The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the democratization process in Kurdistan on the basis of consolidation democracy with focus on arenas defined by Linz and Stepan (1997), namely economic, political, legal, civil society and arenas of state bureaucracy. Furthermore, I intend to explain Kurdistan’s road toward democratization in Kurdistan from 1991 until today, with a focus on the years 2003-2012. The main results are that Kurdistan has developed conditions that support a future consolidation of democracy. However, there are weaknesses in the economic situation, rule of law and the arena of bureaucracy. The arena of the political and civil society grew stronger after the US war on Iraq in 2003 and as effect new institutions such as political parties, opposition, election, political governance and alliances arose.

The aim of this essay is to describe and analyse the legal complications that arise in connection with preliminary investigations involving several juvenile offenders, where all suspected persons have not attained the age of criminal liability. It is also intended to give a broad analysis of the concept preliminary investigation, with particular emphasis on juvenile offenders. It further analyses the legislation and legal complications on the basis of a rule of law perspective. The method previously used is court dogmatic, where in front law text, preparatory work, case law and legal doctrine have been used in order to present the existing sources relating to the subject matter of discussion. The criminal investigative bodies consider juvenile offenders are regulated under the Swedish RB 23 - 28 chapters, FUK and LUL. The fundamental basis used in deciding whether to commence a preliminary investigation, is that of evidence gathered and if it can be reasonably concluded that a crime has been committed under general legislation. A preliminary investigation is initiated and led by either the police authority or the prosecutor. The preliminary investigation is always led by the prosecutor in serious criminal matters. There are certain specific rules that apply when juvenile offenders become the subject of a criminal investigation. The rules applied vary dependant upon and with due regard to the age of the offenders. The age of criminal liability is a crucial and definite factor in this context, where by preliminary investigations can be initiated only against young people that have attained an age of 15 years, but not against those yet to have reached that age. Criminal investigations may however under certain circumstances be initiated against juvenile offenders that have not reached the age of 15 years, as per LUL 31§. The most significant conclusion reached is that the rule of law be applied and met when young people become subjects of a criminal investigation. A majority of the regulations contained within the legislation limit and make the investigative process problematic, particular emphasis being under the interrogation process and the use of means of compulsion. A discussion or inquiry should be entered with regard to the effectiveness of the preliminary investigative process pertaining to juvenile offenders, with a means to improving the procedure whilst maintaining rule of law.

Thesis (D. Jur.)--York University, 2001. / Typescript. "Graduate Programme in Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 351-371). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ67941.

The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze laws that completely prohibit abortion through a legal philosophical perspective. To demonstrate that abortion blanket bans cannot be seen as legally legitimate, the author has completed a literature study where she uses Robert Alexy’s “Concept of Law” to analyze abortion laws both in general, and in Nicaragua in particular. Based upon Alexy’s “Concept of Law” the author has identified three relevant key elements – social efficacy, the argument from injustice and correctness of content - which she uses in her analysis. In order to apply these three elements on the total abortion ban, she then uses four different analysis tools - feminist theory, Human Rights, deontology analysis and right analysis. This has enabled a thorough analysis of the total ban on abortion that has demonstrates that such laws cannot be considered legitimate. By highlighting the human rights violations the law entails, one can conclude that the law has a social impact. Using MacKinnon's theory "experience as a woman" the author had been able to demonstrate how the law should be considered as a gender equality issue, and that it is sexist in nature. Based on the argument from injustice and the legal norms about equal treatment and non-discrimination, the blanket ban can be considered extremely unfair for the women concerned. Based on deontology- and rights analysis, one can conclude that the Catholic Church's stance does not hold for the conservative position that excludes abortion in all circumstances. Thus, the normative arguments from the Christian abortion ethical and conservative position that is basis for the law is not coherent. These three indicators demonstrate that the law in Nicaragua has a social efficacy that is both extremely unfair, violates Human Rights and its application sexist with normative argument and content that is not coherent. It would therefore be entirely justified to thwart the legitimacy of such total abortion ban, as in Nicaragua

