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This thesis aims to generate a model to answer why there is a notable gap in legislative action with regards to expanding and modernizing LGBTQIA+ rights between Sweden and Denmark and the other Nordic countries, groups described by Jens Rydström as the Progressive Core and Conservative Periphery respectively. In order to do so, there is an analysis of the applicability of Rydström’s model to legislative history. This legal review is then applied to the shared colonial experiences of Norway, Iceland, Finland, and the Faroe Islands to generate the beginnings of an explanatory model. The model is then complexified by using the shared colonialist past as an exemplar of lost state capacity before and after independence. This model of lost state capacity is then applied not only to the above gap, but also to the even larger legislative gap between action in the above groups and in a new category consisting of Finland and the Faroe Islands. The last step is an in-depth application of this model to the Finnish case in comparison to the Progressive Core and the Conservative Periphery. This is accomplished in two ways: first through a content analysis of party platforms from five separate eras of Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian politics, and, secondly, through a qualitative analysis of the legislative action data.

Thesis advisor: Mark S. Massa, S.J. / Since the publication of Harvard Law School professor Adrian Vermeule’s now-infamous 2020 essay in The Atlantic, “Beyond Originalism,” American legal scholars have developed a renewed interest in natural law jurisprudence’s position in the American legal tradition. Although many of Vermeule’s critics have framed his jurisprudential method as foreign to the American legal tradition, American legal scholars likewise engaged in important debates about natural law jurisprudence nearly a century ago. During this earlier period, scholars debated whether natural law jurisprudence's reliance on deductive reasoning could withstand the inductive and socially scientific methods that became popular at elite American law schools during the 1920s and 1930s. To understand this earlier iteration of debate over natural law jurisprudence, this thesis turns to the life and legacy of William J. Kenealy—a Jesuit priest who served as dean of the Boston College Law School between 1939 and 1956. Although Kenealy has been almost entirely ignored in the historiography, he figured prominently in an attempted revival of natural law jurisprudence that occurred during the early/mid-twentieth century. Terming this movement the “Neo-Scholastic Legal Revival” because of its reliance on Neo-Scholastic understandings of natural law philosophy, this thesis uncovers how Kenealy's religious formation at the turn of the twentieth century, legal training at the Jesuit-run Georgetown University, and wartime leadership at Boston College positioned him well to contribute to the Revival. In doing so, this thesis reveals that leaders in the Revival, including Kenealy, exerted cognizable influence on twentieth-century American legal discourse. Thus, this thesis challenges dominant historical treatments of twentieth-century American legal development that have ignored an attempted revival of natural law jurisprudence that occurred almost a century before Vermeule emerged in the national legal consciousness. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

LL.D.

This thesis provides a comprehensive history of Supreme Court Free Exercise Clause jurisprudence from 1879 until the present day. It describes how a jurisdictional approach to free exercise dominated the Court’s rulings from its first Free Exercise Clause case in 1879 until Sherbert v. Verner in 1963, and how Sherbert introduced an accommodationist precedent which was ineffectively, incompletely, and inconsistently defined by the Court. This thesis shows how proponents of accommodationism furthered a false narrative overstating the scope and consistency of Sherbert’s precedent following the Court’s repudiation of accommodationism and return to full jurisdictionalism with Employment Division v. Smith (1990). It then shows how this narrative inspired a massive bipartisan coalition in favor of codifying accommodationism, and how this coalition succeeded in passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in 1993. The RFRA coalition eventually fractured, as RFRA’s implications began to conflict with principles and objectives of liberal interest groups and the Democratic Party. This thesis posits that the fracture of the RFRA coalition can be traced back directly to confusions over Sherbert’s precedent.

As World War II neared its end in Europe, the Allied powers faced a difficult situation with the occupied nation of Austria. Considering the complicated Austrian relationship with Nazism, the Allies had to decide how the nation would be liberated, occupied, and rehabilitated. Almost instantaneously, the United States, Great Britain, and France became at odds with a vengeful Soviet Union seeking to build a defensive shield of Communist European client states that included Austria. This study will show that as the head of the American Legal Division, Col. Eberhard P. Deutsch, United States Army, was instrumental in the reformation of occupied Austria’s legal system. It will also address the alleged role he played in the modification of the Second Control Agreement of 1946, the summer quadripartite conference that allowed the Austrian government greater opportunities for self-determination.

