The gender-agenda is borderless. Arguably, legal justice for Indigenous girls and women survivors of violence is unfair, inequitable, and sometimes arbitrary. Systematic violence against girls and women pervades cultures and societies; operates at three main levels: institution and state, structural and cultural, and community and individual; and manifests in myriad shapes, forms and categories. Systematic violence in this research comprises historical, colonial and contemporary aspects of violence and its impact on Indigenous girls and women. Unlike comparative studies, this research is founded on heuristic arguments derived from validating the formation, establishment and continuity of the voices of Indigenous peoples in Liberia and Australia. While many studies isolate ‘gender-based violence’ and the ‘rule of law’ in separate contexts, none has explored the extent to which the Western concept of the rule of law impacts systematic violence against Indigenous girls and women in Australia and post-war Liberia. The research assesses the efficacy of the ‘rule of law’ in dispensing justice to Indigenous girls and women who have suffered systematic gender-based violence. The scope of the research demands a comprehensive and complex systematic empirical approach that draws on the principles of phenomenology, community-based participatory research, and feminist and Indigenous methods. The study adopts an interdisciplinary mixed-methods approach informed by theories of decolonization, feminist jurisprudence, intersectionality, critical legal/race studies, and social determinants of health. Data is drawn from case law, secondary data, empirical evidence, textual/content analysis, electronic mailing and informal participant observation. Over a period of two years, a survey of 231 social service providers working with Indigenous girls and women; in-depth interviews with 29 Indigenous Women Advocates; and 22 informal email exchanges with male colleagues were conducted in both Australia and Liberia. Statistical analyses were carried out on records of 127 708 convicts to Australia; 14 996 former slave returnees to Liberia; 2701 sexual and gender-based violence cases reported to the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection in Liberia; seven case files from the Sexual and Gender-based Crimes Unit in Liberia; and 1200 interview entries from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children in Australia. This analysis of historical documents, jurisprudence and case studies triangulates a philosophical inquiry intended to migrate issues of violence against Indigenous girls and women from the margins of complex socio-legal structures towards the core of Western-centric perspectives, such as the rule of law. Situated between dominant academic conventions and resistance, the research provokes readers to consider ontological, epistemological and ethical arguments regarding access to justice outcomes for Indigenous girls and women. Contrary to the research hypothesis and despite socioeconomic differences between Australia and Liberia, findings show that: although the principle of the rule of law is an emancipatory tool for justice and redress generally, it can also be an apparatus for persistent systematic violence against Indigenous girls and women. Furthermore, the intersection of colonial history, race, gender, class and social status exacerbates the ongoing perpetration of institutional/state, structural/cultural and interpersonal/community violence against Indigenous girls and women. In conclusion, the research recommends adopting a holistic approach to educating girls and women and encouraging boys and men to participate equally in the gender justice agenda, to ensure justice for Indigenous girls and women. The research also suggests incorporating diverse and comprehensive conceptual and methodological frameworks into further research. Finally, throughout the work, this dissertation attempts to give agency to Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing justice.

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Systematic Gender Violence and the Rule of Law: Aboriginal Communities in Australia and Post-War Liberia

Why is there no post-Westphalian world polity today, despite the globalism of recent decades? Is the construction of a world polity an impossible utopia? If it is possible, under what conditions, by what processes, and in what necessary social form? Available visions of a world polity form a debate and world polity formation theories offer limited explanations. In response, this study argues the emergence of a world polity is possible, but is an unlikely and fragile outcome in a late modern context. Two contributions are made to support this argument. First, a new world polity formation theory is developed that explains how systems of polities become single polities. A second contribution advances an account of the historically specific transcivilizational and planetary social form a world polity must necessarily attain if it were to be practically constructed in a late modern context

Searching for a world polity : the world after international anarchy question

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Between Politics and Morality: Hans Kelsen's Contributions to the Changing Notion of International Criminal Responsibility

