Thesis advisor: David M. Rasmussen / In this dissertation I argue for an approach that conceives human rights as both moral and legal rights. The merit of such an approach is its capacity to understand human rights more in terms of the kind of world free and reasonable beings would like to live in rather than simply in terms of what each individual is legally entitled to. While I acknowledge that every human being has the moral entitlement to be granted living conditions that are conducive to a dignified life, I maintain, at the same time, that the moral and legal aspects of human rights are complementary and should be given equal weight. The legal aspect compensates for the limitations of moral human rights the observance of which depends on the conscience of the individual, and the moral aspect tempers the mechanical and inhumane application of the law. Unlike the traditional or orthodox approach, which conceives human rights as rights that individuals have by virtue of their humanity, and the political or practical approach, which understands human rights as legal rights that are meant to limit the sovereignty of the state, the moral-legal approach reconciles law and morality in human rights discourse and underlines the importance of a legal framework that compensates for the deficiencies in the implementation of moral human rights. It not only challenges the exclusively negative approach to fundamental liberties but also emphasizes the necessity of an enforcement mechanism that helps those who are not morally motivated to refrain from violating the rights of others. Without the legal mechanism of enforcement, the understanding of human rights would be reduced to simply framing moral claims against injustices. Many traditional human rights theorists failed to reconcile the moral and legal aspects of human rights. That is why Jürgen Habermas, whose approach to human rights provides the guiding intuition of this dissertation, has been criticized for approaching human rights from a legal point of view, especially in Between Facts and Norms. Most of Habermas’s critics overlooked his goal in the project of reconstructing law. Habermas addresses the question of the legitimacy of modern law by finding good arguments for a law to be recognized as right and just. For him, modern law has two sources of legitimacy: human rights and popular sovereignty. He affirms their mutual presupposition in a system of rights within a constitutional democracy. In order to grasp Habermas’s moral considerations in his account of human rights, one has to go beyond Between Facts and Norms. That is why the relationship Habermas establishes between law and morality should constitute the starting point in understanding the moral dimension of human rights in his account of human rights. That relationship is clarified in the discussion on the interdependence between human rights and human dignity. Human dignity provides the ground from which human rights are interpreted and justified. Human dignity is the standpoint from which individuals can claim rights from one another on the basis of mutual respect. Because of human dignity, members of a political community can live as free and equal citizens. In order to achieve such a goal, there must be structures that facilitate social integration. Thus, the existence of a strong civil society that can stimulate discussion in the public sphere and promote a vigilant citizenry and respect for human rights becomes very important. The protection of human rights becomes a common and shared responsibility. Such a responsibility goes beyond the boundaries of nation-states and requires the establishment of a cosmopolitan human rights regime based on the conviction that all human beings are members of a community of fate and that they share common values which transcend the limits of their individual states. In a cosmopolitan human rights regime, people are protected as persons and not as citizens of a particular state. The realization of such a regime requires solidarity and the politics of compassion. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: Stephen J. Pfohl / Existing studies of governmental responses to human rights allegations emphasize the rhetorical forms that official claims take at the expense of demonstrating how contextual factors influence discourse. Analytically, this dissertation accounts for these factors by theorizing and analyzing how knowledge and culture operate in American political discourse of torture. Drawing on a qualitative content and discourse analysis of 40 congressional hearings, held between 2003 and 2008, this dissertation documents a transition in American politics from a discourse of denial, which downplayed allegations of abuse and torture, to a discourse of acknowledgment, which criticized the Bush administration's interrogation policies on the grounds that the policies permitted torture and undermined U.S. interests. By situating this transition within its institutional and political context, this study examines the influence of documentary evidence of torture, interpretive frames in which American officials situated that evidence, and political power as expressed in control over congressional committees on political discourse. Between 2003 and 2008, a significant volume of documentary evidence of violence against detainees in U.S. custody entered public discourse. Typically, shifts in congressional discourse followed the release of official, documentary evidence produced by government sources, such as military police or FBI agents, that provided first-hand or localized portrayals of abuse and torture at U.S. detention facilities. Such documents, including the photographs taken at Abu Ghraib prison and FBI emails documenting torture at Guantánamo, secured a "reality" of violence that members of Congress found difficult to rationalize as legitimate state violence. This difficulty stems, in part, from the fact that localized portrayals of interpersonal violence frequently capture the excesses of that violence--the irrationality, sadism, and innovations in cruelty of torturers and the vulnerabilities of sufferers of torture. Significantly, though, the political meaning of documentary evidence derives from the interpretive frames in which it is situated. Between 2003 and 2008, "human rights" and the "rule of law" became increasingly available as interpretive frames for the political debate over detention and interrogation. This development resulted from several changes in the political environment, including the Bush administration's mobilization of human rights to legitimize the Iraq war and the Supreme Court's rulings on cases involving detainees. The Democrat's mid-term victory in 2006, which won Democrats control over both the House of Representatives and Senate, also profoundly influenced political discourse. Democrats used congressional committees to pursue broad, reflective hearings on the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies. By inviting legal scholars and representatives of human rights organizations to speak about the policies, the Committees further elevated human rights and the rule of law in the debate about torture. Given these developments, a critical discourse of torture gradually emerged and solidified. This discourse labeled American interrogation practices--known to their supporters as "enhanced interrogation"--as torture and linked their use to significant and negative global consequences for the U.S. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

