In the decade of the 1990s international criminal justice and the international tribunals that enforce it emerged in international society as a major dimension of international relations. This has led to a widely held belief -- further strengthened by the establishment of the permanent International Criminal Court -- that genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes will now consistently be punished by a legal sanction that was previously lacking. The literature in the field has overwhelmingly fostered this impression. But international criminal tribunals are created by sovereign states. Despite the rhetoric that drove this surge in the 1990s, because international justice is part of international relations, it is subject to the strategic imperatives of states, civil society and other actors, and these frequently clash. Thus it is argued that international justice can be most accurately explicated from the perspective not solely of legal rules of international humanitarian law, but from that of the theories and practice of international relations. The Nuremberg trials generated precedents in international law that have given impetus to the movement for individual criminal accountability. But to stress this fact alone is a selective reading of history, for the trials were essentially a case far more of justice as strategy than justice as policy. The nature of the international society means that the relationship between justice and the order that sustains that society is largely, though not completely, one of tension and contradiction. This thesis examines these tensions and contradictions and how they are resolved. It shows that the (anarchical) international society, and not the much talked about "international community" is the dominant context of how international justice actually works. The ad hoc tribunals do not represent the enthronement of justice as policy, but rather are political responses to crimes in selected, narrow geographies in which the society of states chose not to exercise political options that would have led to preventive action. The International Criminal Court does not represent "the end of history" in international justice. Efforts by liberal internationalism to universalize international justice through universal jurisdiction have been largely unsuccessful. So have the attempted prosecutions of persons who are seen as guardians of particular national, regional or international orders. And efforts to give the jurisdiction of the ICC primacy over that of sovereign states and limit the scope of action of some great powers have been robustly resisted. These cases demonstrate that, for as long as states remain the predominant organizing unit of international society, these tensions will remain. The international justice we see is conditional -- one that is selective, inconsistent, and either serves strategic ends or is only a product of political compromises at convenient moments.

The doctrine of non-retrogression – sometimes known as a prohibition on ‘backwards steps’ – in economic and social rights has garnered increasing attention in the aftermath of the financial and economic crises. The attention has clarified aspects of the norm, and has gone some way to providing rights-holders with a vitally needed tool in the context of recent austerity programmes. Yet despite this solid base of attention and the successive enumerations of the doctrine by the CESCR, there remain serious deficiencies in the understanding of the doctrine. The core of this thesis addresses the need for a fuller understanding. It considers retrogression in a systematic way and addresses a number of routes to realising rights. While doing so, the work focuses on the problem areas to provide a deeper consideration. The research identifies and addresses a series of fundamental questions that still afflict retrogression, including: where did the doctrine originate from; what is the conceptual basis for the doctrine; how might the doctrine be reformed to better pursue a role within the ICESCR system; what are the key tests of a successful doctrine; and to what extent could a reformed doctrine address these key challenges? It is argued that non-retrogression’s past is deeply confused, and its future will be beset with challenges. In the process of making this argument, the thesis contextualises, deconstructs, repurposes, reconstructs, and tests the doctrine. The end result is a fuller picture of the severe limitations of the current forms of the doctrine of non-retrogression, and the positing of a reconstructed doctrine that is less vulnerable to the many threats to non-retrogression’s success.

This thesis examines the contributions to the global constitutional process made by the human rights machinery of the United Nations. To do this, it considers the philosophical and theoretical positions related to understanding constitutionalism either as government or as governance. This contrast is then used to help develop the idea of the constitutional process, which is followed by a translation of these ideas into the international realm. Subsequently, it examines the United Nations Human Rights Council from the perspective of a polycentric international society. This is then followed by an examination of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from a cosmopolitan perspective. Ultimately, it is concluded that, whilst the existing contributions made by these organs are seemingly negligible, the particular theoretical approach undertaken is successful in highlighting certain opportunities for reforms that have hitherto been unexamined.

The principal object of the present research may be seen as an attempt to highlight certain specific and special aspects of the modern concept of the rule of law, particularly in the context of its relevance and pertinence to the contemporary demands and developments in the area of fundamental human rights and freedoms. In this line of thought, three specific areas have been identified that have received considerable attention and importance in the conceptual and normative development in the field of the modern legal edifice of human rights, international and domestic, particularly in the last few decades. These 'special' aspects are to be found-. a. in the concept of human rights in the administration of justice:;b. in the principles and practices relating to human rights in certain exceptional situations commonly called 'states of emergency' ; and. c. in the indispensable pertinence and significance of the doctrine of independence and impartiality of the judiciary to these modern features of the rule of law. While the foundation of these cardinal norms of human rights are to be found in the Universal Declaration of human rights, 1948, they have been given the sanction of binding treaties by incorporating them into subsequent major human rights instruments, particularly- the UN's Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as the three regional treaties. These legal norms of international human rights law have then been further elaborated by the adoption of a wide range of global, regional and subsidiary instruments in the recent time. Moreover, the importance and urgency of these particular areas of human rights have been reiterated and re-emphasised by the constant devotion and continued efforts of numerous international institutions, organisations and individual scholars by means of studies; survey, research, conferences, seminars, symposia etc. And finally, over the last half a century or so, since the first treaty provision was made in this regard (i.e., the ECHR in 1950), a considerable amount of jurisprudence has been developed in the case law of the monitoring organs in these relevant fields.

