As a critical theory, feminisms and feminist legal theory challenge existing norms. Of necessity, the values behind this methodology must in turn be critiqued. Feminist methodology, essentialism is dependent on the experience of women, distilled into a particular type of woman for academic ease. Gender is only one of the defining traits of a woman. Depending on the specificities of the context, other traits will impact on the life experiences of a woman and how she experiences discriminatory practices. In a context where a particular racial group do not form the dominant culture, race will be an important defining trait. Therefore to be a Black woman in the Western world will shape a woman's experience of discrimination. To be a Black African woman in the West will also further determine the types of discrimination suffered in addition to gender discrimination which must be differentiated from the experiences of Black Western women and White Western woman. These experiences affect the realisation of women's human rights. Discrimination suffered by an African woman as a woman in Africa is contextually specific. It is identified as culturally specific. Yet, culturally identified or determined gender discrimination is arguably no more than the location of institutionalised gender discrimination in the private sphere. It is considered a cultural problem because the positionality of the dominant theory of feminism, which is Western, locates alien cultures as other and separates the experiences of women in that culture. The location of such gender based institutional discrimination primarily within a cultural sphere places it firmly within the cultural relativist paradigm which challenges the universality of human rights, including women's human rights, and further detaches gender based discrimination from the rights discourse. Therefore, not only is race peripheral to feminisms, culture, or the manifestation of culturally identified gender discrimination, is also marginalised. The separation of women from each other based on factors such as race, class and ethnicity limits the potential of feminist legal approaches to the promotion and protection of women's human rights. Feminist legal theory can promote, protect and assure all women's human rights if it is inclusive and if it is representative. To be representative, the manifestations of racial and cultural discrimination must form an integral part of the theory.

The purpose of this thesis is to address a regulatory dilemma in human rights and to put forward a solution to this dilemma by examining a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI). First, the regulatory dilemma is addressed from the viewpoint of the systems theory of Luhmann and the discourse theory of Habermas. In particular, the welfare state adopted juridification in order to pursue social justice but this state regulation leads to an unintended result, that is, a functional disorder (systems theory) and the colonization of the life world (discourse theory). However, we cannot go back to the liberal paradigm which is simply oriented towards protecting the autonomy of individuals but is therefore indifferent to the consequential social problems of inequalities and injustice. This creates a dilemma between the liberal paradigm and the social-welfare paradigm. The second aim is to examine how the regulatory dilemma can be resolved through a new paradigm of regulation which is influenced by systems theory, discourse theory and regulatory scholarship. Third, we will examine the question whether an NHRI, as an alternative institution with a different status and regulatory mechanism from other national institutions, could play a role in avoiding the regulatory dilemma in human rights. The last section is dedicated to discussing sexual harassment as an example to investigate whether an NHRI could be an alternative institution which could overcome the regulatory failure of other institutions and provide a useful solution to tackling sexual harassment. All in all, it is anticipated that this thesis will illustrate the actual application of systems theory, discourse theory and regulatory scholarship to the regulation of human rights, and that it will shed a theoretical light on the idea of an NHRI, which has not yet been actively researched from the theoretical viewpoint.

This thesis seeks to explain irredentism by identifying the set of variables that determine its occurrence. To do so it provides the necessary definition and comparative analytical framework, both lacking so far, and thus establishes irredentism as a field of study in its own right. The thesis develops a multi-variate explanatory model that is generalisable yet succinct. It builds critically on Donald Horowitz's theory of irredentism (1985;1991) which, like many studies of ethno-nationalism, underperforms due to a bias towards rationalism, materialism and individualism. The present study improves explanatory value by identifying three further variables that tackle ethno-territorial retrieval on its own terms. It argues that irredentism is primarily determined by shared ethno-national identity and the political system factors that condition its politicisation domestically and internationally. The resulting combined model is applied in two, variable-centred parts. First, it is quantitatively tested on a dataset of irredentism which the thesis collates based on its novel definition of irredentism. Second, the theory is applied in a historic case study of so-called "inconsistent irredentism" (Saideman 1998), i.e. an instance where retrieval was abandoned in an outwardly identical setting and therefore must result from factor change over time. The chosen example is that of the Hungarian irredenta in the interwar period (1920-1940), contrasted with its absence in the postcommunist era (1989-2005). To enhance generalisability, the thesis adds a comparison across space by examining Hungary and not one, but two transborder Magyar minorities (in Southern Slovakia and Transylvania). By offering a comprehensive definition of irredentism this thesis unifies previously disjointed cases for analysis. It avoids a rationalist and materialist bias in favour of what genuinely matters: namely the ethno-national bond and the factors shaping its politicisation. Because this approach does greater justice to ethno-national movements it furnishes a more explicative, generalisable and, potentially, predictive model of irredentism.

