This article argues that a gendered conceptualisation of rights means that an invisible barrier had to be surmounted when attempting to frame denial of access to abortion in Northern Ireland as a human rights violation. It considers the Supreme Court decisions of In the matter of an application by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission for Judicial Review (Northern Ireland) and R (on the application of A and B) v Secretary of State for Health; examines what they reveal about the potentiality of human rights law to advance women’s rights; and analyses the limited success of human rights litigation in securing reproductive rights for Northern Irish women. It posits that the reason for this is the continued framing of abortion in the United Kingdom as a paternalistic privilege permitted to women only in limited scenarios and locations. It demonstrates how courts implicitly endorse this framing and consequently exclude women’s victimhood from the human rights framework.
This paper begins by exploring how traditional Manichean and binary narratives, which are familiar to us from fairy-tales, were used to justify the 'War on Terror' and then engages critically with the feminist and critical scholarship which argues that such narratives helped silence the wider geopolitical and legal discussions. Whilst this paper concurs with the large volume of literature that concludes that the heroic narrative obscures the political reality and marginalises the subjects of this narrative, it takes issue with some of the assumptions underlying this literature. This paper argues that many feminist scholars who critique the heroic narrative of the 'War on Terror' have fallen victim to the same oversimplification that the narrative itself deploys. While those scholars are correct to identify the operation of the heroic narrative within the rhetoric on the 'War on Terror', their continued focus solely on this narrative masks the more complex racialised, Marxist and identity narratives that also operate within this rhetoric.
The Leeds Beckett repository holds a wide range of publications, each of which has been checked for copyright and the relevant embargo period has been applied by the Research Services team.We operate on a standard take-down policy. If you are the author or publisher of an output and you would like it removed from the repository, please contact us and we will investigate on a case-by-case basis.Each thesis in the repository has been cleared where necessary by the author for third party copyright. If you would like a thesis to be removed from the repository or believe there is an issue with copyright, please contact us on openaccess@leedsbeckett.ac.uk and we will investigate on a case-by-case basis.Re-affirming and rejecting the rescue narrative as an impetus for war: To war for a woman in a song of ice and fire Abstract From Paris' capture of Helen in Homer's Iliad, and the resulting ten-year war in retaliation, Western literature has a long tradition of narrativising the turn to war as a dispute in service of a woman. Yet in contemporary Western legal accounts it is assumed that legal arch-positivism now governs the decision to go to war, and so any such action can be considered rational and just. However, contemporary turns to war are increasingly invoking just war theory that is wrapped in a similar patriarchal gender narrative. George RR Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire' 1 evokes the European tradition of war in the middle ages, but also explores modern aspects of liberalism, statehood, and international relations. This paper explores how the turn to war is narrativised and understood by various characters in the novels. It does so in order to demonstrate how calls to war rooted in chivalry and protectionism can gain more currency than those rooted in legalist language, but outlines how this then perpetuates and cements a regressive view of women as passive and helpless. This article ultimately calls for an alternative account of law's understanding of war which does not invoke the rescuer paradigm, and so offers potential reimagining of contemporary justifications for war. would consist of a trilogy of novels, but has already penned five of an expected seven. The books gained further popularity after the series was adapted into the award-winning HBO television series, 'Game of Thrones'. The novels are celebrated for subverting common fantasy tropes and introducing the genre to mainstream audiences. 2 What begins in AGOT as a simple historical fantasy morphs into a complex story portraying the deceits and ambitions of the powerful families, and the reader soon realises that many of the narrators are unreliable. The unparalleled detail, and complex plot modelled on actual historical events, such as the War of the Roses, alongside common fantasy themes, have offered a rich tapestry for fans, literary theorists, and wider academic enquiry. 3There is an abundance of academic interest in ASOIAF asserting that; 'Martin's fantasy speaks to us because it is a poignant social commentary grounded in sexual/sexist, econo...
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