Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2004. / Document formatted into pages; contains 213 p. Includes bibliographical references. Abstract available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2009 May 29.

Thesis (M.A.P.S.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [68]-69).

Thesis (M.A.P.S.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [68]-69).

Thesis (M.A.P.S.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [68]-69).

The thesis begins by asking why American tax policy is both attracted to and repelled by the idea of justice. Accepting the invitation of mid-twentieth-century economist Henry Simons to acknowledge that tax justice is a theological concept, the thesis seeks to excavate theological doctrines of taxation throughout Christian history in a way that can answer the presenting question. After analyzing the confusions in contemporary American tax policy (Chapter One), the thesis argues that Christian theology relativized property interests (the moral category most closely related to taxation). Taxation came to express different interests simultaneously and balanced them, while the idea of necessitas (need) emerged as the fulcrum of that balance (Chapter Two). The thesis develops the themes incipient in the early history by highlighting three salient theological moments. Thomas Aquinas clarified his predecessors' doctrines of property, resolving the tension between communal and private property through the interplay of natural and positive law (Chapter Three). In Thomas' account, the positive law of private ownership yields to the natural law substrate of communal property at the boundary between need and superabundance. Taxation can serve to implement that balance. The redistributive logic of Martin Luther's thinking extended to his political theology, as most clearly expressed in his "Preface to the Ordinance of a Common Chest" (Chapter Four), while John Calvin invoked the idea that economic inequality puts in motion both the circulation of goods and the need for redistribution of resources (Chapter Five). By way of conclusion, the thesis suggests a possible narrative connecting early modern to contemporary views on taxation. In the theological account, taxation's balancing function "legitimates" it. Modern tax theory, on the other hand, represents in some ways a return to the Greco-Roman model of tax "justification" instead of legitimacy.

Proefschrift Leiden. / Résumé en francais. Lit. opg. - Index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, Dec., 2009. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

The 11th of November 2018, marked the 100th year anniversary of Poland regaining independence in 1918, following nearly 123 years of partition. To commemorate this centennial anniversary, museums and cultural institutions around the country hosted exhibitions presenting national identity and narratives. In this thesis, I compare two such exhibitions in Warsaw, one hosted by the Warsaw National Museum and the other housed in the Warsaw Modern Art Museum. I argue that the employment of feminine figures as allegorical representations of the nation within the Krzycząc: Polska! Niepodległa 1918 (Shouting: Poland! Independence 1918), exhibition of the Warsaw National Museum, serves as an illustrative example of how women have historically, and continue to be, made physical and symbolic bearers of an exclusivist version of Polish national identity. The Niepodległe (Independent Women) exhibition housed in the Warsaw Modern Art Museum, on the other hand, presents an alternative, and more inclusive, means of national identity formation through acknowledging the heterogenous roles and identities taken up by the actual women of the nation. / Master of Arts / The 11th of November 2018, marked the 100th year anniversary of Poland regaining independence in 1918, following nearly 123 years of partition. To commemorate this centennial anniversary, museums and cultural institutions around the country hosted exhibitions presenting national identity and narratives. In this thesis, I compare two such exhibitions in Warsaw, one hosted by the Warsaw National Museum and the other housed in the Warsaw Modern Art Museum. I argue that the employment of feminine figures as allegorical representations of the nation within the Krzycząc: Polska! Niepodległa 1918 (Shouting: Poland! Independence 1918), exhibition of the Warsaw National Museum, serves as an illustrative example of how women have historically, and continue to be, made physical and symbolic bearers of an exclusivist version of Polish national identity. The Niepodległe (Independent Women) exhibition housed in the Warsaw Modern Art Museum, on the other hand, presents an alternative, and more inclusive, means of national identity formation through acknowledging the heterogenous roles and identities taken up by the actual women of the nation.

This thesis examines the practices of international, national, and localised criminal courts in post-genocide Rwanda. It argues that, although the courts are compatible in law, an interpretive cultural analysis shows that they have often competed with one another. The research draws on interviews conducted with judges, lawyers, and a group of witnesses and suspects from the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the national Rwandan courts, and the gacaca community courts. The courts’ judges and lawyers have interpreted Rwanda’s transitional justice processes very differently. The ICTR has been principally concerned with developing international criminal case law. The national courts purport to have focused on domestic legal reform, while personnel inside gacaca view these local courts as having provided an account of the events and causes of the genocide. This thesis argues that the different interpretations offered within Rwanda’s post-genocide courts illuminate divergent legal cultures inside the institutions, leading to failures in effective cooperation and evidence gathering. The courts have pursued diverse means to try to establish their legitimate authority. However, among a group of Rwandan citizens, the practices of one court were routinely used as the basis to criticise the actions of the others, raising challenges for the legitimacy of transitional justice in Rwanda. The potential for similar competition between domestic and international justice processes is apparent in the current practice of the International Criminal Court (ICC). However, this competition can be mitigated through more effective communication between different justice systems which respond to the needs of the affected populations, fostering a legal culture of complementarity.

My hypothesis is that social contract theory does not satisfactorily explain why we owe a serious concern or respect to profoundly mentally disabled individuals (PMD). This is a problem for social contract theories if we assume, like I do in this dissertation, that the PMD possess a robust moral status (RMS). My dissertation will explore the main strategies deployed by contractarian and contractualist theorists to bring the PMD within the purview of the social contract, in order to clarify why some aspects of their claims are promising but why they nonetheless fail to fully explain the robust moral status of the PMD. I notably find that they leave morally important dimensions of human relations out of the contractual frame, which means that they exclude the PMD from the scope of justice and morality when they claim that this contractual frame offers the only valid explanation to be a subject of justice and a moral patient. I do not conclude that this requires us to reject social contract theory altogether, nor do I count it as a reason to question whether the PMD have a robust moral status. In my concluding chapter, I will rather suggest a theoretical frame that has the potential of incorporating both contractual and non-contractual relations within the spheres of morality and justice, because both kinds of relation vehicle important intuitions about what is of value in human life. This dissertation will contribute to orientate future research on the moral and political grounds for the rights of profoundly mentally disabled people, as well as question or curtail the breadth of certain key assumptions of social contract theories.