Thesis advisor: Shep Melnick / This dissertation examines the use of coordinated multistate lawsuits by state attorneys general (SAGs) as a tool to create national policy. Entrepreneurial SAGs have increasingly employed multistate litigation against private industry and the federal government, reaching numerous out-of-court settlements and favorable court judgments. These lawsuits have imposed new national regulatory requirements across several policy areas and have challenged regulatory regimes established by Congress and federal agencies. This study investigates three interrelated questions about multistate SAG litigation: (1) how SAGs have used this litigation to achieve national regulatory goals, (2) why this activity has increased over time, and (3) what the consequences are for American politics and policy. Employing both qualitative and quantitative analysis, I examine these questions through two stages. First, I present an analysis of an original dataset containing SAG lawsuits and legal settlements in four key policy areas covering 1980 through 2009. Second, I examine three case studies involving pharmaceutical litigation, air pollution control litigation, and lawsuits against the firearms industry. I find that changes in federal law instituted by Congress and the federal courts have created new opportunity points for SAGs, helping spur a dramatic increase of multistate litigation. The SAGs built upon earlier successful efforts, including their blockbuster settlement with the tobacco industry in 1998, to create new avenues of collaboration among their fellow SAGs, public interest groups, and the private bar. The result has been to substantially alter the regulatory landscape in areas including prescription drug pricing, pharmaceutical advertising, and greenhouse gas emissions. By shedding light on this significant form of "regulation through litigation," this dissertation illustrates how SAGs have seized upon the trend towards adversarial legalism in America by using the courts to achieve policy goals when attempts to do so in other venues fail. This runs contrary to a line of scholarly literature suggesting that litigation and courts have a limited impact on significant social change. This study also demonstrates how American federalism, commonly thought to serve as a restraint on the federal government by diffusing power, can be used by skillful political actors to create more energetic government and stronger national regulation. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

This thesis explores identity as it was portrayed, constructed, and upheld through court festivals within the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in the period between the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 and the coronation of Friedrich V, Elector Palatine, as King of Bohemia in 1619. The thesis is made up of five inter-related thematic chapters. Chapter I analyses the role of ‘Lineage, Legitimacy, and History’. This chapter acknowledges the enduring importance of lineage, genealogy, and history to noble legitimacy, and discusses the threats and questions posed by newly rising families. It demonstrates how competing claims and counter-claims to legitimacy were made as festival occasions attempted to weave their protagonists into the fabric of ‘German’ history together with an associated possession of ‘German’ virtues, and how these claims to legitimacy were buttressed by representations of popular acclaim. Chapter II discusses ‘Mortality, Masculinity, Femininity, and Mutability’. At festivals both the mortality of members of dynasties and gendered roles, ideals, and identities as noble men and women were visible. This chapter argues that the evidence of these festivals complicates any stark delineation between male and female identities, instead stressing the degree of mutability of these categories as well as the centrality of virtue demonstrated, primarily, through skill. The themes of mutability and virtue continue into Chapter III, which addresses ‘Nature and the German Land’. Festivals often incorporated performed claims to possession of, and endorsement from, the German land itself. The land and its topographical features could be represented within cities as part of festival occasions, or the journeys to, and between elements of, festivals could incorporate the landscape into the rhetoric of these spectacles. This rhetoric could be confessionalised and politicised, but representations of nature also served to bolster a universalising rhetoric of virtue through the skilled manipulation of nature to the whim of the ruler. Chapter IV deals with the theme of ‘Religion, Piety, and Confessional Difference’. It discusses the role which displays of piety, including humility before God and the Church, played in these occasions, and draws out elements of confessionalised rhetoric present. However, the analysis shows that directly antagonistic religious imagery and language, seen elsewhere in European festival culture, does not feature. Instead, the emphasis is on non-divisive language and a unifying notion of Christendom. This was, of course, set against the dipole of the ‘Other’ which is addressed in Chapter V, ‘Language, Custom, Othering, and Unity’. Festivals drew attendees from across Europe and often included performed representations of non-Christian ‘Others’ such as Turks, Moors, and inhabitants of the New World. While the foreign, even the Ottoman, could be seen as exotic and luxurious, a rhetoric of superiority nurtured through appropriation and trivialisation of the threat which the Ottomans posed again contributed to the creation of common notions of identity. Finally, far from being an impediment to common identity, the meeting and use of different languages at festivals also served to highlight skill, learning, and virtue in the rhetoric of identity at these occasions.