Lietuvos visuomenė prieš daugiau nei penkiolika metų visuotiniame referendume priėmė aukščiausios teisinės galios aktą Lietuvoje - LR Konstituciją, kurios preambulėje įtvirtinta, kad Lietuva sieks tapti atvira, teisinga, darnia pilietine visuomene ir teisine valstybe. Tačiau beveik du dešimtmečius nepriklausomoje valstybėje besiformuojančios teisinė, socialinė, ekonominė ir politinė sistemos liudija, kad mūsų visuomenėje įsigalėjo tokia vertybių sistema, kurioje tokia vertybė kaip teisė yra ignoruojama ir atmetama, t.y. stipriai paplito teisinio nihilizmo reiškinys. Šiame darbe analizuojami teisinio nihilizmo kaip socialinio reiškinio ypatumai, jo priežastys bei įveikimo galimybės Lietuvoje. Teisinio nihilizmo reiškinio pagrindiniai šaltiniai ir priežastys mūsų valstybėje būtų tokie: „aklas“ rėmimasis teisinio pozityvizmo samprata, kuriai būdinga teise pripažinti bet kokį, net ir žmogaus teises pažeidžiantį įstatymą, ydingas teisėkūros procesas, spragos konstituciniame reguliavime, nesusiformavęs pilietinės (atviros) visuomenės institutas, bendros krašto socialinės ekonominės programos vizijos stoka, menkas teisminės valdžios autoritetas, arši politinių jėgų konkurencija, plačiai paplitęs korupcijos reiškinys. Darbe siūloma kompleksiškai spręsti teisinio nihilizmo problemą. Visų pirma, turi būti imamasi visų įmanomų priemonių, kurios skatintų piliečių teisinės sąmonės formavimąsi bei teisinės kultūros lygio kilimą mūsų visuomenėje. Daugybė socialinių faktorių... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Lithuanian society adopted Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania 15 years ago, where it have been fortified, that Lithuania will strive for an open, just, harmonious civil society and State under the rule of law. But the legal, social, economical, political systems, which have been developing for the last two decades in our independent state, proclaim that in our society have settled such system of values, where law as a social value has been ingnored and declined. There have been analyzed the phenomenon of legal nihilism, it’s causes and the possibilities to overcome it in Lithuania in this work. The main causes and sources of legal nihilism are: the predominant ideology of legal positivism in our society, which claims that legal validity must be strictly separated from questions of morality, faulty law-making process, breach of constitutional regulation, unsettled institucijon of civil society, the lack of vision of common social – economical programmme, poor reputation of judiciary power, savage competition of political powers, outspread phenomenon of corruption. There have been suggestions to solve the problem of legal nihilism by integrated process in the work. Foremost, there have to be assumed all measures, which stimulate the formation of legal conscious and rise of legal culture in our society. Lots of social factors evidence the need of situations for civil society, because only an opened, democratically thinking, leading, actively defending human... [to full text]

'Honour', an undefined notion in a patriarchal society like Pakistan, is used as a tool to justify the crime of murder. Violence in the name of honour is not a new phenomenon. Historically, it has been justified in the name of culture but the scope of this tradition has broadened with time and there is an enormous increase in the number of its victims. This cultural notion is interpreted in a way to control women's sexuality and to keep women subordinate to men. Honour killing is not legally sanctioned but the judiciary, the administration and the society often condone it one way or the other. In the tribal areas of Pakistan where such murder is not considered a crime, honour killing is a punishment for those who contravene against the traditional honour code. / The wide acceptance of honour killing has made women suffer as a whole against their basic rights; human, constitutional and Islamic. This thesis focuses on the judicial redress against the crime of honour killings, which could be achieved by proper administration of justice. It contests that to control the crime in the patriarchal society of Pakistan, legislative measures are not enough. There is a dire need to eliminate the inadequacies of the administration of justice. The State could build a judicial framework to eliminate the inequality and discrimination against women. The judiciary could play an important role in bringing justice to the victims and in curbing this heinous crime.