La dette ecologique est un discours politique qui s'est developpe au debut des annees 90 pour lutter contre le fardeau des dettes financieres qui grevait les budgets des Etats en developpement. Etats et societe civile se sont alors appropries les acquis theoriques et pratiques des sciences economiques et sociales pour contester un ordre du monde inegalitaire et conduisant a la degradation continue de l'environnement, caracteristique d'un "echange ecologiquement inegal". Mais dans la bouche des differents acteurs, la dette ecologique a pris des sens differents, si bien que l'on peut dissocier quatre discours de la dette ecologique. A chacun de ces discours correspondent un ou plusieurs outils juridiques, outils qui, apres analyse, s'averent souvent inaptes a valider les pretentions des partisans de la dette ecologique. Il apparait que seule la version communautaire de la dette ecologique offre un cadre d'analyse qui soit efficient sans etre contre-productif. L'analyse specifiquement dediee au regime climatique en droit international confirme ce resultat puisque les normes allant dans le sens d'un accroissement des capacites des populations locales semblent plus a meme de reduire la dette climatique.

La dette écologique en droit international public

This thesis explores the relationship between United Nations
sanctions and the rule of law. Its primary contention is that sanctions have
been applied in such a way that they have undermined the rule of law, thus
weakening the authority and legitimacy of the U.N. Security Council and the
U.N. sanctions system. As a consequence, States are less likely to comply
with their sanctions obligations to the extent necessary to ensure that
sanctions are effective. The challenge is therefore how to modify the Security
Council's sanctions practice so that sanctions command such respect and
inspire such confidence that States both desire and feel compelled to
implement sanctions fully and effectively.
The thesis proceeds in four Parts. Part I sets the stage for analysis,
introducing U.N. sanctions and proposing a basic accountability-based model
of the rule of law, according to which the central aim of the rule of law is to
prevent the abuse of power. Part II explores the origins of the Security
Council's sanctions powers, tracing the path leading to the enshrinement of
the Security Council's sanctions powers in the U.N. Charter and describing
the legal basis for the application of sanctions. Part III illustrates how the
Security Council has acted upon its sanctions powers in practice, charting the
manner in which the Council's sanctions-related decisions have shaped the
contours of the U.N. sanctions system. Part IV then operationalises the
theoretical framework for analysis developed in Part I, critically evaluating the
extent to which sanctions have strengthened the rule of law. It concludes that
the U.N. sanctions system exhibits shortcomings in respect of each of the key
elements of the rule of law and makes proposals for reforming the Security
Council's sanctions practice so that sanctions can strengthen, rather than
undermine, the rule of law.

Strengthening the rule of law or serving as a tool of war? : a critical analysis of United Nations sanctions

From Apology to Utopia—The structure of international legal argument

The study deals with two related issues: first with the conundrum of the Hungarian law on nationality and voting rights; second with instances when nationality acts as a stigma. It has two major propositions. First, the Hungarian law on nationality and elections does not lead to any reasonable conclusion concerning who constitutes the Hungarian political community, as millions of Hungarian nationals are practically excluded - but an ever increasing crowd of people who have never lived in Hungary but are descendants of nationals of the Hungarian Kingdom (and who are therefore entitled to preferential naturalization and rewarded with voting rights), are. So a clearly ethnic-cultural nationalist discourse has led to the adoption of a system of rules which in essence serves one purpose: the creation of a faithful clientele. Second, nationality in the present form, usually based on ius sanguinis and ius soli is not tenable from the moral- and political-philosophical point of view as it does not differ from a feudal privilege, also determined by accident of birth into a family or in one place. The specific burdens that differentiate nationals from settled foreigners are also reviewed in this paper. The conclusion is that nationality should be reformulated along the lines of Rainer Baubock and Ayelet Shachar's thinking; that is, rights entailed in nationality should derive from attachment to a given community, and from the fact that the decisions of the body politic directly affect the person.

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Boldizsár Nagy

Papers

From Apology to Utopia—The structure of international legal argument

Nationality as a stigma: the drawbacks of nationality (what do i have to do with book-burners?)

Divert or Preserve the Danube? Answers in Concrete’– a Hungarian Perspective on the Gabcikovo‐Nagymaros Dam Dispute

Act LXII of 2001 on Hungarians Living in NeighbouringCountries

Before or After the Wave? Thoughts on the Adequacy of the Hungarian Refugee Law