MA, International Relations, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011 / The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a vast country in the Great Lakes region of Africa torn apart by repeated armed conflicts. As from September 1998, the conflict in the country attracted attention of the international community with the number of deaths estimated at around 3.3 million people. The 1998 armed conflict was the most complex in Africa, due to an intricate cluster of international and external factors, with up to nine states militarily involved inside the Congolese territory. These are grouped into two opposing sides, composed on the one side by the Kinshasa government with its Angolan, Namibian and Zimbabwean allies and on the other side a divided set of rebel groups composed of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD) and the Mouvement pour la Libération du Congo (MLC) with their allies from Rwanda and Uganda. The United Nations (UN) Security Council is engaged in supporting international peace and security according to Chapters VI, VII and VIII of the UN Charter. The UN Organisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) is a special mission sanctioned by the UN as an effort to solving the political problems in the DRC in line with the adoption of resolutions 1355 (2001), 1376 (2001), 1417 (2002), 1445 (2002), 1493 (2003), 1565 (2004) and 1625 (2005) by the UN Security Council. It was established that MONUC confronted challenges of peace implementation, especially in the Eastern DRC. The aim of this research is to examine the role of MONUC with regard to the promotion of democracy and human rights in the DRC. Thus, from November 1999, MONUC started to operate in the Congolese peace process for the restoration of democracy, as well as the promotion of human rights in the country. This research report will demonstrate that MONUC contributed with strong political support towards the organisation of the 2006 national democratic elections. Meanwhile, the war was ended throughout the country, but human rights abuses continued to be committed in some Eastern areas up to date.

Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, presented to the School of Law, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand. / Over the last few decades, the debate on the topic of business and human rights has dominated the international scene. Initially, the debate focused on the question whether corporations have obligations beyond making profits. This is no longer contested, and the issue now at hand is the need to define what these obligations are and to determine how they can be enforced. In the history of the development of human rights, the duty to uphold human rights and secure their protection was considered a preserve of the state. However, with changing economic dynamics and increased globalization, it is undeniable that states are no longer the only or major threat to human rights; the modern corporation, much bigger in structure and complex in operations than before, has taken its place beside the state, having as much potential as the state to negatively impact human rights. Kenya adopted a new Constitution in 2010, at the same time that John Ruggie, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on Business and Human Rights was finalizing his mandate and putting together his findings based on research he had conducted over a number of years. The business and human rights deliberations Ruggie steered at the international level were expected to culminate in the negotiation of an internationally binding instrument. This did not happen. This study shows that the failure to propose the negotiation of a treaty was not fatal to the Business and Human Rights agenda, but rather that the alternative approach taken presents a more ideal opportunity to prepare the ground for the future negotiation of a treaty. Ruggie developed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and proposed them as a common global platform for action, an authoritative focal point to direct efforts geared at understanding the corporate obligation for human rights. Although both the Constitution of Kenya and Ruggie’s findings underscore the role of the corporation in upholding human rights, the corporate obligation with regards to human rights is not clear. The main objective of the research was therefore to give human rights obligations of corporations in Kenya greater specificity so that both corporations and the State may more effectively implement them. The study undertook to investigate what the corporate obligation for human rights entails, building on the foundation established by the 2010 Constitution, which provides for horizontal application of the Bill of Rights to juristic persons, and the guidance offered for states and corporations and other business entities through the UN Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework and the UN Guiding Principles. The study established what the obligations under the three pillars recommended in the UN Framework would mean for Kenya. The mistaken belief commonly held by corporations that corporate social responsibility is the same as human rights obligation was explored. The findings also show that the State Duty to Protect will mainly be exercised through the enactment of laws that offer guidance to corporations on what constitutes their duty and how it can be executed in practice. The study therefore recommends that amendments and additions be made to particular laws, the main one being the Companies Act of Kenya, to guide corporations in executing their human rights obligation. Furthermore, a recommendation is made that the Commission charged with implementing the Constitution include a specific section on Business and Human Rights in the National Policy and Action Plan drawn up to implement the 2010 Constitution. This will ensure that due attention is given to the subject, and a clear and comprehensive approach adopted to make corporate accountability for human rights violations a practical and realistic goal. The proposals made for the Action Plan include factors that will improve access to remedy for victims of human rights violations. / MT2017