<p>The International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur (Commission) began its work in October 2004 and provided its final report only three months later on 25 January 2005.2 There, it concluded, inter alia, &ldquo / that the Government of Sudan has not pursued a policy of genocide&rdquo / and that at least the central Government authorities did not act with genocidal intent.3 However, these findings would not exclude the possibility that the atrocities committed by individuals against victims were carried out with the specific intent to destroy and therefore could possibly fulfil all necessary requirements of the crime of genocide.</p>

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

<p>Victorian England was the first empire in history to imagine itself as liberal, believing that its own power could bring law to the darkest and most unruly corners of the world. But despite covering nearly the entire period known as the Pax Britannica, Victoria's long reign did not include a single year without war. </p><p> The conceptual knots presented by England's global power forced some of the century's most canonical authors to confront, and attempt to solve, contradictions fundamental to their self-consciously liberal society. Because law was understood by many Victorian theorists as the opposite of violence, it was when metropolitan thinkers came up against the fringes of civilization's ordering power, in the empire, that the violence underwriting peace become most uncomfortably plain. "Out there," said jurist James Fitzjames Stephen, "you see real government." But if what Stephen called the liberal state's quiet but crushing force emerged most explicitly at the peripheries of law's reach, literary forms composed at the center of the imperial network --London-- reveal the problem of liberal violence as absence, as silence: as a problem. These problems became dilemmas of narrative and poetic form that I argue are legible across linked areas of Victorian literary production: from the realist masterpiece (The Mill on the Floss) and the philosophical treatise (A System of Logic) to works of political historicism (On Liberty), sensation fiction (Armadale), and apparently apolitical poetry about flowers (Poems and Ballads). Forms of Empire looks to show how the Victorian state's interrelated forms --literary and political, conceptual and historical-- expose the violence liberal theory could not see. </p><p> Forms of Empire builds on and seeks to advance work on the pairing of "liberalism and empire" in the broad area of cultural studies. To do so it works dialectically, placing Victorian liberalism's vision of perpetual peace in the context of the empire's endless war and tracking loose networks of London-based thinkers as they confronted the problem of how violence relates to law. This process exposes live debates, both explicit and implicit, about just what force secured Victorian England's so-called Age of Equipoise. What emerges is a particularly literary analysis of how linked coteries of Victorian writers, through the height and decline of a great world power, attempted to make sense of the uneasy links they saw (and did not see) between liberalism and empire, the forms of law and the disorder of violence --the vexed connection, that is, between peace and war. </p><p> The project's focus on literary structure and political theory is also historical, tracing Victorian global rule from its phase of hegemonic globalization at mid-century (the so-called Age of Equipoise) into its more openly war-torn, post-1870 decline, a structure that corresponds to the project's two halves. While reframing existing periodizations of empire in Victorian Studies, this genealogical procedure also particularizes what is often studied as a homogenous "imperial discourse." Forms of Empire is necessarily interdisciplinary, since it charts the conceptual cross-pollination among semi-autonomous fields of Victorian knowledge: political theory, anthropology, economics, philosophy, and literature, among others. But it is also focused on method, showing that theoretical debates among Victorians themselves --about the dilemmas of their hegemony-- can illuminate controversies about liberalism, violence, and method in a newer moment of empire, ours.</p> / Dissertation

In this topic there is analyzed the particularity of the creation of the Rule of law in Lithuania. The reality of the state life forced to choose this topic. The implementation of the idea of the rule of law – the fundamental aim of every state, because only the rule of law firms the humanistic basis, makes sure the ways of life‘s wellbeing, freedom, fight with bureaucracy. The aim of the rule of law is firmed in the preamble of the Lithuanian Constitution. It means that the activity of the institutions conforms to law. Equity, the rule of law, the protection of the rights and freedoms of the people are the main fundamentals of such state. The social, political and public relations change every day, therefore law, which regulates these relations, can not be stable, it has to change continually, and they depend on the characteristic of the relations. Therefore in the topic there are analyzed the problems, which are typical to Lithuania reaching the rule of law. There are examined how the theoretical model of the rule of law conforms to legal, social and economical reality of the state and how there are firmed the rights and freedoms of the people. Advanced civil society is essential condition of the existence of the rule of law. Only the civil society can create the rule of law, and the state can not develop as the rule of law without the civil society. There is accented the importance of culture and legal consciousness of the society to the creation of the model of the... [to full text]