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The transformation of the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey involved reforming the government, redefining the relationship between the population and the ruling elite, and navigating ethnic and religious identities and how those identities affected the national identity. Unfortunately, these processes were accompanied by the suppression of religious and ethnic minorities, deportations, violence, and murder.

This thesis is an empirical examination of the articulation of comic offence and the practices of comic censure as conducted in media discourse. Making complaints about comic discourse is a risky endeavour. The joker can retort that it was `just a joke' or can charge the complainer with lacking a sense of humour and libels can fail and be very costly. The main focus is on the discursive strategies and practices used when claiming that comedy has caused offence. This is an under-researched area in humour studies. The ambivalence involved in negotiations between ethical and comic discourse is a central tenet of the thesis. Two main avenuesf or expressing comic offence are used in the thesis: letters of complaint written to the editor of comic discourse and charges of offensive comedy made through the law of defamation. The thesis adopts an eclectic approach to data collection and analysis. The research draws on different data sources: letters pages and readers' letters printed in the satirical magazine Private Eye, newspaper articles reporting on libel cases brought against Private Eye and interviews with editors, journalists, cartoonists and libel lawyers working for Private Eye. Content analytic techniques are used when analysing the readers' letters to provide a clear overview of the general pattern of complaint involved and the common consequences of such complaint. Composition analysis is used to assess how the editor of Private Eye constructs the letters page. Here I explore the strategies employed by the editor when defendingc criticisms that offence has been causeda nd assessh ow the editor discursively treats the offended reader. To examine in closer detail the characteristic ways in which reader's structure their expression of grievance, I then employ more qualitative modes of analysis: linguistic discourse analysis and symbolic cultural analysis. Attention then shifts to the second main avenue for expressing comic offence: the law of defamation. I conduct a quantitative content analysis of Private Eye's libel litigation history to provide an overview of the types of individual who utilise the law of defamation and the bases on which reputations are damaged. Textual analysis is used to assessh ow newspapersre port libel casesb rought against Private Eye in order to explore the press' role in the debate of comic offence and comic censure. In my conclusion I discuss what the thesis suggests about the ethical considerations of humour and comedy and I highlight the importance of the thesis for humour studies. The thesis finishes with some recommendations for future research.

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The author employs research skills from law, history and religion in order to present an account of the relations of law and religion in Oregon's history from its earliest days to the present.

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.

The United Arab Emirates' legal system has developed though the continued negotiation between the Shari’a and the Civil Courts over the spheres of criminal law and commercial law. The framework that has emerged, as a result of regime politics and Supreme Court rulings, provides the regime the flexibility to continue their commercial development and integration into the modern global economy, while retaining the domestic authority structures that legitimate their power.

This thesis explores the historical development of personal status law, which governs a person’s marriage, divorce, and custody rights. It is significant because it is part of a framework that has defined women’s rights for centuries. I will argue that personal status law is a patriarchal framework that has been reinforced over time, leading up to the creation of nation-states in the Middle East. As such, this is the “institution” of personal status that will be traced using historical institutionalism theory. In this thesis I will argue that personal status has undergone a critical juncture, or crucial moment of potential to change, in both Jordan and Iraq’s founding, and that this has consequentially affected personal status law development and responses to the women’s movement throughout the 20th century in both countries. This thesis briefly reviews the role of women’s rights and the development of law in pre-Islam era, Islam and the Qur’an, and the Ottoman Empire in order to describe the institution of personal status law. Next, I review the history of Jordan and then Iraq and identify the critical juncture of personal status in historical context. In each chapter I will also explore the matter of de facto, or what women’s rights are like in practice, as an example of the institution at work in the patriarchal protection paradox.

Treaties and international organizations work together to create a global environment that protects the rights of a person and actively promotes the well-being of society. However, they do not necessarily guarantee the rights of everyone. Since women are not explicitly named in human rights documents, they are often not granted equal human rights. Therefore, it takes more than just international legal instruments to guarantee women's rights as human rights. A combination of civil society (NGOs), International organizations (IOs), and domestic government creates a perfect coalition to beat the barriers that must be overcome to fully protect women from violence.