Thesis. 1979. M.C.P.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: leaf 99. / M.C.P.

Thesis. 1976. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alfred P. Sloan School of Management. / Microfiche copy available in Archives and Dewey. / Vita. / Bibliography: p.323-328. / Ph.D.

At the beginning of the 21st Century, conflict-of-laws theory lies in tatters. The determination of the applicable law could hardly be more disputed and insecure. At the same time, globalization requires a strong basis on which legal systems can be coordinated. It is therefore high time to reconsider the theory of choice of law. In my analysis, I have focused on the three major players in the conflicts dilemma: individuals, states, and courts. I have tried to show how their roles have changed or should change in order to allow for more justice and global coordination. I have started out with the individuals because they suffer most from the application of a certain law. Today, it is recognized in almost all legal systems that individual parties can choose the law governing their disputes. But this principle does not sit very well with traditional theory of conflicts, which is built on connections to states and state authority. That is why I have tried to give a theoretical justification for party autonomy. Second, I have turned to the states because the reason we have conflicts is the existence of different countries with different legal systems. States claim application for their law either because a case arises in their territory, or because it is connected to their nationals, or because it touches upon their interest. In the modern world, though, it becomes difficult to establish these kinds of connections as social relations are increasingly transcending state borders. In my second article, I have shown that the law of the states has reacted by "de-bordering" itself. The final actor I have examined is the courts. One of the main problems of conflict of laws, in my eyes, is that courts consider themselves as organs of a certain state. I argue in my third article that this is a misconception and that their main preoccupation should be to render a just decision. If that would be accepted, they could very well turn out to be the key organizers of a more just global legal order.

Why do states of the Global South initiate international criminal justice processes for domestic atrocity crimes? The phenomenon of Southern agency regarding international criminal justice presents an empirical and theoretical puzzle given the Southern states' defence of Westphalian sovereignty, or the juridical equality of states and domestic non-intervention. International criminal justice challenges this notion of sovereignty by directly prosecuting individuals under international law through international courts. This thesis rejects this theoretical notion that international criminal justice curbs sovereignty, and argues that the initiative for international criminal justice processes is a type of short-term political strategy adopted by Southern state actors to strengthen specific aspects of their statehood. In doing so, the thesis challenges the dominant theoretical explanations of Southern state preference that relies on their relative weakness and the power of external factors, such as Great Power interests or transnational activist networks, and reclaims the possibility of agency for Southern state actors. The argument is derived from a theory developed in this thesis, referred to as judicial extraversion, or a counter-structural theory of strategic action that links the politics of statehood in the Global South and the political opportunities inherent in the nature of international criminal justice, namely, the individualisation of responsibility, criminalisation of specific forms of violence, and the privileged status of the state in the international criminal justice system. It develops this theory through the qualitative case studies of Uganda's self-referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC), Cambodia's request for an international criminal tribunal to the UN, and the counterexample of Colombia's special domestic criminal justice process for paramilitary demobilisation. The thesis finds that relative weakness of Southern states is insufficient to explain engagement with international criminal justice, and highlights the possibility of paradoxical agency. Finally, the findings suggest that, under particular circumstances, international criminal justice can be used to entrench the authority of weaker states in the international system.