The topic of this study is the judicial enforcement of so-called social and economic rights, in particular the right to health care, education, housing, food etc, expressly recognised in international treaties and in many domestic constitutions (often referred to as social rights' justiciability). Many believe that courts should refrain from enforcing those rights because they are neither legitimised nor institutionally competent to deal with the issues involved (i.e. matters of policy and resource allocation). Partisans of social rights' justiciability, on the other hand, insist that it is within the appropriate role of courts to adjudicate social rights and that no special expertise is required in that task that courts do not have or cannot develop. I review this debate and conclude that neither side is correct. The main problem, I submit, is that both sides of the debate have been taking for granted a conception of social rights that I argue is flawed. Indeed, it is commonly thought that social rights are entitlements to a certain basic level of social goods (e.g. health care, food, housing), which are necessary for the individual to lead a decent life. I call this the "basic needs conception". I claim, however, that social rights are in fact entitlements to a fair share of society's resources not necessarily related to the capacity for the enjoyment of basic needs. I propose, then, that the debate on legitimacy and competence has to be recast in the following terms: are courts legitimised or competent to deal with the intractable question of distributive justice posed by social rights I claim that they are and propose an insurance model, inspired by the work of Ronald Dworkin, which they could follow to reach an acceptable answer to that question.

Participation in online communities is problematic. Take up of community technologies is often patchy and subject to resistance, particularly in organisational settings. Previous literature, mainly influenced by a cognitive tradition, tends to explain this either through features of the technology such as interface design or through individual motivational structures. This study explores the insights Actor-Network Theory (Callon, 1986; Latour, 1986; Law, 1986c; Law, 1986b; Law, 1992) and a practice-based approach (Gherardi, 2000; Orlikowski, 2002; Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, 2002; Nicolini et al., 2003; Schatzki, 2005; Gherardi, 2009b; Feldman and Orlikowski, 2011; Nicolini, 2011; Cox, 2012) provide to more fully explain participation in online communities. The study focuses on the failure to establish an online community supported by a collaborative technology as part of a Human Resources project within a multi-campus University in Mexico. A range of methods for data collection were used, however semi-structured interviews were the main basis for analysis. Initially, analysing communication activity in the community showed low levels of participation, leading to conduct 30 interviews with actors playing different roles during the project; 17 interviews were conducted in the initial stage of the study and 13 interviews in the final stage. Work-related documentation and observation in online meetings were also used as sources of data. Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and a practice-based approach (PBA), both members of the praxeological family of theories (Reckwitz, 2002), were used in sequential order to inform the analyses. During the first stage of the research, ANT was used to explore how a group of actors aimed to promote participation in the online community by developing different strategies to enrol the collaborative technology supporting participation into their network. By strengthening the relations between the collaborative technology and other relevant actors within the network participation was expected to occur. The analysis reveals that lack of participation arose from an inability of the technology to develop strong relations with key actors; processes of betrayal from human actors to the technology; failure of strategies and lack of political power from the actors sponsoring the community; incomplete internal translation of the technology; and existence of competing actors. In the second stage of the research, insights from PBA were used to further explore how pre-existing practices shaped participation in the online community. This analysis showed that factors shaping participation included the interconnection of HR practices to other practices of the University; the existence of habits and the sense of routinisation and habituation reflected in HR practitioners´ patterns of interaction and media use; the concern of practitioners that participation in the online community did not support the enactment of shared knowings critical in the performance of HR practices; and the features of HR practices being at odds with participation at the online community. Although offering distinct accounts, the findings of ANT and PBA offered two perspectives that deepen our current understanding of participation by foregrounding the relational and collective, historical and emergent, and highly contextualised character of participation. On the basis of the findings, the study provides a series of considerations that might be of relevance when conducing praxeological research to study organisational phenomena. Bringing power issues to the fore of the analysis, the use of alternative approaches to better deal with power concerns, the use of ethnographic methods, the adoption of different angles from observation, acknowledging the emergent and historically-shaped character of phenomena, and the need to foreground the socio-material character of phenomena are highlighted as relevant considerations.

