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The Republic of South Africa became democratic after it succeeded to come out of a long time 'scourge' of the apartheid system which violated quite a number of human rights. One of the tools employed during that era was unnecessary secrecy which hampered citizen's right to know. When South Africa held its first election in 1994 it commenced a new South Africa without apartheid; it aimed at embracing human rights and to do away with all bad laws existing before a democratic South Africa. Consequently, the supreme law of the Country, the Constitution of 1996, entrenched human rights law amongst which is the right to access to information held by the State and another person that is required for the 'exercise and protection of human right'. This was underscored in section 32. This right started to ·appear in the interim constitution of South Africa of 1993, but was amended in the current constitution by the addition of a subsection which directed that 'national legislation must be ena~ted to give effect to this right ... ' The provision of the Constitution was effected by enacting a legislation of the Promotion and Access to Information Act of 2000) (PAIA) which put in practice the directive of the Constitution. This minor dissertation intends to make a follow up of how this right is being implemented in South Africa. In doing so, the right to know will be examined in relation to institutional and cultural secrecy. Briefly, the dissertation will seek to answer the questions: i) what are the legislative norms which have been put in place to promote and safeguard this right? and ii) are there limitations and challenges to this right? Then at the end of this dissertation, the research will present a comparative study with Tanzania, the country of origin of the present author, where the right to know is recognized by the Constitution of Tanzania but remains ineffective for lack of concrete laws to enforce the right of access to information. In a state where there is no law providing for public access to government information, this work can present a lesson from South Africa. Furthermore, it is hoped that this dissertation can contribute ideas at this moment when Tanzania is in a · transitional process of making a new Constitution.

Thesis advisor: Marc Landy / This dissertation addresses the question of how the issue of gun rights is debated and resolved in American politics. While the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) has often been described as a distinct political win for gun rights advocates, it left open crucial political and regulatory questions that remain unsettled, including the constitutional permissibility of gun control measures and the proper balance between state and federal authority in establishing those parameters. This dissertation provides an account of the Second Amendment’s political development and its interpretation as a civic, state, collective, and individual right, and how shifts in interpreting the right to keep and bear arms have changed the way competing claims of gun rights and gun control are reconciled through the political process. Doing so aligns the Second Amendment with other major changes in American politics – outside of the courts – including the growing role of the federal government, the increase in polarization and the importance of cultural issues to partisan politics, and the rise of the gun rights movement as a pivotal political force. Using the lens of American political development, this dissertation is structured to identify critical junctures over time when changing interpretations of the Second Amendment transformed the politics of gun control, which include policy changes, partisan realignment, and broader patterns of federalism. Detailed historical and legal research of primary sources was conducted, including analysis of newspapers, journals, correspondence, as well as early state constitutions, records from the Constitutional Convention, briefs from state legislatures regarding gun regulation, and relevant court cases. Based on this research, the evidence is sufficiently compelling to support the collectivist reading of the Second Amendment rather than the individual rights interpretation. In other words, the Second Amendment was intended to protect the states from federal encroachment by guaranteeing their right to arm their militias – not to grant an individual right – a position that was subsequently maintained by the courts until District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) overturned decades of precedent, further complicating the already contentious issue of gun rights in American politics. Chapter One focuses on the historical and intellectual origins of the right to bear arms that influenced early state constitutions and gun regulations. Chapters Two through Four discuss the nature of arms-bearing during the Revolutionary era; the debates surrounding the drafting and ratification of the Second Amendment; and the crucial role of the state militia system to early notions of republican government. Subsequent chapters provide an account of the changing nature of the state militia system, ultimately resulting in the formation of the National Guard; early legal interpretations of the right to bear arms, including whether the Second Amendment applied to the states; and a comprehensive account of federal gun legislation. From there, Chapter Seven discusses the development of collective rights theory and the Supreme Court’s traditional position on the Second Amendment. Chapters Eight and Nine turn to the rise of the gun rights movement; the establishment of the National Rifle Organization as an influential political actor and how the Second Amendment was politicized to advance its cause; changes to federal gun legislation; and the development of individual rights theory and its influence on the partisan debate about gun control, including a literature review to account for the “New Standard Model” of Second Amendment scholarship. Chapter Ten analyzes the milestone decisions District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010) and also provides a detailed account of the process of incorporating the Second Amendment against the states, arguing that even though the Supreme Court established the individual right to keep and bear arms, its traditional interpretation as a states’ right must be maintained in the interest of federalism. The Conclusion further advances this assertation, contending that the intense debate about gun rights in American politics could be tempered by allowing the states greater latitude to regulate both gun control and gun rights. Under a federalized system of well-regulated liberty that emphasizes state autonomy, the states would be free to either limit or expand the right to keep and bear arms based on the demands of their constituents, which balances the politics of gun control with the constitutional protections of the Second Amendment. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