In the first two months of 2014, LGBTI rights were dealt heavy blows in two African countries. On 7 January, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan signed into law a bill that criminalises same-sex unions, with prison sentences of up to fourteen years. This same law sentences any person or organisation that funds in any way the registration and operation of gay organisations, clubs, or societies to a prison sentence of ten years. A month later, the president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, officially assented to a more draconian bill which imposes penalties as high as life imprisonment for people engaging in consensual same-sex sexual activity. There has been a stark increase in the passing of repressive gender laws on the continent in the last decade. This is a qualitative inductive study that sets out to research the factors causing the increase of gender repressive law making in African states between 2009 and 2014. The study sets out to dissect the 2014 Anti-homosexuality bills of 2014 in Uganda and Nigeria as case studies. Using a multi-layered analysis approach the study tests out the influences leading to the increase of LGBTI intolerant laws categorised into national, regional and international impacts. I argue that strategic national interests are central in explaining the frequency, urgency and intensity of anti-homosexuality vitriol in some African states.

1 Abstract (in English langugage) In the presented dissertation thesis I tried to argue that if we want to apply the principle of proportionality correctly in case of a collision of fundamental rights or in case of a collision between a fundamental right and a countervailing interest, it is not sufficient only to refer to this principle within the argumentation. On the contrary, it is necessary to recognize a structure of this principle and to apply its components. In order to recognize the structure and components of the proportionality principle, it is necessary to understand the role and effects of human rights in legal orders. I assume that theoretical backgrounds of this principle contribute to the better understanding of the objective tension between the individual's autonomy and general will of the society. Another important aspect in the correct application of this principle is the institutional balance between the legislature and the judiciary and overcoming of the "counter-majoritarian problem". In the contemporary, not only Czech, but also foreign practice we may observe lots of examples in which courts do not pay appropriate attention to the proportionality principle. When solving hard cases, sometimes they made only a reference to this principle without further elaboration. From the...