Cette thèse étudie la dimension historique de la notion d'ordre public. Celle-ci, bien que très usitée en droit positif, est difficile à définir et à déterminer. L'analyse historique de son émergence et de son développement à partir du XVIe siècle permet de comprendre les grandes caractéristiques et problématiques que soulève son utilisation par les juristes. Afin de restreindre le champ d'investigations autrement inépuisable, le cadre d'étude choisi est l'ordre public dans sa dimension étatique. La notion d'ordre public mise en œuvre par l'État suppose la recherche de la stabilité et de la pacification de la société. Elle combine pour ce faire, d'une part des procédés de police administrative visant à prévenir les troubles à l'ordre avant qu'ils ne surviennent ; et d'autre part des outils de droit pénal visant à l'appréhension et à la punition des infractions brisant l'ordre établi. À travers l'histoire, la notion évolue selon deux axes. D'abord, l'ordre public est conçu comme une notion-cadre, permettant de rassembler un ensemble de techniques et d'outils juridique concourant la protection de la société et des personnes, ensemble qui se développe de manière pragmatique sous l'Ancien Régime. Ensuite, l'ordre public est étudié à travers son rôle de vecteur, stimulant l'intervention de l’État et de ses institutions, les amenant à agir sur la société et à la contrôler pour imposer une série de valeurs comme la garantie de la vie humaine, de la propriété, de la cohésion sociale. La dimension historique de la notion révèle la pérennité remarquable d'un modèle né sous l'Ancien Régime, conservé et perfectionné après la Révolution, qui est toujours de droit positif en ce qui concerne ses caractéristiques essentielles. / This dissertation deal with the historical dimension of the notion of public order. Public order is often used today but its meaning remains unclear. The study of the birth and evolution of public order, since the 16th century, allows a better understanding of its impacts on modern societies. It shows that public order is a notion used to summarise a vast range of public policies designed to protect society and people. It is also used to control and to drive the society in the way the political power intends.The study argues that the historical model of public order, though created in a pragmatic way in the Ancien Régime, then continued to be valid after the Revolution and is still, up to a point, valid today.

O presente trabalho analisa, com base na teoria dos sistemas sociais de Niklas Luhmann, o que significa fazer história do direito na sociedade moderna. Diante da caracterização desta sociedade como funcionalmente diferenciada, é exposta a complexidade temporal dos sistemas sociais e, em particular, do direito enquanto um possível objeto de pesquisa histórica, para em seguida avaliar em que consistem as observações históricas realizadas na sociedade atual. Por fim, avalia-se a adequação da teoria dos tempos históricos de Reinhart Koselleck à complexidade temporal da sociedade moderna. / This work analyzes, based on Niklas Luhmanns social systems theory, what it means to make legal history in modern society. Considering its characterization as a functionally differentiated society, it is exposed the temporal complexity of the social systems and particularly of law, as one of the possible subjects of historical research, to then examine what are the historical observations performed in the present society. Finally, it is evaluated how adequate is Reinhart Kosellecks theory of historical times to the temporal complexity of the modern society.

In the context of a changing political landscape, where shifts in state boundaries and socio-economic structures deeply affected the Italian peninsula and its people, this thesis analyses women and the law in action in the years from the Restoration up to the enactment of the Pisanelli code (1815-1865). It does so with particular reference to the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia. These years also saw a number of changes in the legal system with various new laws instituted. The quick succession of these legal acts testified to the new ideas, behaviours and perceptions that began to take form in the period in question, but which the patriarchal and hierarchical nineteenth century society - so reliant on strict class stratification to perpetuate its status quo - resisted fully accepting. Within this context, women began to redefine their sense of self and to think of themselves as having an identity which went beyond their traditional domestic roles of mother, wife or daughter. This work aims to describe this process by focusing on women's attitudes towards the law and their interactions with the legal system. The thesis is structured in the following way: the first part focuses on the Ottocento context, the ideals promulgated about women in public discourse and the legal framework of the Italian peninsula. In the second part attention turns to relevant case studies from the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, brought to light by first-hand examination of archival documents and court proceedings preserved in legal journals of the time. Each part is subdivided into three chapters. After an examination of the social, political and economic context of the nineteenth-century Italian peninsula (Chapter one), the discussion presents a picture of contemporary views about women according to scientists, theorists, moralists and jurists (Chapter two). Chapter three is devoted to the law in force in the pre-unification states with regard to women, paying close attention to the institution of dowry. Chapter four deals with a selection of case studies concerning marriage promises, seduction, and extramarital relations. What emerges from the investigation is the intrusiveness of authorities and the reach they extended into people's private lives in an effort to maintain social order and exercise power within a society founded on hierarchy, immobility, and obedience. Chapter five examines lawsuits questioning dowries and wills. These acts show the families' choices to preserve their wealth, often inevitably paving the way to future discord, with women initiating lawsuits to obtain more money from their relatives. Finally, Chapter six analyses widowhood and separation, two possible moments in a woman's existence that had important implications in terms of both their intimate sphere and the devolution of wealth. In particular, the chapter traces widows' actual access to inheritance, and women's requests for separation, focusing on the reasons that drove them before a court to relate issues pertaining to their very intimate lives, such as contracting diseases. Through the analysis of the law in action and women's use of the law itself, this thesis will recover the forgotten voices and lives of those ordinary women, who, in their everyday life, reacted against the limitations and constraints imposed upon them by society and decided not to passively accept their status.

Louisiana developed an extensive system of levees throughout the Atchafalaya Basin and along its territorial Mississippi River. This system reached its zenith on the eve of the American Civil War. It went into dramatic decline following the conflict due to the confluence of military activity, protracted irregular warfare, and neglect stemming from labor and capital revolution. These shifts intensified with the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and finally consolidated after the ratification of Louisiana’s Constitution of 1879. The shift of responsibility for the construction and maintenance of levees during the Reconstruction Era led to many significant changes in the character and function of many of the State’s institutions as it struggled to adapt to the postwar order it confronted.