Following the shift from borders to bordering practices in the field of borders studies (Parker & Vaughan-Williams, 2009; Diener & Hagen, 2012; Meier, 2013), this thesis proposes bordering practices as specific kinds of spatial practice which occur through processes of narrating and negotiating, and are situated in relation to concepts of everyday life and spatial practices (Lefebvre ([1974] 1991 and de Certeau ([1984] 1989), and critical spatial practice (Rendell, 2006). The thesis examines the im/materiality, spatiality, and temporality of bordering practices through the negotiation of spaces of political-sectarian conflict – since their resurfacing in Beirut in 2005, practised by a triad of residents, politicians, and militias. It is a site-specific and practice-led research project that employs art, design and urban research tools to work with residents, located between the two adjacent areas of Tarik al-Jdide and Mazraa – both situated within the Mazraa district, and of different political affiliations divided across Sunni/Shiite lines. Through negotiation and narrative the thesis explores a series of modes of bordering practices: those produced by conflict mechanisms, negotiated and narrated by residents; those negotiated and narrated through my engagements with the residents during this doctoral research; and those negotiated and narrated through the art installations I produced in response as forms of critical spatial practice. The thesis is structured into four projects, each of which develops first by identifying strategic division conditions practised by political parties through the borders of: Surveillance, Sound, Displacement and Administration; second, by investigating residents’ spatial practices that exist as responses and negotiations to those strategic divisions; third, and finally, the four projects produce four new bordering practices that transform borders into multiple shifting practices and representations that divide and connect through acts of negotiating and narrating: in particular, in project 1, crossing the border of surveillance between two women at their balconies; in project 2, translating the border of sound between taxi and walking journeys; in project 3, matching the border of displacement between twin sisters and their husbands; and in project 4, hiding behind the border of administration between an elected district’s representative and his fictional TV character.

Theoretically, the High Seas are by definition peaceable. Consequently, there is no requirement for security enforcement upon them. Historically, they are also common territory. Movement on them is unrestricted and states are proscribed from exerting power over them. This image of secure oceans and unfettered use of the seas is the ideational basis of international maritime governance and law. And it is also the key enabler of global maritime trade. Practically, however, this image is flawed. There is an observable rise in incidents of maritime insecurity, some of it minor, but much not. For instance, there is evidence that the high seas are being deliberately exploited for criminal and terrorist purposes. The reasons for this are linked to the High Seas Regime. Specifically, its prescription on the use of enforcement power and the interplay between the international law of the regime, and the domestic jurisdictions of individual maritime actors. This situation now challenges both law makers and security practitioners. So, given this paradox between perceived ideals and actual circumstances, how can states adequately provide for their security upon the oceans? Commentators such as Posen and Holmes suggest a return to the classical maritime strategies of Mahan and Corbett. They compare the oceans to ungoverned or undergoverned space on land, and posit the need for 'command of the commons' . While unashamedly antithetical to the concept of 'free seas', this also ignores the postmodern separation of the delivery of security from the successful practice of warfare. In strategy terms, the ways of achieving the latter (i.e. decisive military action) are not available in the political space of the former. The means, however, (i .e. seapower) are the same. Referencing Till's work on post-modern seapower, and acknowledging that Freedom of the Sea will remain the central tenet of the High Seas Regime, this thesis proposes that the two traditional political narratives of the oceans - the co-operation space or the conflict space - are diverging. And that a third narrative, the Maritime Security Space is emerging between them. In it, the intervention rights available during periods of cooperation, currently limited to situations of piracy, human trafficking and illegal broadcasting, will be unrepresentative of the range of insecurity to be found.

The universality of human rights has been a fiercely contested issue throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. This thesis critically engages with the universality of human rights, not as a static characteristic or attribute of rights, but as an ongoing process using Judith Butler's concept of cultural translation. A practice through which universal concepts are dialectically worked and reworked by entering into dialogue with competing assertions of themselves, cultural translation is explored as a productive way in which rights politics can be read and consciously engaged in by radical political groups, feminist groups in particular, to work human rights beyond their current liberal conceptualisations. In this investigation Butler's ontological tools of performativity and livability are also engaged to consider the way in which the universalisation of human rights interacts with discourses of gender subjectivity and, crucially, may offer opportunities to open up wider possibilities for gendered life. The culmination of this thesis, paying attention to the links between the work of Butler and that of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, advances the model of cultural translation as a potential centrepiece in a contemporary . radical democratic theory and practice of human rights. Exploration of the possibilities of cultural translation in this way is carried out via two case studies considering the universal human rights concepts of "non-discrimination", thought in relation to gendered violence, and "life", thought in relation to the politics of abortion, as they translate from the international to the local level, annotating investigation at the latter level with insights from rights politics in the context of Northern Ireland.