In recent decades, achieving the goal of the global protection of human rights has been approached most commonly through multilateralism. States have since abandoned notions of self-reliance in favour of interdependency and collaboration, leading to a proliferation of international, regional, and sub-regional multilateral organizations. However, the definition of ‘multilateralism' restricts the application of the legal frameworks of these organizations to sovereign states that have voluntarily consented to be bound by the obligations contained therein. State consent and political will drive multilateralism, and the requirement of voluntariness in these forms has been utilised as a means of respecting the internationally recognized legal principle of state sovereignty. Consequently, voluntariness has impacted the effective functioning of organizations such as the African Union (‘AU') and the Southern African Development Community (‘SADC'). This thesis proposes that the less significant the impact of voluntariness is on a regional or sub-regional human rights system, the more effective it will be in its role of protecting human rights. This thesis provides practical ways of lessening the impact of voluntariness, in order to strengthen the human rights legal frameworks of the AU and the SADC; and to improve the functioning of their respective compliance mechanisms. This thesis achieves the aforementioned by drawing from the systems' European and African regional and sub-regional counterparts.

This thesis addresses the right to ‘basic education' in South Africa by focusing on the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). To what extent South Africa is bound by this treaty and whether it is fulfilling its obligations are the central questions of the thesis. To provide answers to these questions, the situation in South Africa regarding the various aspects of this right in terms of the 4-A scheme, which was developed in order to define the country's obligations as per the ICESCR, is examined. It can be seen from the 4-A scheme that South Africa is bound by the ICESCR regarding basic education to a large extent. This includes that schools must be physically and economically accessible to learners, and that there must be a comprehensive infrastructure. The ICESCR also calls for a certain quality of education to be provided to learners with disabilities, as well as for learners to be provided with food. Based on this examination regarding these aspects of the right to education according to the ICESCR, it can be concluded that South Africa often does not meet these requirements.

Under Apartheid children with disabilities were systematically excluded from the education system. With the dawn of democracy, the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa guaranteed the right to basic education for everyone. The Preamble of the South African Schools Act went further by recognising the importance of creating an education system that could remedy past injustices and provide high-quality education for all. Yet despite these guarantees, South Africa has failed to realise the right to education for children with disabilities. Today, a considerable portion of children who are out of school consists of children with disabilities. This paper critically assesses the ability of South Africa's current legislative and policy framework to realise the right to education for children with disabilities. It considers South Africa's international law obligations concerning education provision. It further considers South Africa's domestic legal and policy framework by taking an in-depth look at the effectiveness of various education legislation, policies, guidelines, and plans of action. This paper argues that the current legislative and policy framework is insufficient to realise the right to education for children with disabilities. It further argues that a comprehensive legislative and policy framework is a key first step to realising this right.

