No description available.

No description available.

Many convicted offenders around the world do not vote in elections because they have been disenfranchised, which is the legal deprivation of their voting rights as a consequence of their convictions. Addressing this practice from the perspective of legal and constitutional theory, this dissertation deals with the question of how modern democracies should understand the connection between the right to vote and the commission of a criminal offence. After careful analysis of issues related to the democratic importance of the right to vote, the civic virtue of offenders and the requirements of a democratic punishment, the dissertation argues that disenfranchisement is a practice that constitutes an unjustified exception to the general principle of universal suffrage. However, it may also critically express and shape some of our general ideas about democracy and citizenship. In particular, it is argued that the exclusionary and degrading aspects of disenfranchisement can illuminate inclusionary aspects associated to the right to vote. In making this argument, it is suggested that the right to vote not only works as a right of participation but also embodies a mechanism of democratic recognition. Addressing the current common law jurisprudential trends on disenfranchisement, it formulates a case for a strong judicial review of legislation in cases in which voting eligibility is at stake.

This is a study of Human Rights Education (HRE) discourse in community-based settings. It is a critique and analysis of the ways that HRE discourse is shaped by power and culture between the global and the local. It aims to fill a gap in the current research in a number of ways, by examining both the theories of human rights and education, as well as the practice of HRE. The aim of the thesis is not only to show how it has and is used, but also whose interests this serves. The research was carried out using mainly qualitative methods, but also some quantitative methods. In order to make connections between the global and local HRE discourse it included twelve months of fieldwork in Tanzania, where data was gathered from NGOs working in HRE explicitly. It also linked stakeholders, such as international organisations, other NGOs and individual community members such as paralegals and participants in HRE processes. The thesis has three parts which each deal with the language and texts, social practice, as well as, socio-political and cultural influence of HRE discourse. The first part outlines the sheer variety of content that inform various conceptions of HRE and shows how HRE is both plural and complex. It examines the historical and sociopolitical construction of HRE. The second part of the thesis examines the local context of HRE using the data gathered from twelve-month’s empirical fieldwork in Tanzania between 2009 and 2010. The third part of the material analyses the way that social relations both construct and are constructed by HRE discourse, the unintended consequences, and suggestions about possible ways forward.

The previous UK Coalition government (2010-2015) made significant efforts to professionalise the police service in England and Wales. One of their approaches was to require police students to study at university, before becoming police officers. It has been hypothesised that requiring police students to study at university may ensure that professionalism develops within these students/officers, with the higher education received. At the same time as developing professionalism within these officers it has been suggested some of the negative aspects of police culture may diminish. Whether or not these hopes are borne out by university training of police students was the central research question for this project. This original research examined socialisation and culture of police students, within a UK university institution. It evolved by utilising reflexive grounded theory to examine the student perception of the police service, using questionnaires, focus groups and content analysis of completed essays, by Foundation in Policing Degree students. In summary the findings of this research suggested that university training of police students may not have the desired effect on professionalism, as police culture appears to develop regardless of the setting. Further to this, minority ethnic students continue to report being less attracted to the police as a career choice. A number of reasons are suggested for these findings and future recommendations are set out. Ultimately, this research concludes that the way a police officer is trained and/or educated requires reviewing, as simply moving the process to a university setting does not automatically deliver the intended outcomes, and in fact can result in the police culture simply flourishing elsewhere.

This thesis presents a multi-national empirical study of the relationship between financial development and economic growth from the legal protection perspective based on both micro firm-level data and macro country-level data. Our study comprehensively examines the investor legal protection in terms of legal statues, legal enforcement and legal origins. We first examine the mechanism through which the legal system affects firm investment behaviour. The study suggests that a well-functioning legal system will benefit financial development; consequently access to external finance in the financial sector will be easier, thus firms are less sensitive to internal financing. Secondly, we investigate this relationship by taking into account of the cost of capital. The empirical study provides evidence that stronger legal protection will lead to a decrease in the cost of debt and equity, since it promotes financial development and thus funds are more available. Finally, we construct four new indices to measure financial development from the qualitative aspect rather than the quantitative aspect. The indices measure the liquidity and volatility of financial market while assessing the efficiency of banking and non-banking sector. We find that economic growth is accelerated by financial development which is exogenously determined by the functioning of legal systems.

This thesis addresses the "air of paradox" that continues to plague Kant's absolute prohibition of revolution. In seeking to identify the source of this contention, I investigate a possible inconsistency within Kant's Doctrine of Right as a doctrine of external freedom. Taking my lead from Christine Korsgaard's idea of ―perverted justice‖, I explore the idea that states can exist that undermine their own purpose, in their denial of the freedom which is their end. Establishing the possibility of perverted justice takes us into an inquiry into the nature of Kant's moral theory as a theory of freedom, and specifically, the particular kind of freedom that Right takes as its end. I take the contrast between the ethical and juridical domains as my point of departure, defending Kant's strict division between the two domains. In doing so I defend the moral status of Right against commentators who exclude it on grounds of its external nature, arguing for a conception of practical freedom that is broader than the internal freedom of autonomy, and hence can include Right under its scope. From this I offer an account of external freedom as acting in accordance with the Universal Principle of Right, which is nothing more than the constraint of one's choice under universal law. In conclusion, I argue that Right (justice) cannot be frustrated in the way that Korsgaard's idea of perverted justice suggests, due to the formal nature of external freedom. Obedience to positive law cannot deny external freedom in the way she suggests; rather, our constraint under law is constitutive of our freedom as the end of political society. There is therefore no inconsistency to be found within Kant's Doctrine of Right between the idea of external freedom as the end of Right and his absolute prohibition of revolution.