The central finding of this thesis adopts a positivist and 'orthodox' perspective (in contrast to what has been described as the 'heresy' of, for example, the Critical Legal Studies movement) in suggesting that the view each judge has of his or her interpretive function is dispositive of a differential judicial approach to the application of the principle of sovereignty in the asylum and immigration code in Ireland and that this perspective is further informed by a series of identifiable factors which, to date, have been the subject of a largely normative assessment from either a human rights approach or the protection of the state in effective immigration control and the securing of national boundaries. The variables or factors which inform this varied judicial approach can be grouped as firstly, the competing rights (including, in particular, constitutional rights) which arise in various aspects of the asylum and immigration process including, for example, detention, direct provision, family re-unification and the position of Irish citizen children and secondly, the (arguably differential) application of the law of the European Union (in referring matters of European law to the Court of Justice of the European Union for advisory opinions) and the application of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights by Irish Superior Courts. The chronological overview adopted covers the period from 2000 to 2014 (2000-2004; 2005-2009; 2010-2014) and the decisions reviewed comprise the judgments of the High Court and the Supreme Court as the process for challenging decisions in an asylum, immigration and citizenship context is' a statutory judicial review procedure which can only be brought in the Superior Courts, i.e. initiated in the High Court and appealed to the Court of Appeal (from October 2014) and the Supreme Court

Since its establishment in January 1951, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has played a unique and pivotal role related to international refugee law. The thesis explores the bases for this role and the approaches adopted by UNHCR to strengthen its role since the onset of the crisis in refugee protection in the 1980's. UNHCR's creation of doctrinal positions, that is, the organisation's written views of what refugee law should be, are featured as a crucial means employed by UNHCR to further the elaboration of the refugee law framework. UNHCR's innovative approaches related to States' accession, implementation, and application of international standards for the protection of refugees, such as capacity-building, are highlighted as means to enhance the effectiveness of international refugee law. The thesis commences with an overview of the historical and statutory foundations for UNHCR's role related to international refugee law, in chapter 1. The content of UNHCR's responsibilities, which concern the development and effectiveness of international refugee law, and the work the organisation carries out in order to fulfil these responsibilities, are explored in chapter 2. The flexibility in UNHCR's international law role, attributable to formal means to modify UNHCR's responsibilities and techniques adopted by the organisation, is elaborated in chapter 3. The increasing divergence between UNHCR's and States' approaches to refugee law, with the significant consequence that the weaknesses in the treaty law framework and in the means for ensuring its effectiveness, particularly its application, have become increasingly prominent, are the subject of chapter 4. The approaches adopted by UNHCR to address the weaknesses in the treaty law framework are evaluated in chapter 5 while the new activities carried out by UNHCR to strengthen the effectiveness of international refugee law are reviewed in the final chapter, chapter 6.

My thesis addresses the question of International Tax Arbitrage ("ITA"). The discussion is comparative in nature, covering the United States and the United Kingdom. The study builds a foundation to discuss cross-border transactions where the laws of more than one jurisdiction apply to the transaction in question. Weighing the intervention of national revenue authorities in these transactions requires us to look also at the different background and policy objectives of each country, including the varying tax incentives that exist in each jurisdiction and the attitude of each country towards cross-border transactions. ITA is a situation whereby a given taxpayer structures her affairs in a way that allows her to follow and comply with the tax laws of two or more jurisdictions while receiving a tax advantage without any net investment as a result of inherent inconsistencies between the tax laws of the different jurisdictions, thus reducing her overall world tax rate. I focus on the question whether taxpayers should be allowed to exploit inherent differences between the tax rules of different jurisdictions. I discuss this question both at the practical level and at the policy level. To properly answer this important question, we need first to determine what are the relevant policy considerations that should be taken into account. In this analysis, attention has to be given also to considerations that are not always included in the analysis, like foreign policy and political considerations, including in the UK, the impact of EC law on tax policy. Once the considerations have been identified, it is necessary to apply them to the situation at hand. In the thesis, I explore the different considerations both independently and in relation to specific case studies and develop an approach to analyze the appropriateness of ITA in given situations.

This thesis provides a philosophical account of the morality of extraterritorial punishment. The introduction clarifies the methodology by putting forward an analytical account of moral rights and endorsing the interest-based theory of rights, and presents a normative appraisal of the moral significance of political boundaries. Chapter 1 presents an innovative interest-based justification for the right to punish. Chapter 2 examines the extraterritorial scope of this right to punish with regards to domestic offences. It argues that the justification here advocated is the best suited to account for the strong intuition that the right to punish should be primarily territorial in scope, and provides a critique of the principles for states' power to punish offences committed extraterritorially currently in force under international law. The next part of the thesis focuses on extraterritoriality in the context of international criminal law. Chapter 3 argues that the defining feature of the concept of an international crime is that it warrants conferring upon some extraterritorial body the power to punish their perpetrators regardless of the nationality of both offender and victim. Chapter 4 provides a fresh look at universal and international jurisdiction, i.e., at the theoretical explanation for the proposition that every state should have the right to punish international crimes and the scope of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Chapter 5 provides a theory of legitimate authority to punish offenders. It relies on an innovative application of the influential service conception of authority to this specific question and permits a philosophical examination of issues such as show trials, victor's justice, tu quoque, and trials in absentia or against defendants who have been abducted abroad. A conclusion summarizes the central findings of the thesis and suggests possible avenues for future research.