Thesis advisor: R. Shep Melnick / In what seems like the blink of an eye, transgender rights has catapulted from a nonissue in American politics to the peak of the culture wars. Scholarship on the transgender rights movement has proliferated rapidly in recent years, most of it sympathetic to the cause but some of it critical. Missing from this literature, however, is a serious examination of how courts and agencies have justified their efforts to advance what Vice President Joe Biden in 2012 called “the civil rights issue of our time.” This dissertation tries to fill that gap. Through an in-depth analysis of court precedents and agency pronouncements, and an examination of the assumptions behind regulators’ redefinition of male and female, it suggests that noble intentions have led civil rights institutions into a thicket of interpretive difficulties and regulatory dilemmas. First, judges and administrators have declared biological sex a “stereotype,” but have offered virtually no explanation for why this is so. This has resulted in regulatory peculiarities, including: courts relying on “stereotypes” when invalidating policies that they deem stereotypical; agencies instructing schools to adopt conflicting definitions of male and female; and government officials unable or unwilling to explain why separating restrooms and athletic teams by a non-physical understanding of sex is necessary in the first place. The deeper reason for these peculiarities, I argue, is a failure to articulate a coherent account of what makes us sexed beings. Second, civil rights officials have argued that their interpretation of federal law finds unambiguous support in a body of court rulings that condemn stereotyping. The problem with this argument, I suggest, is that the precedents that are cited actually say the opposite of what they are made out to say. They say that sex is biological, and that transgender women are biological men who fail to live up to social expectations about maleness. By invoking the abstract notion “stereotype,” regulators hide their break with precedent from citizens and perhaps also from themselves. Transgender regulation thus raises important questions about legal interpretation in relation to constitutional government, and about the role of the legal profession within liberal democracy. This dissertation challenges two dominant narratives about transgender rights. According to one, transgender rights is part and parcel of a broader postmodernism that is tearing through American institutions and weakening the foundations of Western societies. According to the other, transgender rights is a logical extension of the original civil rights revolution and a fulfillment of liberalism’s deeper humanitarian impulses. I argue that transgender regulations are more “conservative” than those who decry (or hope for) postmodernism believe, but more postmodern than those who appeal to liberal equality seem willing to acknowledge. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

The first three chapters of this dissertation critique the findings and recommendations of the February 2014 report of the United Nations Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea). They contend the report is grounded in hyperreal representational practices and functions as an instrument of securitization. It thereby reifies the asymmetrical state of war that is a root cause of DPRK human rights violations. These three chapters then function as a vehicle for the final two chapters that locate the primary origins of the Western understanding of North Korea within American/Western liberal ideology. North Korea’s ideological position makes appropriate the framing of DPRK human rights violations as extraordinary by contrast to other comparable countries. The Introduction asserts the relevance of the asymmetrical conflict between the DPRK and its adversaries and introduces the theories of Thierry Balzacq, Pierre Bourdieu, and Jean Baudrillard. Chapter One critiques the selectivity and methodology of the report, particularly the de-temporalization, de-localization and extrapolation of allegations as representative of the experiences of ordinary North Koreans. Chapter Two demonstrates the indeterminacy and hyperreal representational practices of the report’s findings of extraordinary crimes against humanity against hostile, starving and ‘abducted’ populations. Chapter Three challenges the lack of DPRK objectivity in the report’s presentation of historical and geopolitical context, particularly the neglect of the consequences of the asymmetrical state of war. Chapter Four introduces the philosophy of Slavoj Žižek and asserts its relevance to identifying North Korea as an abjected, gendered and racialized fantasy-space of American/Western liberalism (objet petit a). Chapter Five considers the consequences of ideology for empirical critique and DPRK agency, advocating unconditional normalization and investment as the most ethical American DPRK policy. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The first three chapters of this dissertation critique the findings and recommendations of the February 2014 report of the United Nations Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea). They contend the report is grounded in hyperreal representational practices and functions as an instrument of securitization. It thereby reifies the asymmetrical state of war that is a root cause of DPRK human rights violations. These three chapters then function as a vehicle for the final two chapters that locate the primary origins of the Western understanding of North Korea within American/Western liberal ideology. North Korea’s ideological position makes appropriate the framing of DPRK human rights violations as extraordinary by contrast to other comparable countries.

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