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Few topics of discussion within international human rights law are as riddled with confusion as that concerning the legal status or normative significance of the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies and their work. The treaty bodies, in its work, generate a form of jurisprudence – a body of norms and directives about how state parties ought to act in order to comply fully with the treaties. The prevailing issue within the legal practice and academic debate is often presented as a dilemma: are the norms generated by the treaty bodies binding or not? This paper takes a somewhat different approach, arguing that the treaty bodies’ normative output, all the while legal in nature, is best understood as non-binding, yet maintain the function of giving the states parties to the respective treaties reasons for action. Thus, discarding with the binary ‘grammar’ defended by some of the leading international law scholars, where law equals binding and obligatory, and non-binding and non-obligatory equals non-law. Instead, this paper suggest a third option which better fits the actual function that treaty body output serves within the practice of international human rights law. Also, since the resulting norms do not have binding force, the requirement of state consent should be proportionally weakened, giving rise to the possibility that the state may be subject to legal norms without its consent.

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This dissertation examines the evolution of institutions and legal rules regulating and prohibiting the slave trade into a global regime for the regulation of international labor migration between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. In the nineteenth century, the spread of anti-slavery norms increased Western demand for African and Asian contractual workers; but it also upturned labor recruitment networks in the Senegal River valley and the Pearl River delta, which relied on coercive practices that Western governments now prohibited. As a result, imperial powers, indigenous authorities, and labor-source communities competed to set and enforce new rules for the lawful recruitment of West African and Chinese laborers for Western enterprises. I argue that jurisdictional competition between these groups produced legal regimes that determined mobility and economic opportunity for Asian and African workers. As novel legal arrangements both facilitated and restrained African and Asian migration to worksites across the globe, labor-source societies in West Africa and China grew conscious of their shared existence within a Western-dominated world order and engaged in global debates over slavery, labor, and civilization. I trace the origins of these debates to two phenomena: the early modern global trade expansion and the subsequent emergence of the anti-slavery movement. These developments transformed political ideologies not only in Western imperial metropoles, but also in Sahelian West Africa and across the South China Sea. I also uncover African and Asian critiques of domination, discrimination, and inequality in international and imperial legal orders. This project thus elucidates how labor mobilization produced new identities and solidarities across Africa and Asia. It further reveals how the regulation of migration produced global disparities of wealth and sovereignty.

The purpose of this study was to examine and analyze federal and Virginia statutes along with selected state and federal court decisions which govern the legal rights and responsibilities of educators in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the areas of 1) liability; 2) terms of employment; 3) legal relationships with students; and 4) legal responsibilities to students with disabilities. The legal resources for this study were the United States Constitution; the Code of Virginia; other federal and Virginia legislation; and Virginia and federal judicial opinions. The methods of research employed in this study were the "descriptive word" or "fact word" approach and the case method. The computer-assisted legal research services, Lexis and Westlaw, were used extensively in this study. The conclusions resulting from this study are as follows: 1) The doctrine of sovereign immunity absolutely protects Virginia school boards and administrators from liability for negligence. Virginia teachers are also protected by sovereign immunity but only for acts of simple negligence. Sovereign immunity does not bar Virginia's teachers from actions involving gross negligence and does not protect school districts and school personnel for constitutional torts. 2. To obtain employment in Virginia, an educator must hold a license issued by the State Board of Education, pass a professional teachers' examination and execute a written contract with the school board. To obtain continuing contract status in Virginia, educators must serve a three-year probationary period in the same school division. Virginia educators may be dismissed, suspended or placed on probation for cause. 3. School age children are mandated to attend school in Virginia. Local school boards possess statutory authority to employ reasonable measures to maintain discipline in the schools. Virginia students may be suspended or expelled provided they receive procedural due process. Students possess constitutional rights under the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments. 4. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act mandates that students with disabilities be provided a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. The IDEA and Virginia regulations governing special education outline comprehensive and detailed procedural requirements guaranteeing the rights of parents of children with disabilities. / Ed. D.