In the cooperation between the EU and Ukraine since the EU-Ukraine AssociationAgreement was signed in 2014, the EU has relied heavily on discourse to project power. Theinvasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on the 24th of February 2022 caused a severeescalation of the conflict that has ravaged Ukraine since 2014, and the reactions of theEuropean Union have been strong. But what has the role, or more importantly, thediscursively constructed role, of the EU been in the Ukraine situation before the invasion?Additionally, how has this role been legitimised by the EU institutions responsible for theunion’s foreign policy? This study offers a poststructuralist analysis of how the EU constructsitself as a more coherent and powerful actor in European politics, than it actually may be.Employing Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulated power in a similar way to the study of theEU:s discourse with Serbia and Kosovo by Gashi Krenar, the analysis focuses on how theUkrainan national identity, and the conflicts facing the nation are discussed in official EUdocuments. Special attention is given to expressions of normativity and sovereignty, theambiguity of which may conceal more obscure meanings. The results I present are used as afoundation for my understanding of the EU’s discourse as constituted by a deliberatediscursive strategy of simulating power, a strategy that is used in very different ways in theyear 2014 and then seven years later, in 2021.

This dissertation examines jury nullification - the ability of American juries in particular criminal cases to ignore or override valid law to be applied to defendants by acquitting them in cases in which the facts are undisputed or clear - as an exercise of sovereignty over the friend-enemy distinction as those terms are defined by Carl Schmitt. It begins with a biography of Schmitt and a description of his concept of sovereignty as ultimate decisional power. It then discusses sovereignty in the American context, with particular attention to the principles of the Founding and the nature of the fictively constructed American people. It next applies Schmitt's concept of decisional sovereignty to the American context, concluding that sovereignty in America is diffuse, and its exercise by particular governmental actors is to some degree cloaked, and that the sovereignty of the American people, while crucial to the founding moment, is largely latent in ordinary times. This application of Schmitt to sovereignty in America also demonstrates the deep tension between democratic popular sovereignty and rule-of-law liberalism. The dissertation then turns to Schmitt's understanding of the distinction between friend and enemy as the central political axis, and argues that the criminal in the American context is functionally the enemy, if not the absolute enemy of the polity. It then discusses in detail the mechanics and history of jury nullification, ultimately concluding that jury nullification both operates at the crucial political moment at which enemies are generated (or not) through the application of criminal law to defendants, and is an act of popular sovereignty, intended by the Founders to help preserve a balance between democracy and liberalism by maintaining a central political role for the people.

Established in 1998, the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) presents fundamental complexities for the concept of state sovereignty, while raising prospects for progressively developing international law and global governance in human security related areas. The Court's distinct history, negotiation and governance properties have significance well beyond international criminal justice. The ICC has broader implications for emerging forms of multilateral and transnational cooperation, the heightened standing and visibility of the individual person within the regulatory and protective precincts of international law, and the evolving role, capacity and disposition of the state in brokering, implementing and enforcing innovative governance arrangements. These analyses cross a number of sub-fields within international relations and global governance scholarship. A transcending dimension of my theoretical approach and intended contributions is the idea of state sovereignty as a meta-constitutive institution that fundamentally structures international law and politics, but is itself subject to subtle normative changes in its qualitative meanings and implications. As an institutional fulfillment of the post-Second World War proceedings at Nuremberg, the ICC strikingly departs from the conventional inter-national law of states. The Court seeks to uphold individual-focused human rights and humanitarian law safeguards, as reflected by the three crimes within its jurisdiction: genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Its jurisdiction over individual offenders is equally novel. The ICC is 'complementary' to national justice systems, and thus will directly administer justice only when states are demonstrably 'unwilling or unable' to conduct genuine proceedings. This distinct supranational governance format aims to facilitate national legislative and capacity-building measures to enhance the vigilance and effective functioning of domestic legal systems. The Court is the permanent organizational and normative focal point of an emerging program of enforcement and supporting efforts. More broadly, it contributes to the normative ideal and practical realization of a comprehensive and integrated global human security agenda. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Aerial Empire combines environmental and political history to argue that air shaped the United States’ colonization of the intermountain west. By focusing on environmental management and federal-Indian policy, it shows how claiming and regulating air as a natural resource both supported and subverted the nation’s control over the region in the twentieth century. A combination of white encroachment, warfare, diplomacy, and violence had transferred the region from Native to non-Native populations by the late nineteenth century. This process involved claiming western air, but appropriating the lower atmosphere required technology and policies devised during the twentieth century. Efforts to access and regulate air shaped twentieth-century U.S. expansion in New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, and Arizona, and turned a boundless atmosphere into a finite resource. Climate cures began the process of defining air as a natural resource, accelerated by aviation which compelled courts to legally distinguish navigable airspace from air rights in the 1920s. Nuclear science expanded atmospheric knowledge and smog undermined an approach to pollution based on dilution by 1950. As air pollution control shifted from a local to national issue, commercial and military jets increasingly crowded the skies. Environmental policy extended federal authority over air as a natural resource with the 1970 Clean Air Act, which tribes used to press federal recognition of their environmental sovereignty. Fluid and elusive, atmospheric motion subverted efforts to fix the sky in place and undermined territorial jurisdiction. Although modern legislation made air a material resource, the atmosphere remained interconnected with land in ways that complicated its regulation. Claiming air required seeing it as a material rather than an immaterial resource, and as a finite rather than infinite one. Tribes influenced and deployed environmental law to bolster Indigenous power and challenge the settler state’s authority over air, land, and Native peoples. Yet Indigenous and rural communities suffered disproportionate impacts of atmospheric transformations, such as nuclear testing, extractive industry, and military airspace. Efforts to claim, measure, map, and manage the atmosphere contributed to crucial changes in modern American society, including the transfer of Indigenous land, resources, and labor to settlers; the degradation and pollution of air with dangerous compounds and waste; the expansion of military control over new spaces; and the extension of federal authority through modern environmental policy. / 2028-10-31T00:00:00Z

