<p>The Serbs are a national group which has been disliked by the Croats for hundreds of years. Even before Croatia became a part of Yugoslavia, the country wanted its independence. However, before and after the break up of Yugoslavia, there was a strong nationalism in the country which led to hatred towards the Serbs and the Serb minorities in Croatia. Studies have shown that minorities often are disfavoured by the majority decisions. This leads to a disadvantageous position for the minorities in the relation to the majority. The problem is how a state should compensate these groups for their disadvantageous position to be able to ensure justice and equality for all citizens within the country.</p><p>The aim of this thesis is to compare Croatia’s formal national minority rights with the actual national minority rights of the Serbs and to see whether they coincide with each other. The research questions are:</p><p>• What formal minority rights do Croatian Serbs have in Croatia?</p><p>• What minority rights do Croatian Serbs have in reality?</p><p>The method used in this study is the qualitative text analysis.</p><p>The conclusion of this thesis is that Croatia has a positive attitude towards minority rights and the Serb minority, as Croatia has allocated group-differentiated rights to its national minorities. The Croatian view upon national minority rights coincides to a large extent with Will Kymlicka´s theory. Furthermore, the formal rights and the virtual rights regarding education, language, culture and proportional representation coincides to a great extent if not precisely.</p>

Thesis (LL. M.)--University of Toronto, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references.

Univ. Cheikh Anta Diop, Diss u.d.T.: La condition du pouvoir exécutif dans le nouveau constitutionnalisme africain--Dakar, 2001. / Literaturverz. S. 279 - 305.

Thesis (D. Jur.)--York University, 2001. / Typescript. "Graduate Programme in Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 351-371). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ67941.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Kiel, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. xiii-xxxiii).

The Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region established the legal and judicial systems of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of the People’s Republic of China. The courts of the HKSAR are vested under the Basic Law with the independent judicial power of the HKSAR, and are authorized to interpret the Basic Law. The common law based legal system is maintained in the new order under the Basic Law. The HKSAR courts have interpreted the Basic Law as the constitution of the HKSAR, and, using the traction provided by the constitutionalization of the Basic Law, made and filled for themselves the role of a constitutional check on the executive and legislative branches of government to ensure that they act in accordance with the Basic Law, with the constitutional jurisdiction to invalidate executive decisions and legislations found to be inconsistent with the Basic Law. This Thesis considers the exercise of judicial power in the HKSAR along three trajectories. The first tackles the challenges to the legality and legitimacy of the constitutional jurisdiction of the courts of the HKSAR to review legislations of the HKSAR, principally propounded by Mainland Chinese scholarship. The arguments set out in the most representative of such scholarship are each examined and rebutted. Nevertheless, the courts of the HKSAR are vulnerable to the exercise of the power of interpretation by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) of certain provisions of the Basic Law touching upon the review of legislation and the adjudication of cases. The second concerns the relationship between the HKSAR courts and the coordinate branches of government of the HKSAR, namely the executive authorities and the legislature. Through an examination of the methodologies and procedures in which the HKSAR courts review legislation, it is found that they have calibrated and tempered the process of review, including the countering of justification with deference and the innovation in remedies, to palliate the effect of judicial scrutiny. The third examines the incidents where the exercise of judicial power in the HKSAR impinges upon a national law element under the Basic Law, the chief of which is the Court of Final Appeal making a reference of provisions of the Basic Law to the NPCSC for interpretation before final adjudication. The Court adopted strategies to resist the making of a reference to the NPCSC, taking a ‘second-best’ approach in limiting the effect and influence of Mainland legislative measures and legal theory in the HKSAR. It is possible for the Court to act as a last bastion of the autonomy of the HKSAR. This Thesis concludes with a cautious look at the erosive risks to the duty of the HKSAR courts to exercise constitutional jurisdiction posed by the findings above and the trend of indigenization of jurisprudence. The jurisprudence of the HKSAR must, in its own interest, stay cosmopolitan. / The Best PhD Thesis in the Faculties of Architecture, Arts, Business & Economics, Education, Law and Social Sciences (University of Hong Kong), Li Ka Shing Prize, 2010-11. / published_or_final_version / Law / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This dissertation offers a novel argument for the democratic importance of political parties and campaign finance. Taking issue with the United States Supreme Court's campaign finance and political party jurisprudence, which tends to value campaign spending and party activity for the role that they play in expanding voter choice, my account seeks, instead, to emphasize the role that these forms of political participation can play in countering the sense of political disenchantment which characterizes the political attitudes of a large number of American citizens today. I argue in this project that by subjecting their preferences to continuous contestation and challenge, parties and campaign finance can help instill an appreciation for compromise, as well as tolerance for political diversity and disagreement, among the disenchanted. This, in turn, has many beneficial implications for enabling good governance on the part of the American state. In the course of the dissertation, I also specify the many ways in which contemporary parties and campaign finance regimes need to be reformed in order for them to be able to perform this role. Questions of institutional design thus occupy an extremely prominent place in the project. / Government

No description available.

Seventy-five years ago the provincial governments of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta signed a series of Natural Resources Transfer Agreements (NRTAs) with the federal government. These agreements provided the answer to a contentious debate known as the 'Natural Resources Question'. Before the NRTAs, the three prairie provinces did not have control over their public domain lands and did not share equal constitutional status with the other Canadian provinces. In the early 1920s, Prime Minister King recognized the validity of the provincial arguments for constitutional equality and no longer wanted the federal government to be responsible for the administration of provincial natural resources. By this time, the policy ambitions which had previously justified the retention of the natural resources had been fulfilled. Thus, the constitutional rights arguments presented by the prairie provinces found a receptive audience when the control of the lands and resources were no longer a federal priority.

Although Ronald Inglehart's New Politics theory has attracted criticism, its influential distinction between materialist and postmaterialist values tends to go unquestioned. The influence of this distinction is particularly apparent when analysts interpret the "new" social movement emphasis on esteem and belonging as a "postmaterialist" departure from a traditional, or "materialist" focus on security. This way of understanding contemporary feminist and ethnocultural-minority movements is misleading because it rests on a onedimensional view of esteem and belonging. By treating esteem and belonging as expressive, which is to say as purely aesthetic or psychological goods, New Politics obscures the instrumental significance of esteem and belonging for movements that represent traditionally, marginalized constituencies. This work undertakes a qualitative study of the participation of national socialmovement organizations, "old" and "new," in Canadian constitutional politics. The analysis is based on these actors' presentations to parliamentary hearings and royal commissions on major constitution-related issues between the years 1938 and 1992. Above all, the study illustrates what New Politics theory neglects: the instrumental role of social esteem and civic belonging as bases of voice and self-defence. I argue that attending to this role can help analysts to understand better the postwar politics of recognition. The work develops this argument in three major ways. First, I demonstrate the instrumental importance of esteem and belonging for the mid-century traditional left. Second, I show that problems of misrecognition and disesteem presented feminists and ethnocultural minorities with severe difficulties in garnering a meaningful hearing for their security needs. Third, I analyze the discursive ways in which postwar "new" movement participants came to pursue forms of respect that had proved elusive in the past. The work's overall conclusion is this: the material nature of the politics of recognition is demonstrated by the extent to which increased esteem and belonging for traditionally disrespected groups has been paralleled by an expanded menu of recognized security concerns. The study's major message follows from this conclusion: because struggles over esteem and belonging have crucial material stakes, they should not be contrasted a priori with struggles that may appear to target questions of security more directly.