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This study analyzes the connection between the Peace, Order & Good Government doctrine (‘POGG’) and responses to requests for faith-based legal exceptionalism in England, Canada, and the United States. By assessing certain aspects of the three nations’ imperial/colonial heritage, the study demonstrates that POGG acts as the catalyst for their disparate approaches to constitutionalism (i.e., church-state arrangements). The connection is significant since the concept of multiculturalism has seemingly become the basis for justifying extraordinary accommodation requests that include not only non-democratic political ideologies but also constitutionally-challenging religious choice of law preferences. The prevalence of requests for accommodation has been more recently linked to migrants from nations where religion and government are inextricably bound. As such, this study demonstrates the imprudence of relying on multiculturalism when responding to constitutional inquiries that necessitate a return to foundational principles. By revisiting more recent requests for Islamic law exceptionalism, this study assesses POGG’s foundational connection to the national rejoinders of England and Canada. This study then advocates for the United States to return to foundational principles to frame a prudent rejoinder to similar requests, which will likely prevent an unprecedented enlargement of the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The doctrine of illegality referred to as ex turpi causa non oritur actio provides a defence to civil claims concerning illegality thereby depriving the claimant of his normal rights and remedies. Over the years the courts have differed significantly as to the proper approach towards the illegality defence thus creating uncertainty in the law. Whilst some judges preferred a rigid rule-based approach others supported a flexible policy and proportionality approach. Patel v Mirza [2016] UKSC 42, a Supreme Court decision which set to resolve this long standing issue, further deepened it. There Lord Toulson for the majority laid down a trio of considerations under which various factors are to be weighed. The minority condemned this approach as being discretionary and tearing up the existing law. In contrast the minority preferred a rule-based approach governed predominantly by the reliance test. This thesis contributes to the literature by providing a quasi-flexible approach to the illegality defence. The test will be governed by the principles of consistency and proportionality which find support in English and other common law jurisdictions case law and the literature on illegality. Consistency will take precedence over proportionality, the latter of which will be restricted in application.

This thesis investigates what medical confidentiality means in practice, in the context of a trial for domestic abuse. Despite the recent landmark case of WF (2016), which upheld a complainer’s right to privacy in relation to the use of their medical records, I demonstrate that medical records continue to be used routinely in criminal prosecutions in ways which undermine the supposed protections supported in WF. This points to the need for a more fundamental assessment of the underlying processes of the type that I have carried out in this thesis. There is no other research that properly takes account of these issues, while including the views of the survivors, as well as the front-line clinicians and lawyers involved. This thesis offers a fundamental exploration of how perceptions of medical confidentiality affect how records are made, sought and used in this context. Using data from twenty-eight in-depth interviews with survivors, clinicians and lawyers, I show how medical confidentiality is routinely undermined in cases of domestic abuse and sexual violence. My research demonstrates the need for a new approach to the definition of medical confidentiality and a review of the ways that medical records are used in these kinds of cases. Interview responses are complemented by a questionnaire study, recounting survivors’ experiences with medical and legal services, alongside further quantitative data tracing the medical records requests made to an NHS health board. Throughout, I highlight issues with the consent process, finding that prosecution staff use the potential for failed convictions to encourage survivors to agree to their medical records being recovered and disclosed. The concept of relevance is also discussed, with my data bolstering accusations by other researchers that it is too widely interpreted, by legal professionals in particular. The potential for future legal proceedings is shown to have a powerful impact on the way confidentiality is perceived in the health service, with clinicians, on occasion, willing to amend practice to assist the chance of prosecutions succeeding. Overall, this thesis highlights the importance of medical confidentiality in survivors’ perceptions of the criminal justice process and the health service. Moving away from the simplistic assumptions that confidentiality has no effect on courtroom experiences, my research instead shows that diverging perceptions of confidentiality risk the disclosure of large amounts of sensitive medical information that in turn affects the chances of survivors engaging with clinicians and lawyers in future.