Standard explanations of judicial behaviour (i.e. legal, rational-choice, attitudinal, and institutional models) are overly static and exogenous, interested in instances of sudden change in judicial behaviour, as triggered by appointments, legal reforms, or shifts in the political context. While these models are useful in understanding the external incentives affecting judicial behaviour, they are unsuitable for explaining sustained judicial empowerment beyond temporary strategic calculations. In response, recent 'ideational' approaches, especially studying constitutional courts, highlight the importance of judges' ideas about their role - not their ideologies or policy preferences - in instilling a mission, rather than an incentive-oriented view of the judicial function. Yet, despite their more dynamic approaches, those methods have overlooked how ideational change in the 'outside' world translates into change 'inside' this type of courts. Due to those limitations, this study proposes a complementary explanation of judicial empowerment: a theory of informal mandates and endogenous empowerment. Viewed through this lens, change and variation in judicial empowerment within and across cases are explained by the construction, expansion, and endurance - or absence and collapse - of collective internal understandings of the court's role and mission. Such understandings are developed as legal doctrines and articulated under broader informal mandates by 'mission leaders'. Gradually, these informal mandates can expand and gather majority support from strategic partnerships formed between 'mission leaders' and 'supporting leaders' - usually justices with high seniority. The more these informal mandates expand and endure inside the court, the less exogenous factors and strategic incentives over-determine its behaviour in the long-run. Judicial empowerment, thus, is better understood as a process that develops and expands gradually, endogenously, and informally, with a mission-oriented purpose. The theory is applied in the constitutional tribunals of Costa Rica, Chile, and Uruguay from 1990 to 2016. These countries have similar rule-of-law conditions, but their constitutional tribunals differ considerably in the strength and endurance of their informal mandates and, as a result, have attained different levels of judicial empowerment.

Considérée depuis plus de deux siècles comme une tradition intangible, la brièveté des décisions de justice est aujourd'hui remise en question par les juridictions suprêmes françaises. Les évolutions actuelles de la justice conduisent les juges à s'interroger sur le maintien de la concision caractéristique de leurs décisions. Ce questionnement s'inscrit dans une réflexion globale sur la fonction de juger. Le style des décisions est en effet lié à une certaine représentation de la justice. Dès lors, il convient de mettre au jour la représentation exprimée par la brièveté des décisions et celle qu'appellerait un mode de rédaction plus long. L'étude des significations prises par la brièveté des décisions montre qu'elle exprime la puissance refusée de la justice et se heurte à l'exercice du pouvoir de juger. Le caractère ambivalent de la brièveté permet de montrer le paradoxe qui traverse l'histoire de la justice française. En se taisant, le juge a entretenu jusqu'à présent la fiction du juge bouche de la loi tout en exerçant son pouvoir créateur. Son pouvoir ne faisant désormais plus de doute, le juge doit l'assumer à travers une rédaction plus développée de ses décisions. / Considered for over two centuries as an established tradition, courts' brevity decisions is now challenged by French's supreme courts. Current developments of justice lead judges to highlight the necessity or not to maintain one of their main singularity which is to writ short decisions. This question is part of an overall consideration of the judicial function. The way the decisions are written is indeed related to some representations of justice. Then, it's necessary to update the judicial function's representation which is now also expressed by decisions' brevity. The study of the brevity meanings points out that brevity expresses a denied power of justice and faces the judge's power exercise. The ambivalent nature of brevity shows an historical paradox which is present through the history of French justice. By remaining silent, the judge has so far maintained the fiction of a non creative judge while exercising his creative power. No longer in doubt, the judge's power must be assumed through a more developed writing of its decisions.