This thesis considers the question of human freedom through the lens of the revival of republican political theory that has taken place in recent decades. In its first part, it distinguishes between different strands of that revival and argues that one of these presents a variant of human freedom which more adequately captures the human condition than does the ideal of freedom traditionally endorsed by liberal thought. It then considers that question of freedom in relation to very fundamental questions of power, law, and the reasons for which we accept the existence of an organised public power in the first place, arguing that the individual finds himself trapped between, on one hand, threats to his freedom which are horizontal, emanating from private parties, and those which are vertical, arising from the apparatus of public power which exists in order to protect man from man. In part two, one of the principal advantages identified for the neo-republican ideal - its aptness for application to the freedom of individuals in relation to each other, as well as in relation to the state - is explored within the specific contexts of the relationship of husband to wife and that of employer to employee. In each case, the relationship between the question of freedom and the specific legal rules which determine when and where public power will intervene against or on behalf of one party in relation to another, most generally the rules of private property, is analysed. It is argued that freedom is primarily a function of the ‘ordinary’ law: that which determines one’s rights and duties in relation to others, and which determines the distribution of property through taxation and spending. On the basis of this account, a renewed republican constitutionalism which focuses upon issues of property within the constitution - as a right protected by fundamental rights documents, and as a potentially distorting factor within the democratic process - is offered in part three. The normative element of republican constitutionalism is not exhausted by the issue of how to organise the organs of the state such that the individual is not dominated by the state: issues of private right being a function of constitutional processes, the constitution must also ensure that its outputs do not force man to live at the mercy of man.

In the last three decades, liberal political philosophy has been increasingly concerned with the nature and extent of the moral responsibilities of members of different political communities to each other. John Rawls contributed to this debate in his final book, The Law of Peoples (LOP). There, Rawls refused to extend his account of domestic distributive justice to international politics and argued that some non-liberal (yet decent) peoples can be members in good standing of the international community. Many of Rawls’ critics maintain that this evidences a double standard, and accuse LOP of being an incoherent extension of Rawls’ political philosophy to global politics. In this thesis I show that the opposite is true. I start by underlining the main discontinuities between Rawls’ accounts of domestic and international justice. I then show that these discontinuities can be explained by tracing the evolution of the idea of public justification in Rawls’ work. Rawls’ two theories of justice are the application of the same idea – public justification – in different political contexts. While the first three chapters are dedicated to the elaboration of this distinctive interpretation of LOP, the final two chapters address Rawls’ accounts of international economic assistance and international toleration. The thesis surveys a number of critical arguments against Rawls’ elaboration of his duty of assistance and his understanding of toleration based on reasonableness. It finds them all wanting, and strikingly off the mark: all seem premised on the idea that a just world is a substantively liberal-egalitarian one. Thus, Rawls’ critics fail both to properly attend to our limited abilities to change the global political landscape (not to mention the risks associated with such attempts) and to understand the implications of any sustainable account of toleration.

This thesis approaches the Weimar constitutional debate by focusing on its most significant participants, Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt. It reveals that this debate concerned the constitutional question in the context of the contradiction between the democratic modern state and the capitalist economy. It was in that sense a debate on the 'riddle' that was identified by the young Marx concerning the problem of the political form through which modern societies are regulated, caught between the political question, namely that of political power, and by the social question, namely that of the socio-economic structures of power. In effect the term “political constitutionalism” captures this tension through which Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt approached the constitutional question. The historical context of the Weimar Republic is important in order to bring into the light the theories of Kelsen and Schmitt (and, secondarily, of other Weimar theorists who also approached the constitutional question through similar problématiques). Regarding this context, it is, firstly, demonstrated that the Weimar Constitution was a post-traditional constitution that dealt both with the political question (the introduction of parliamentary democracy) and with the “social question” through its “economic constitution”. It is, secondly, demonstrated how the relationship between political and socio-economic power affected, in turn, the constitutional order throughout Weimar by leading ultimately to its structural transformation. This thesis argues, firstly, that Schmitt’s solution to Marx’s riddle dissociated the constitution from its democratic promise in order to protect a concept of constitutionalism that would maintain the 19th century liberal political-economic divide. Hence, it ended up as a theory of “authoritarian liberalism” that legitimized the “structural transformation” of the Weimar constitutional order between 1930-32; secondly, that Kelsen’s solution, while placing emphasis on the association of the constitution with the democratic promise, underplayed the power of the capitalist mode of production to affect both the State and the constitutional order itself. As a result, and although he defended the Republic and the Weimar Constitution, he could not see that the constitution itself was traversed by the power of capital in its entanglement with the mode of production.