This thesis is concerned with the role of human rights in contemporary liberal democracy and considers this role specifically in the context of the 'war on terror'. The thesis examines the relationship between human rights and security developed in this context and considers the processes through which this relationship has been formulated as well as the various players involved in development and maintenance of what needs to be understood as a liberty-security regime. The analysis begins from a critical understanding of contemporary liberalism still very much grounded in its classical tradition and seeks to interrogate the liberal character of the current regime. The necessary unraveling of this regime is done in part through a comparative analysis of the relationship between liberty and security as formulated in state strategy in the UK, Australia and the US. However, rather than understanding this regime as developed and sustained solely at the level of state or government action, the crucial role of civil society actors, particularly of certain intellectual strata and of human rights advocacy organisations, in constructing and legitimating such a regime, as well as the interplay between these perspectives, is also at the core of this study. The thesis demonstrates the pivotal role that liberal intellectuals and human rights organisations play in not only legitimating the current regime but also influencing its current form. Fundamentally, the research suggests that this legitimating function exists not in spite of their apparently critical position but because of it. The analysis in turn aims to establish whether the role of human rights in this context is indicative of an inherent political functionality or whether there is the possibility that human rights can be part of an alternative and above all emancipatory politics. To develop this consideration, a critical review is provided of certain thinkers on the left who utilise human rights principles as central to a critique of the current regime and as part of their vision of an alternative, leftist politics. By demonstrating that the effect of a human rights framework on critical interventions is not restricted to those working within the liberal tradition, this thesis suggests that a commitment to human rights principles in this context cannot be part of the development of a substantive critique of both the current regime and the wider liberal-capitalist status quo.

Participation is an important theme in current democratic theory and there is burgeoning use of its institutional form, direct democracy, to legitimise political bodies and their decision-making. This thesis analyses the legislative design and implementation of two recent direct democracy innovations: the European Citizens Initiative (ECI) and the referenda in the European Union Act (EUA). The agenda setting ECI, which gives EU citizens the chance to propose legal acts of the Union, is the first supranational instrument of direct democracy, and the EUA contains the UK’s first ongoing legislative criteria that trigger a referendum. The duality of EU democracy is an essential aspect of its legitimisation. Two dichotomies are therefore used to frame the analysis of direct democracy in the EU: the supranational (direct) and intergovernmental (indirect) routes of EU legitimisation and the legitimisation of the EU’s constitutional framework and its daily authority. These dichotomies, and democratic criteria focussed on citizen participation and influence over the political agenda, support the analysis of the likely combined impact of the ECI and EUA on the dual EU democracy. The critical assessment of the legislative design of the ECI and of the Commission’s decision-making in relation to the ECI shows that institutional mediation and the EU’s duality have a significant impact on the potential to increase the influence of EU citizens on the EU political agenda, and to facilitate a challenge to established policy preferences. Similarly the critical analysis of the EUA referenda provisions indicate that the apparently strong opportunity to vote on the UK’s EU policy in a referendum is qualified in a number of respects by institutional control reflected in the legislation itself, and that the chance of citizen-led policy preferences is diminished. The thesis concludes with a combined analysis of the ECI and EUA to assess the joint impact of direct democracy on dual EU democracy through answering two questions: ‘What are their implications for the EU democratic paradigm?’, and ‘What is their influence together on EU democratic legitimacy?’. The overall findings are that the impact of the ECI and EUA, despite posing some challenges and despite their democratic potential, is likely to be heavily restricted as a result of institutional control and the EU’s political framework.

This thesis critically examines the relationship between the protection of human rights and peace in ethnically divided, post conflict societies. It seeks to achieve this in two ways: on the one hand, it undertakes a theoretical analysis of the two key terms and on the other, it compares how protecting the rights to property and vote has affected peacebuilding efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, South Africa and Cyprus. Peace, as defined in the thesis, consists of three elements – security, justice and reconciliation; these sometimes reinforce and others contradict with each other. Theoretical arguments and real-life examples from the three case studies that confirm the existence of a positive relationship between human rights and peace are abundant. At the same time however, it is possible that the protection of human rights can also undermine peacebuilding efforts, whether inadvertendly or through their explicit demand. Human rights can, for example, promote security to the detriment of justice or reconciliation, thus negatively affectively the peacebuilding operation as a whole. In addition to the existence of a positive and negative relationship, it is also often the case that human rights are not connected to peace at all. This is particularly because in order for peace to be built, it is necessary to induce in the ethnically divided, postconflict society, legal, political, socio-economic and psychological changes. While however, human rights can make important contributions to the legal changes that have to take place, they are less effective in inducing the rest. This more nuanced understanding of the relationship between human rights and peace, calls for the enrichment of the liberal peacebuilding recipe that has human rights at its centrepiece. Policy makers should adopt an alternative strategy, which while valuing human rights, also addresses their limitations by supplementing them with other peacebuilding tools and mechanisms as well.

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