The Babatha and Salome Komaise archives contain the legal documents of two Jewish women and their families, dating mostly from c. 94 C.E. to 132 C.E. The community that they attest lived in a small village which was first part of the Nabataean Kingdom but was later incorporated into the province of Roman Arabia in 106 C.E. The documents consequently provide invaluable information about a community’s experience before and after the creation of the province. The laws and traditions in evidence in the two archives are remarkable for their diversity, exhibiting elements of Jewish, Nabataean, Roman and Hellenistic law. This thesis examines this complex legal situation and considers the ways in which people coped with the array of legal options available to them. A ‘ground-up’ approach is adopted, focusing on the people involved in the documents’ creation and use in order to detail how different parties affected the working of law in the area. An overview of the individual documents is provided in The Survey of the Documents. The rest of the thesis is then structured according to the various groups that influenced their formulation and use: The Scribes, Legal Advisors, The Parties, The Alternatives to the Assizes and The Roman Officials. These various contributions are then brought together in the Conclusion to model how law operated in this particular community. The primary contributions of this study are therefore to Roman provincial and legal history, as well as the history of the Jewish people in the inter-revolt period.

This thesis explores the ways in which Islamic law and human rights interact within the work of women’s rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that advocate the reform of the Egyptian Personal Status Law (PSL) in the period between 2006 and 2010. The thesis shows the relevance of the human rights framework as well as the flexibility of Islamic legal discourse in the work of the NGOs. Drawing on both Islamic law and human rights enabled NGOs to develop a more gender-sensitive religious discourse, which supported their PSL reform demands. However the interaction between these two frameworks was largely affected by several important factors, which sometimes led NGOs to dilute some of their demands. These factors included the implications of the change in the form of Shari‘a as codified law under the modern nation-state; the Egyptian political context both internally and externally; the common local perception that human rights are a Western production and an extension of Western colonialism; the dominant religious but patriarchal discourse governing the PSL; the implications of activism through the NGO structure; and the personal religiosity of individual activists. The thesis explores NGOs’ PSL reform demands in depth bearing in mind these factors. It investigates NGOs’ discourse and shows its strengths and weaknesses. It shows that the interaction between Islamic law and human rights within NGOs’ work in this particular Egyptian context produced reform demands that were innovative and practically appealing on one hand, but epistemologically problematic in some instances, on another.

With the expansion of the use of private prisons and detention centres worldwide and the increasing involvement of private actors in the provision of custodial services, this doctoral thesis considers life inside two private prisons in England. Using theoretically informed ethnography it evaluates the effect of responsibility on men imprisoned in two private prisons in England. Firstly, it briefly reviews the background and development of prison privatisation in England and Wales and considers the role and place of private prisons as part of a wider neo-liberal shift. Secondly, using qualitative data gathered inside two private prisons, it evaluates if these prisons, through their regimes, are trying to create responsible self-governing prisoners. The thesis reviews both, how regimes and practices in place in these two prisons attempt to forge responsible prisoners, and how individual men and groups of prisoners experience, feel about, cope with and assimilate penal messages of self-governance and responsibility. Finally, it questions both the impact of responsible prisoners for prisons and the impact of responsibility on prisoners and argues that, whilst there is a benefit to fostering environments in which prisoners are enabled to become responsible and self-governing, a careful balance must be maintained, as for some men the responsibility itself becomes characteristic of the "pain of imprisonment".

A perennial question amongst social movement strategists is to what extent movements can use the tools of the system they are struggling against in their efforts to change that system. Whilst this debate traditionally distinguishes between two camps – radical and reformist approaches – this thesis investigates one movement that breaks this mould. The thesis uses the example of Bolivia's Landless Peasants' Movement (MST) to intervene into renewed theoretical discussion about the possibilities and perils for such movements of using the legal system in the pursuit of systemic social change. Through its tactic of land occupation, the MST breaks the law by occupying unused land on large estates, whilst also invoking other laws stipulating that unused land must be redistributed to those who will work it. The thesis situates the MST's approach to law in the context of an intensified process of juridification in the neoliberal period, through which the logic and language of law increasingly have come to structure political debate and dissent, creating particular pressures for radical movements to engage with the law. Yet it also suggests that movements like the MST have developed subversive ways of engaging the law in response. By examining the MST's tactic as it interacts with this broader context of intensified juridification, the thesis clarifies and nuances the theoretical discussion by identifying how the particular conditions of political mobilisation in the neoliberal period bear on this theoretical debate. Moreover, by examining specifically how this movement's approach to law is differentiated from traditional radical and reformist approaches, and from other attempts to combine the two, the thesis reveals further potential options for radical movements seeking to engage the law. The thesis ultimately suggests that the transformative potential of law may not lie in employing the content of individual laws but in strategic manipulations of the contradictions inherent in the liberal legal form.

