What about the legislative process and discretion at the implementation level of the national legal arrangement of refugee treatment in Indonesia?My PhD research deals with the national legal... Show moreWhat about the legislative process and discretion at the implementation level of the national legal arrangement of refugee treatment in Indonesia?My PhD research deals with the national legal arrangement of refugee treatment in Indonesia. It focuses on two aspects: the lawmaking process and discretion at the implementation level, which it perceives as dialectical or cyclical, rather than separate processes. I look at three national legal instruments in particular:the right to asylum provision in the Constitution, the 2011 Immigration Law, and Presidential Regulation (PR) 125/2016 on the Treatment of Foreign Refugees. These legal instruments are important, but as I will show later, they are also problematic to deal with refugees in the context of Indonesia as a non-signatory state to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention or the 1967 Refuge Protocol. Show less
International prosecutors are the gatekeepers to international criminal justice. They have the sole authority to prosecute people for the most serious crimes at international courts: genocide, war... Show moreInternational prosecutors are the gatekeepers to international criminal justice. They have the sole authority to prosecute people for the most serious crimes at international courts: genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Every day, they need to decide which situations to investigate; which crimes to charge; which witnesses to call; whether to negotiate pleas; and whether to appeal. Prosecutors make theses choices, and countless others, by exercising discretion. Discretion, this research argues, is the act of reaching a reasoned decision about the appropriate course of action to pursue. Discretion translates law from an abstract set of ideas and notions into practical action. How prosecutors exercise discretion shapes what international criminal justice is, how it develops, and what it does. What have international prosecutors considered when exercising discretion, and why?This research draws upon first-hand interviews with current and former senior prosecutors at the highest levels of international courts to explore the motivations and assumptions that drive the practice of prosecuting in international criminal justice. It argues that prosecutorial discretion is informed by the different role identities that prosecutors adopt towards the institutions, people, and concepts they encounter in their work. Specifically, it claims that prosecutors have been influenced by their roles as norm performers, builders, and guardians. This research concludes that adopting a relational understanding of the prosecutorial role, in which prosecutors are understood to have different roles within different relationships, allows a nuanced understanding of what international prosecutors do and explains why decisions are made. Show less
This dissertation looks into the role of discretion granted by EU directives in EU legislative decision-making and national transposition processes. It applies a qualitative single country-study,... Show moreThis dissertation looks into the role of discretion granted by EU directives in EU legislative decision-making and national transposition processes. It applies a qualitative single country-study, focusing on the transposition of six directives in the Netherlands, from the policy areas of consumer protection, environment and justice and home affairs (migration). In the theoretical part the concept of discretion is explored, using insights from both the legal and political sciences. The empirical analysis then presents both EU and national processes regarding the six directives, addressed individually as well as in a comparative manner. This study contributes to clarifying the reasons and circumstances regarding the granting of different margins of discretion to Member States and the effects of discretion on EU negotiations and national transposition. It confirms that discretion can have facilitating and impeding effects on transposition, explains why, and identifies other factors affecting transposition by interacting with discretion. Additionally, a more fine-grained approach to measuring discretion is proposed than hitherto. Finally, but addressed separately from the empirical analysis, the link between discretion and legitimacy is elaborated. It is argued that discretion in national transposition processes can be used to enhance the directives’ input, throughput and output legitimacy within national law. Show less
The dissertation examines the application of EU farm animal welfare legislation in 27 member states. It develops a theoretical framework that applies insights from the transposition literature to... Show moreThe dissertation examines the application of EU farm animal welfare legislation in 27 member states. It develops a theoretical framework that applies insights from the transposition literature to the post-transposition phase of implementation and derives hypotheses to explain cross-national variation in implementation success. The hypotheses are centered on the notion that the pressure to adapt to EU requirements makes post-transposition application difficult. Countering adaptation pressure, the presence of discretion, whereby member states have some flexibility to adapt requirements to their national circumstances, helps to alleviate the difficulties brought on by adaptation pressure. Additional hypotheses are derived from the transposition literature concerning the geographic and organizational decentralization of implementation authority and the length of transposition delay prior to application. The hypotheses are tested through a mixed methods design that combines a set of case studies and a quantitative analysis of the implementation of all major requirements applied in 27 member states in the legislation within this policy area. Support is found for the adaptation pressure and discretion hypotheses, while limited support is found for the hypotheses concerning the decentralization of implementation authority Show less
