the material composition of a crime. Article 245 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine was chosen as an example of analysis. The article discusses the elements of the criminal offense prescribed by Article 245 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine and the sanctions provided by the legislator for this type of criminal offense. Recommendations were developed to allow courts to impose penalties for violations more substantively under Article 245 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The authors described the qualified composition of the criminal offense prescribed by Part 2 of Article 245 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The paper investigates the place of ecocide in the system of criminal offenses against peace, the security of humanity, and international law. It examines the name of the special section of the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses, noting its somewhat unconventional nature.

Some theoretical and practical problems of legal protection of occupational safety: national and international aspects

The academic article deals with certain issues of the theory and practice of regulatory regulation of labour protection in Ukraine. Main organisational and legal forms of occupational safety and health, as well as main tasks of labour protection management in the country, are defined. Philosophical, general scientific and special legal methods of cognition, including but not limited to formal-legal and comparative legal methods, were used for the research. It is noted that Ukraine’s health and safety situation is one of the most challenging in Europe. The authors also state that importance of the psychological climate in the workplace and its impact on the production process cannot be underestimated, so relevant measures in the context of its improvement are proposed. The article highlights certain aspects of labour protection regulation at the international legal level in general (ensured by the International Labour Organization) and at the level of the European Union in particular, as well as the impact of relevant standards on national legislation. The authors formulate proposals for improving the labour protection institute in modern economic conditions in Ukraine, including but not limited to: implementing innovative legal education and training programs focused on occupational safety and health;, creating/improving safe working conditions under martial law, including proper equipment of shelters for use during air raids; ensuring submission of a draft law on improving penalties for violations of labour protection legislation, which will increase employers’ responsibility for compliance with labour protection legislation. It is concluded that the occupational health and safety management system shall be based not only on measures taken by the state, but also on the interest of the parties to labour relations in maintaining the proper physical condition of the employee, which is inextricably linked to the economic and social well-being of the employer.

Islamic Jurisprudence's Penalties for Violation of Traffic Regulations and the Amended Jordanian Traffic Law

This study attempts to explain the ramifications of running red traffic lights and the public interests that result from the implementation of sanctions for such infractions. In addition, it aims to clarify the rulings on high-speed driving and driving without a licence in Islamic jurisprudence and Jordanian traffic legislation, Both inductive and analytical methods were used in the study, which involved a review of the relevant sections of the Jordanian Traffic Law as well as the writings of jurists. According to the results, if a driver of a vehicle causes an accident that results in the death of another person, they have a duty to compensate Allah for that loss, and blood money represents the victims' rights until they want to relinquish them. Infractions of traffic laws, such as speeding excessively, running red lights, and driving without a licence, can result in jail time, fines, and licence suspension. The study suggests using visual and audio mediums to make the requirements pertaining to infractions of traffic laws more clear.

Mechanism design for public projects via three machine learning based approaches

We study mechanism design for nonexcludable and excludable binary public project problems. Our aim is to maximize the expected number of consumers and the expected agents’ welfare. We first show that for the nonexcludable public project model, there is no need for machine learning based mechanism design. We identify a sufficient condition on the prior distribution for the existing conservative equal costs mechanism to be the optimal strategy-proof and individually rational mechanism. For general distributions, we propose a dynamic program that solves for the optimal mechanism. For the excludable public project model, we identify a similar sufficient condition for the existing serial cost sharing mechanism to be optimal for 2 and 3 agents. We derive a numerical upper bound and use it to show that for several common distributions, the serial cost sharing mechanism is close to optimality. The serial cost sharing mechanism is not optimal in general. We propose three machine learning based approaches for designing better performing mechanisms. We focus on the family of largest unanimous mechanisms, which characterizes all strategy-proof and individually rational mechanisms for the excludable public project model. A largest unanimous mechanism describes an iterative mechanism, which is defined by an exponential number of mechanism parameters. Our first approach describes the largest unanimous mechanism family using a neural network and training is carried out by minimizing a cost function that combines the mechanism design objective and the constraint violation penalty. We interpret the largest unanimous mechanisms as price-oriented rationing-free (PORF) mechanisms, which enables us to move the mechanisms’ iterative decision making off the neural network, to a separate simulation process, therefore avoiding the vanishing gradient problem. We also feed the prior distribution’s analytical form into the cost function to achieve high-quality gradients for efficient training. Our second approach treats the mechanism design task as a Markov Decision Process with an exponential number of states. During the Markov decision process, the non-consumers are gradually removed from the system. We train multiple neural networks, each for a different number of remaining agents, to learn the optimal value function on the states. Training is carried out by supervised learning toward a set of manually prepared base cases and the Bellman equation. Our third approach is based on reinforcement learning for a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process. Each RL episode randomly draws a type profile, which is hidden from the RL agent (mechanism designer). The RL agent only observes which cost share offers have been accepted under the largest unanimous mechanism under discussion. We use a continuous action space reinforcement learning approach to adjust the offer policy (i.e., adjust mechanism parameters). Lastly, our first two approaches use “supervision to manual mechanisms” as a systematic way for network initialization, which is potentially valuable for machine learning based mechanism design in general.