In recent years, the percentage of incarcerated individuals with mental illness has dramatically increased. It is very hard to provide treatment and care for these defendants in jails or prisons. Currently, there are more mentally ill individuals incarcerated than in psychiatric hospitals. Furthermore, as budget cuts are being decided, urban and rural communities in America are looking at ways to help the mentally ill by initiating a mental health court (MHC) or continuing to fund an already existing MHC. Guided by the therapeutic jurisprudence theory, the purpose of this study was to elicit the opinions from MHC professionals regarding the strengths and weaknesses of MHCs in addressing the needs of defendants, their victims, and the communities in which they live, in order to gain the recommendations for program improvement from the professionals who have knowledge of the impact of public safety, recidivism rates, and quality of life for mentally ill defendants. Study participants answered questions about several aspects of MHCs, such as length of incarceration, application of the therapeutic jurisprudence theory, treatment planning, and institutional budget constraints. The interviews were coded using NVivo, looking for common words, statements, and themes across responses. Mental health courts have been shown to save thousands of dollars to local community budgets, provide professional support and complete the judicial system requirements. This study furthers social change by supporting the rationale for MHCs: to help prevent defendants with mental illness involved in the criminal justice system from reoffending, thereby improving community safety and reducing justice system costs over the long term.

Les Transistors à Haute Mobilité Electronique (HEMTs) à base de GaN sont les composants les plus prometteurs pour des applications de puissance en gamme d’ondes micrométriques et millimétriques grâce à leurs très bonnes propriétés physiques comme leur grande largeur de bande interdite (3.4eV), induisant un champ de claquage élevé (>106 V/cm) mais également une vitesse de saturation des électrons élevée (>107 cm/s). Dans ce travail, nous avons étudié les effets de canaux courts pour des transistors réalisés sur des hétérostructures AlGaN/GaN et InAlN/GaN. Des grilles de longueur (Lg=75nm) ont été fabriquées permettant d’atteindre des fréquences de coupure du gain en courant et en puissance respectives de 113GHz et 200GHz. Ces performances sont à l’état de l’art de la filière InAlN/GaN sur substrat saphir. En ce qui concerne les hétérostructures AlGaN/GaN, les pièges liés aux états de surface ont été stabilisés grâce à une étape de passivation optimisée consistant en un prétraitement N20 et un dépôt de bicouche SiN/SiO2. Cette dernière a permis de limiter les chutes de courant du transistor en régime dynamique. A partir d’une topologie adaptée, des résultats de puissance hyperfréquence à 40GHz ont été obtenus. Une densité de puissance au niveau de l’art de 1.5W/mm a été mesurée sur un HEMT AlGaN/GaN sur substrat Si(111). Pour une hétérostructure InAlN/GaN sur substrat saphir, les résultats de puissance hyperfréquence sont également à l’état de l’art de la filière avec une densité de puissance en sortie du transistor de 2W/mm et un rendement en puissance ajoutée de 13%. / GaN based High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTs) represent the most promising devices for microwave and millimeter-wave power applications. One key advantage of GaN is the superior physical properties such as a wide band gap (3.4eV) leading to high breakdown fields (>106 V/cm) and a high saturation electron drift velocity (>107 cm/s).In practice, physical limitations appear and avoid reaching expected performances in terms of frequency and microwave power. Short channel effects appear with the decrease of the transistor gate length. In large signal conditions, traps related to surface states of the semiconductor lead to drain current drops. In this work, we have studied short channel effects for transistors fabricated on AlGaN/GaN and InAlN/GaN heterostructures. Devices with 75nm-T-shaped-gates exhibit a current gain cut-off frequency and a power gain cutoff frequency of 113GHz and 200GHz respectively. To the author knowledge, these cut-off frequencies are the highest reported values for InAlN/GaN HEMTs grown on sapphire substrate. For AlGaN/GaN HEMTs, traps related to surface states were neutralized thanks to optimized passivation steps, permitting to mitigate DC to RF dispersion. It consists of a N2O pretreatment followed by a SiN/SiO2 bilayer deposition. From an appropriate transistor topology, microwave power measurements were performed at 40GHz. An output power density of 1.5W/mm, very closed to the state of the art, was measured for AlGaN/GaN HEMTs grown on Si(111) substrate. For InAlN/GaN HEMTs grown on sapphire substrate, state of the art output power density of 2W/mm was achieved with an associated power added efficiency of 13%.