Esta pesquisa elege o materialismo histórico-dialético como método de análise de ques-tões contemporâneas da homossexualidade e sua relação com o Judiciário brasileiro. Articula paradigmas marxianos, marxistas e feministas, por meio da interdisciplinaridade do direito, da sociologia, da antropologia, da filosofia e das ciências da linguagem, para compreender o fenômeno LGBT (lésbicas, gays, bissexuais, transexuais e transgêneros) que mobiliza indivíduos na reivindicação por promoção, efetivação e proteção de direitos humanos. Recorre aos conceitos de fetichismo da mercadoria, fetichismo jurídi-co, forma jurídica, contrato e gênero, na perspectiva da História, para compreender e promover a desnaturalização de processos sociais e situá-los na base econômica da so-ciedade em face da luta de classes. Posiciona o direito na superestrutura, onde localiza também o direito civil, o direito de família e os direitos humanos, para desnudar seus processos discursivos ideológicos e, logo, práticos. Empreende uma crítica marxista dos direitos humanos ao tomar como objeto decisões do Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) e do Superior Tribunal de Justiça (STJ), respectivamente, sobre o reconhecimento da união estável entre pessoas do mesmo sexo e a autorização de conversão em casamento de união estável entre duas lésbicas. / This research chooses historic-dialectic materialism as a method of analyzing contem-porary issues concerning homosexuality and its relation to the Brazilian Judiciary System. It formulates Marxian, Marxist and feminist paradigms, through the interdisciplinarity of law, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and language sciences, to comprehend the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and transgender) phenomenon that mobilizes individuals in the claim for promotion, effectuation and protection of human rights. It resorts to the concepts of commodity fetishism, legal fetishism, judicial form, contract and gender, in the historical perspective, to comprehend and promote the de-naturalization of social processes and place them in the economical base of society in light of class struggle. It positions the law in the superstructure, where it also finds civil law, family law and human rights, to unveil its discursive ideological and, therefore, practical processes. It undertakes a Marxist critique of human rights by taking as object Brazils Federal Supreme Court (STF) and Superior Court of Justice (STJ) decisions, respectively, regarding the recognition of same-sex unions and the authorization of civil union conversion into marriage between two lesbians

Thesis advisor: Richard Cobb-Stevens / The right of revolution in the social contract theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke is a curious topic. This paper discusses the differences and similarities between the two philosophers’ discussions of this topic. It is argued that Hobbes and Locke differ most drastically on the notion of who the sovereign is. While Hobbes prefers to establish the sovereign as a demigod, Locke understands the sovereign as a mortal, and thus fallible, man. It is because of this distinction that Hobbes and Locke disagree on the notion of the right of revolution. Furthermore, the American Founding Fathers, including James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, inherited Locke’s perspective on this matter when arguing for the independence of the colonies. Finally, it is the conclusion of this paper that this notion of the right of revolution continues today, when observing the numerous political revolutions around the world. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: James M. O'Toole / In the 1960s and 1970s American Catholics invoked conscience inordinately. They claimed to possess “sacred rights of conscience.” Catholics produced a thick psychological literature on the “formation of conscience.” They also made clear that conscience could never be handed over to an authority figure, whether in the church or state. The term conscience then became a keyword in the rights discourse of late twentieth century America. This dissertation seeks to explain why Catholics invoked conscience so frequently in the 1960s and 1970s, and it aims to chart how conscience became important to the rights vernacular of the late twentieth century. Catholics invoked conscience frequently in an effort to remain in and expand tradition. The theology of conscience had roots in the thirteenth century work of Thomas Aquinas -- a tradition American Catholics studied in the 1940s and 1950s. This study also shows how the human rights advocates of Amnesty International and a community of mainline Protestants appropriated the Catholic theology of conscience and used it for their own purposes. The 1960s and 1970s, rather than witnessing the end of tradition, facilitated its growth.

Thesis advisor: Jennie Purnell / Thesis advisor: Gerald Easter / This thesis seeks to explore how drug cartels achieved de facto sovereign control over the favelas of Rio de Janeiro between 2000 and 2010, effectively preventing the Brazilian state from guaranteeing the rule of law uniformly throughout national territory. It also investigates the extent to which Brazilian citizens have suffered human rights abuses as a result. Drawing on both primary and secondary evidence, I argue that drug cartels gained sovereignty over these enclaves as a combined result of state weakness and cartel strength. The Brazilian state forfeited these territories a century ago, because it was infrastructurally weak to such an extent that it was unable to systematically penetrate them in order to monopolize violence, enforce laws, and provide public services. The cartels, in turn, exploited the favelas as ideal locations for the transport, repackaging, and sale of drugs. Benefiting from the profits of illicit activities, the gangs transformed into well-armed, bellicose organizations that maintained authority over the communities by performing state-like duties. In due course, organized crime amassed sufficient control over the favelas to thwart most state encroachments. Examining the exceptions, I found that the limited police encroachments were largely rights abusive--save those made by the Pacifying Police Units. State weakness and cartel strength have disjointed the rule of law and undermined democracy in Brazil. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.