The thesis considers whether, as proffered by the functional method of comparative law, legal institutions can be defined in a system-neutral way in terms of specific effects. To address this question, the thesis uses EU directives, particularly the Financial Collateral Arrangements Directive, as a reference to test this assumption of the functional method. Thus, the thesis begins by demonstrating how the functional method is behind the legislative process of EU directives generally. It is argued that because directives are binding as to the results to be achieved, there are presumptions that implementing legal institutions in the Member States are functionally equivalent and give rise to the same effects. Thus, because they are equivalent, there is a presumption that, at the level of directives, it is possible to formulate system-neutral norms which are not tied to any national legal system. Against this background, the thesis considers the definitions of a title transfer financial collateral arrangement (TTFCA) and a security financial collateral arrangement (SFCA) in the Collateral Directive. An investigation is carried out to identify if the specific concepts and ideas (e.g. full ownership; ownership of financial collateral; possession and control, ‘by way of security’ etc), as presupposed by the Directive, are indeed system-neutral as suggested by the functional method. In the examination of each of these concepts and ideas, the argument was persistently made in the chapters that although there are functional similarities between legal institutions across the systems, these institutions and concepts can only be seen within a doctrinal context. In this light, in all of the cases considered, it was demonstrated that the concepts or presuppositions contained in the Collateral Directive: a) implicitly endorse some doctrinal principle at the expense of other equally valid principles in contravention of the supposed system-neutrality of the concepts; and b) that most of the functional criteria or effects set out in the Directive are only meaningful when seen within a doctrinal context, rather than from the literal, outsider perspective supposedly adopted by the Directive in line with the functional method. The findings in the thesis generally upholds the criticisms against the functional method that it does not provide tools to understand doctrinal institutions; defines institutions without any objective criteria; and is itself formalistic and doctrinal — in contravention of its own tenets.

The works that form the basis of this submission for PhD by publication are intrinsically linked through their focus on contemporary responses to substance use. This is achieved through employing a critical criminological lens to consider two key themes; the socio-legal construction of ‘drugs’; and the harms of drug prohibition. Underpinning this discussion is the contention that the arbitrary frameworks governing the availability and legality of different substances construct a drug apartheid – a system of inclusion and exclusion that privileges certain drugs and their users whilst segregating, criminalising and punishing others. Resultantly, contemporary drug policy, justified by its purported ability to mitigate drug-related harms, contradictorily serves to enhance their scope and severity. Yet the legitimacy of the drug apartheid is maintained through a reductionist drugs discourse, which obfuscates nuanced knowledge and presents fallacy as fact. This process conceals the full spectrum of drug-related harms. Simultaneously, this discourse abdicates responsibility for such harms onto minorities of irresponsible and indeed problematic substance users, disavowing the influence of consumer capitalism, structural social inequalities and indeed drug policy in shaping these damaging outcomes. This thesis addresses each of these key issues in turn. Firstly, it outlines how we, as a society, construct ‘drugs’ on a social, legal and political level, critiquing this through the lens of the drug apartheid and the reductionist drugs discourse. Secondly, it provides a damning assessment of drug prohibition through a focus on the harm of non-drugs and the harming of the vulnerable, echoing how these are characteristics of the ongoing drug apartheid. Together, these strands feed into a condemnation of one of the most incongruous and damaging social policies of modernity. Concomitantly, it is argued that there is a need to reconceptualise our understanding of both drugs and drug-related harm in order to contest the drug apartheid. There is a need to recognise the full spectrum of harm prompted by both legal and illegal substances alongside that born from drugs policy itself; and there is a need to acknowledge that whilst drug-related harms are disproportionately experienced by socially marginalised populations, that the processes of the drug apartheid permeate the entire social strata, making us all susceptible to its damaging outcomes. The key message emanating from the submitted works therefore is that the drug apartheid and its tools of drug prohibition and the reductionist discourse need dismantling as our current (non)drug policies are prompting more harm than they prevent. Hence, there is a need to reconstruct drugs on a social, legal and political level and to redress the harms consequentially caused. This can be pursued through a two-fold agenda. Firstly, through a critical, theoretically driven research ambition to better understanding all drugs as drugs, their benefits, and their harms, and how drug policy relates to this. Secondly, through the conceptualisation of a single regulatory framework which encompasses all currently legal and illegal substances, recognises the need to live with rather than without (certain) drugs and which therefore readdresses the harmful contradictions and biases of the status quo.

