2026 Theses Bachelor's

The Clothed Body as a Mode of Freedom An Analysis of How the Implementation of International and Domestic Law Fails to Protect the Clothed Body as a Mode of Political Expression

Nyirenda, Rolihlahla

An Analysis of How the Implementation of International and Domestic Law Fails to Protect the Clothed Body as a Mode of Political Expression. This thesis analyzes how wearable political iconography becomes legally vulnerable through a comparative model of three case studies: the Black Panther Party military regalia, the keffiyeh as a Palestinian icon, and the anti-Vietnam War black armbands. It investigates how domestic and international legal frameworks differentially recognize, regulate, and suppress clothing as a form of political expression by drawing on archival documents, legal records, federal surveillance, and media discourse.

The findings reveal that clothing occupies an unstable and contested position within the frameworks that protect and promote freedom of expression. This is a result of recurring institutional decisions that reclassify dress as conduct, disorder, or security threat rather than protected speech. This reclassification is neither neutral nor consistent. The same legal systems that codified black armbands as symbolic speech authorized expansive federal surveillance of Black and Arab activists based on their attire.

This thesis argues that the legal instability of worn expression is structural. The Human Rights Committee’s lack of specificity contributes to the legal vulnerability of the clothed body as a mode of expression. This allows both state and non-state actors to bypass the proportionality assessment that is normally required when restricting speech. Since speech is a derogable right, states retain a wide latitude to invoke public order and neutrality to suppress wearable political iconography and often do so along racial lines. Protecting the clothed body as a mode of dissent requires explicit legal reform, institutional accountability, and equality in the application and promotion of freedom of expression.