minimality, which is in turn closer to Griffith’s original idea. As with Griffith’s model, such solutions will also exhibit dissipation in the total energy in cases where crack propogation occurs in a brutal manner. However as pointed out by [@Negri2008], brutal cracking is primarily a dynamic phenomenon which explains why the total energy cannot be completely accounted for in a quasi-static framework.

On the treatment of $\ell$ as a material parameter
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If we settle for invoking local versus global minimality, then classical solution schemes that were previously deemed inadequate are now robust without the need to perform backtracking. We are left with the non-convexity of Griffith’s functional, but this is easily dealt with via the alternate minimization algorithm as earlier mentioned. On the other hand, we end up as well with Griffith’s original conundrum concerning crack initiation. It turns out that the saving grace is none other than the regularization of the functional, which as will be discussed in the later sections actually allows for crack initiation in the absence of stress singularities provided that the characteristic length $\ell$ associated with the regularization is *finite*. This also brings us more in line with nonlocal damage theory where the thickness 