Since the end of the Cold War, the relationship between international and domestic law has become one of the most pressing conundrums in legal theory and practice. But this is an old problem of politics, society and law within and between states. Despite the current urgency, no comprehensive historical study of the concepts of ‘domestic’ and ‘international’ has been produced. This thesis fills one part of this significant gap. It examines how and why these ideas, as linked terms, emerged in the works of jurists writing in the British Isles. That development is most clearly understood as a product, response and justification of projects of empire and the kinds of legal subjecthood that empire required. This history is presented in four parts. Chapter One contends that the ‘domestic’ emerged from sixteenth and seventeenth century efforts to channel natural law and imperial jurisdiction into territorial authority for the early English imperial state. Chapter Two argues that the ‘international’ appeared in the late eighteenth century to demand the rational reorganisation of the domestic laws of all states, to further commerce, check revolution, and articulate national independence. Chapter Three shows how the domestic and international became entwined in a variety of Victorian-era projects tied to the independence of absolute imperial sovereignty and the interdependence of the globalising world. Chapter Four argues that in the interwar years the domestic and international became central to juristic attempts to transform the collapsing British Empire and wider international order, culminating with general theories of the rule of law within and between states that underpinned the post-1945 settlement. This history reveals a much more diverse set of roles and projects for the domestic and international than is imagined in current theorising. The contingency of these past meanings forms one pathway for unsettling and remaking them for today’s projects.

This thesis investigates the question of whether mandatory compliance or voluntary ‘‘comply or explain’’ enforcement is a more effective regulatory approach to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and whether regulation creates a hierarchy to enable prioritisation of stakeholder interests. There is a lack of consensus on whether corporations should be subject to CSR obligations. CSR concepts encourage the identification of specific core CSR categories such as ethical, legal, economic, social and environmental responsibilities and obligations. The Indian and UK contexts exemplify a variety of CSR-related legislative provisions enacted to underscore the importance of a company’s stakeholder obligations and responsibilities that extend beyond its corporate constituencies. However, the current CSR jurisprudence is carefully evaluated in Kuwaiti company law given the lack of CSR-related legislative provisions in the country. There is a need to explore and analyse these areas in different contexts, such as CSR in UK and Indian company laws, to form the basis of potential CSR provisions and legal vision for Kuwaiti company law. The current study uses Kuwait as a case to determine the ideal regulatory model for the country, whether CSR adherence is more likely to be mandatory (prescriptive) as demonstrated in Indian company law or voluntary (self-regulation) as demonstrated in UK company law and which builds the foundation of a middle ground approach. This is further supported by middle ground components of contextualism, constructivism, legal transplants and institutional theory.

This thesis engages in a critical socio-legal analysis that evaluates the potential effectiveness of legal mobilisation as a tool of social struggle with a view to conceptualising the labour movement’s capacity for political participation through meaningful engagements with law. The domination of financial markets on political systems, the diminishment of labour law protections and the proliferation of undignified working practices ask difficult questions of a constitutional theory that insists on the continued importance of national legal systems, and the potential opportunity that remains in law’s resources to transform the present conditions of work and the social relation between capital and law. This thesis takes a strategic approach to constitutional theory and argues that national legal systems remain a key site of struggle for labour. Rather than cede the regulatory space of the State to market-interests, labour must engage in litigation, legislation and political actions that confront the inadequacy of existing work standards and insists on the constitutional protection of dignity, solidarity and the right to work. In order to locate the tools of such strategic engagements, we will turn to a method of constitutional analysis ‘from-below’ that is committed to uncovering the agency of social movements in constitutional practices. This will provide the space for a critical analysis of the following tenets of effective legal engagement: The articulation of recognisable legal claims, law’s institutional capacity and, the productive interaction between legal mobilisation and political objectives. This thesis presents a pragmatic conception of the potential effectiveness of labour’s engagements with law, as a means to reconstruct the link between political subjects and constitutional structures and provide important mechanisms for labour to confront its present condition.