This thesis deals with children from orphanages. The content of the theoretical part consists of the legislative framework of the issue, explaining basic concepts, description of historical development of institutional care and the scope of institutions of social and legal protection of children. The main objective is to monitor the situation of children's home of clients in the institutional education. Approach the situation before the regulation of institutional care during their stay in institutional care, not only in the orphanage itself, but also diagnostic facilities, and also after leaving the facility and must be included in everyday life. The practical part deals with how children stay in foster homes also affects their lives. Key terms Children's home, Institutional Education, alternative family care, socio-legal protection of children, family, Diagnostic Institute.

The basis of the theoretical part is the conceptualization of terms that stem from the main research question. That includes an explanation of the fundamental points of the socio-legal protection of children, protective education, facilities for institutional and protective education. For the empirical part a qualitative strategy of research was chosen, interview method. The respondents included employees of the department of socio-legal protection of children. Based on the results of the research, the thesis describes functioning of the cooperation of both organizations.

The thesis examines the expressions and origins of negative attitudes to gender equality in the Czech Republic, which have been noticeable especially in the process of implementation of the EU sex equality acquis. It asks whether and how they can be explained with reference to socio-legal developments that started during Czechoslovakia’s State Socialist past, but are still relevant today. In order to answer these research questions, the thesis examines how gender equality has been regulated through law and how it has been understood by law-makers, judges and legal scholars in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic during State Socialism (1948-1989) and Transition (1989-today). The thesis examines legal developments in gender-relevant areas, most importantly in antidiscrimination law. It also excavates the underlying, sometimes hidden, but crucial understandings of key concepts such as ‘women’, ‘gender’, ‘equality’, ‘discrimination’ and ‘rights’. The thesis argues that while formal legal guarantees for women have largely been satisfactory in the Czech Republic by international standards, the way these formal legal guarantees are understood, interpreted and applied has not been gender-progressive. It argues that the reasons for this are: (i) entrenched patriarchal ideas about women’s appropriate role both in private and public life; (ii) a failure to understand gender as a social construct and to recognize gender order as a pervasive social structure; (iii) an inadequate conceptualization of equality and a refusal to combat sex discrimination; and (iv) a limited understanding of the role of law and of rights in the shaping of social relations. It argues that these understandings have been considerably path-dependent on State Socialism, be it through a rejection of anything perceived as State Socialist (which has harmed redistributive policies), as well as through the mostly unconscious retention of ideas or their absence (which has led to a blindness to the cultural aspects of patriarchy).

No description available.

In this thesis it is argued that while the concept of freedom of religion or belief itself is opaque and difficult to define, the right to religious freedom must contain certain basic factors – most importantly the right to individual (religious) autonomy. The individual autonomy approach is seen here as providing the necessary rationale for the protection of freedom of religion or belief. This rationale is not cemented in stone in the practice of the Convention and this has caused the Court to lose its focus on individual freedom. It is a dangerous tendency. It allows the focus to be placed on the role of the State and leaves freedom of religion or belief to be heavily affected by politics and fluctuating social attitudes. In this regard, this thesis looks for the meaning and scope of individual and collective religious autonomy and how it is and ought to be represented in the practice of the European Court of Human Rights. It is the aim of the author to contribute to a clearer and more principled understanding of Article 9 of the ECHR. The right to individual autonomy is thought to be able to provide the necessary focus for the European Court of Human Rights in creating a more robust framework for the protection of freedom of religion or belief different from current Court practice which shows inconsistency in its reasoning and theoretical chaos. This lack of clarity has also contributed to freedom of religion or belief being a relatively weak right. It is explored here as to how the principle of autonomy (as developed in this thesis) relates to other principles provided by the Court, namely the principle of State neutrality, pluralism and the effective protection of rights, but also the margin of appreciation and the autonomy of religious communities. The individual autonomy centred theoretical framework in the first part of the thesis will be engaged to analyse the conflict in the triangle of state-individual-community explored in the second part.

This paper utilizes a critical (political) discourse analysis to examine security dialogue as revealed through policy; in order to facilitate this task, the following publically available political documents will be analyzed: Smart Border Declaration; Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), and the pending Beyond Borders deal. The objective is to highlight the complexities and realities of the security era as it pertains to North American border security. In other words, I am interested in the administration of border security policy in its practical context. Reviewing the Beyond Borders deal and situating it within the overall national security policies that govern the Canadian border facilitates the identification of limitations posed by the security mentality dominant in border governance. This thesis advocates that those studying border security policies in order to formulate alternative options do so in a manner that appreciates the unique polity milieu of the border. The analysis presented here has policy implications and concludes with recommendations and projections for the Beyond Borders deal. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2011-10-14 13:59:44.787