Penalties for Information Disclosure Violations and Independent Directors' Dissenting Behaviors at Director-Interlocked Firms: Spillover Effects Through Director Networks

Exploiting the mandatory disclosure requirement for independent directors’ votes in Chinese listed firms, this study investigates how penalties for information disclosure violations influence the dissenting behaviors of independent directors at firms with director interlocks. The results suggest penalties for information disclosure violations may encourage independent directors to express dissent on board proposals that are raised by director-interlocked firms. Further analyses show that as the severity of penalties increase, independent directors become more likely to express dissent, particularly about information disclosure issues. This dissenting behavior significantly improves the director-interlocked firm’s information disclosure quality and reduces the likelihood of being penalized for information disclosure violations. Finally, cross-sectional tests show that interlocked independent directors and independent directors with a background in finance, a greater reputation, and more power are more likely to dissent.

KEKERASAN FISIK PADA ANAK DALAM KELUARGA

Physical violence against children in the family is a serious problem that affects the child's growth and development and future. Physical violence against children carried out by their parents can include hitting, kicking or using blunt objects. Parents' awareness of the negative impact of violent punishment is still low and this is influenced by many factors such as a lack of understanding about violence, existing traditions of violence, and psychological problems. However, parents often believe that violence is the only solution in raising and educating their children. Several research results show that violence against children in the family is very difficult to reveal in public. Physical violence against children can also be a legacy of intergenerational violence. Violence against children can be defined as incidents of physical, emotional or sexual violence that are often carried out by people who have a close relationship with the child, such as parents or other family members. Violence against children is divided into two types, namely verbal violence and nonverbal violence (psychological and physical violence). The most common form of violence is physical violence. Physical violence against children can result in physical injury, organ damage, and even death. Therefore, efforts are needed to prevent physical violence against children in the family, including increasing parents' awareness of the negative impacts of violent punishment and providing other alternatives in raising children. Apart from that, support from other parties such as the government, NGOs and the general public is also needed to prevent physical violence against children in the family. Efforts to prevent physical violence against children at home are expected to improve children's health and help them develop their potential optimally.

Mecca’s Cult and Medina’s Constitution in the Qurʾān: A New Reading of al-Māʾidah

Abstract The Qurʾān’s fifth sura denounces the killing of game during pilgrimage and decries the killing of innocent Believers. This juxtaposition reflects the intimate connection between right worship and proper social order, between cult and covenant, a connection that animates the entire sura. In particular, the sura suggests that if Jews and Christians have been generally unreliable allies, if they have been often reluctant to support the Believers’ military efforts against the Quraysh, and if they were even unwilling to requite violence against innocent Believers, it was because the People of the Book mostly had a negative view of the Meccan Sanctuary and its rituals. Specifically, they derided the central rite of ṣalāt, which may have been accompanied with sacrifices on certain occasions (such as Fridays). In the light of their opposition to the Meccan cult, the sura commands the Believers not to take Jews or Christians as covenantal partners. It is possible that the sura thereby ended the Believers’ alliance with some Jewish tribes of Yathrib as enshrined in the Constitution of Medina. What supports this possibility is that al-Māʾidah has significant thematic and terminological overlaps with the Constitution of Medina, as alliance with the Jews and deterring violent crimes through retaliation are central concerns to both documents. Still, and contrary to the interpretations of several scholars, it is doubtful that at the time of al-Māʾidah’s proclamation the Prophet had judicial authority over the People of the Book or that he sought to impose violent punishment against them.