This study develops three models of human rights determinants with the inclusion an untested variable, women in parliaments. The research is conducted on pooled cross-sectional time-series data from 130 countries between 1978 and 1996. For the purpose of analysis the Prais-Winsten Regression method with Panel Corrected Standard Errors was used. The women in power variable is hypothesized to be significantly, positively correlated with a state's propensity toward respect for human rights and is operationalized as percentage of women in parliaments. Three models incorporating as control variables previously identified correlates of human rights abuse were utilized to asses the impact of percentages of women in parliaments on two individual subsets of human rights: personal integrity rights and socio-economic rights. Two models were designed to measure the subset of rights categorized as personal integrity rights using two separate measures: State Department Scores and Amnesty International Scores. Model number three utilized the Physical Quality of Life Index to measure levels of socio-economic rights. Statistical significance was demonstrated by the women in parliament variable in all three models.

Although federal circuit and district court judges are placed within a federal hierarchy, and receive legal and judicial training that emphasizes the importance of the judicial framework and its structure, such judges are also subjected to other pressures such as the types of litigants within the courtrooms as well as their local political environment. Furthermore, such judges are apt to form their own views about politics and legal policy and are often appointed by presidents who approve of their ideological leanings. Thus, federal courts are caught between competing goals such as their willingness to maximize their preferred legal policy, and their place within the judicial hierarchy. This dissertation applies hierarchy and impact theory to assess the importance of the judicial framework and its socialization, by analyzing both the judicial opinions and votes of federal circuit and district court judges in obscenity cases during a four-decade period (1957-1998). The research presented here finds the influence of higher court precedent to correspond in part with the conception of a judicial hierarchy. An analysis of citations of Supreme Court precedent (Roth v. United States (1957) and Miller v. California (1973)) in lower court majority opinions suggests low levels of compliance: lower courts at …