The adoption of the Digital Market Acts (DMA) marked a significant development in the direction of the European Union’s stronger approach to regulating its digital economy. This thesis sought to evaluate the European Union's structural power in the digital economy as well as the DMA’s potential impact on the future of the EU’s digital sovereignty policy. Through the use of qualitative content analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that the European Union has extensive regulatory authority over technology companies that operate in its digital market. This power derives from Articles 2(2), 5, and 6 of the DMA, which provide the European Union authority to govern and manage data access and control in the digital market. The EU’s commitment to digital sovereignty, which promotes national authority over their digital infrastructure and data, is reflected in the DMA’s implementation. This thesis argues that the DMA signifies a shift in the right direction for encouraging fair competition and reducing digital market monopolies, regardless of concerns over the DMA’s influence on the European Union’s trade relations with the United States. This research suggests that the European Union has the potential to affect the structure of the global digital market and the behavior of digital companies.

In the 1932 essay The Concept of the Political, German legal philosopher Carl Schmitt (1888– 1985) raises the question: what is the modern state? In his answer Schmitt indivisibly links state and politics by stating that the concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political. The modern state is subsequently characterised as the political unity of a people. In the following thesis, I investigate the meaning of this designation by examining Schmitt’s state theory. Firstly, I set out to analyse his understanding of the political as a realm of conflict (chapter 2). On that basis, I scrutinise his views on the nature of the state as a political form of organisation (chapter 3). The thesis argues that given Schmitt’s understanding of the political as basically antagonistic, the raison d’être of the state is to relativise domestic tensions and conflicts in such a way as to facilitate the maintenance of order, peace and stability in a territorially enclosed configuration. Furthermore, the thesis contends that the ultimate purpose of the state, according to Schmitt, is to ensure a strong sense of political unity within the population and to promote the common goods a flourishing political community requires. In light of this, the thesis concludes that Schmitt’s state theory is essentially teleological in the sense that the political unity constituting the state is not merely an empirical phenomenon but rather a standard every real state should endeavour to realise.

This paper analyses the EU’s sanctions on Zimbabwe against their political objectives and compliance with international law. In doing so it operationalises the concepts of legitimacy, legality, sovereignty, and statehood under the framework of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL). From this purview, this paper concludes that the EU’s sanctions are illegitimate and violate several principles of international law including that of non-intervention and sovereign equality. Furthermore, this paper finds that the far-reaching impacts of the sanctions have had negative ramifications for civil society and inadvertently violate the human rights of the Zimbabwean people–which are protected under international law through the Unilateral Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) as well as those within the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Although modestly successful in partially achieving some of their objectives, the sanctions impose a higher cost in contrast to any long or short-term benefits.

There is much debate among genocide scholars as to the causes and even accurate definitions of genocide. Early warning developed to address the increasing need for humanitarian intervention in violent conflicts around the world. As a subset of genocide studies, early warning seeks to go beyond explaining the causes of genocide. The early warning model created here uses six indicator variables - government, leaders/elites, followers, non-followers/bystanders, outsider group, and environment - to detect the likelihood of genocide within a given case study. Four cases were chosen - Kenya, Nigeria, Yemen, and Ethiopia - and analyzed using the indicator variables to determine if these violent conflicts may already be or may become genocides. Preliminary findings show that the civilian outsider group is a vital component when determining whether or not a conflict is or may become a "limited-genocide" and that genocides are a function of the interaction of the six indicator variables and not just their presence. Other implications for sovereignty and humanitarian intervention are discussed.

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