This study examines the complex, important, yet unclear responses to terrorism within the framework of international law. The question of who is a terrorist depends to a significant extent on the subjective outlook of the definer and many researchers tend to believe that an objective and internationally accepted definition of terrorism can never be agreed upon. The aims of terrorism and guerrilla warfare may well be the same, but they are distinguished from each other by the targets of their operations. A lawful cause does not act to legitimate the means and methods used; therefore, this research examines, in particular, the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello applicable when peoples actively practise their right to self-determination, and the relationship between the struggle for self-determination and terrorism. The thesis explores ideas and disagreements over definitions of what constitutes terrorist activity. Such problems are tracked by discussing the background and history of terrorism and responses to terrorism, and the thesis considers how these manifests in debates around definitions of armed conflict and their relationship to war crimes, and the reasons which made it impossible to include terrorism within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Finally, the thesis considers the unfolding developments around the problem of foreign terrorist fighters, and UN Security Council policy and practice on this issue including concerning how the law seems to be changing in this field and what the implications might be for humanitarian action. Furthermore, this thesis discusses the question of what should be done to address the threats caused by the return of foreign terrorist fighters and whether the measures issued by international bodies such as Security Council Resolution 2178 are sufficient. The concluding part of the thesis makes recommendations aimed at improving the international legal framework.

Through the use of 28 in-depth interviews with victims, activists, and criminal justice staff, this research details the emotional, physical, and social impact of image based sexual abuse (IBSA) on women’s everyday lives, and identifies some of the key policing and legislative issues which prevent women from achieving justice within the criminal justice system. In doing so, this study is the first and one of the largest pieces of research to examine IBSA through the use of in-depth interviews with victims in the UK. Therefore, it is able to significantly contribute to our understanding of victims’ experiences. By taking a radical feminist and victimological approach, this research also highlights the gendered nature of IBSA, including the motivations behind perpetration, the normalisation of sexual violence against women in online environments, and the link between IBSA and domestic abuse. Importantly, by examining IBSA as part of a victimisation process rather than as an event, this research identifies IBSA as being interlinked with coercion, control, blackmail, harassment, and verbal and physical abuse. Thus, the research places IBSA on Kelly’s (1988) continuum of violence. The research also identifies continued problematic responses within policing and legislation, demonstrating a failure of the state to account for gendered violence and the silencing of women’s experiences. The findings raise fundamental concerns; they call for greater recognition of IBSA as a serious form of sexual violence against women, and for a radical overhaul of criminal justice responses in order to aid women in their pursuit of justice.

There has been a lack of empirical research on children’s involvement in the design and delivery of youth offending services. This PhD investigates the extent and nature of children’s participation in planning, decision making and assessment in youth justice. It seeks to reveal the ‘logic’ and unmask the ‘hidden workings’ of participatory youth justice practice. The PhD involved 15 months of fieldwork, undertaken between 2016-2017 at a youth offending service in England. This involved participant observations and semi-structured interviews with children and young people (n=20) and professionals (n=20). Pierre Bourdieu’s analytical tools: habitus, capital, field and symbolic violence, were utilised to investigate the attitudes and behaviours of practitioners and those under supervision. This original and distinctive study produced new knowledge, uncovering both inclusive and exclusive aspects of practice that either facilitated or foreclosed children’s participation. Opportunities provided to young people to have a say and influence practice were strikingly unequal at the practice level. Involvement in shaping decision making and influencing processes was ostensibly reserved for the non-high risk, especially the ready to conform or those with seemingly malleable personality types. The study found that several young people were seeking to exert minimal energy in order to achieve a type of passive compliance with court order requirements. Professionals were concerned that they were also participating in this type of ‘game playing’. The PhD reveals insight into why agents may not contest the status quo despite experiencing hardship. The PhD presents cogent arguments for involving children more centrally in decision making, unlocking their potential and reversing a system that has traditionally ‘designed out’ opportunities for them to provide a perspective on their care/supervision or devalued the credibility/validity of their experiential knowledge. Peer mentoring was found to be a liberating and enlightening type of practice. Whilst not necessarily denouncing the adult professional voice and perspective, children and young people can be ‘experts by experience’.

The emergence of transnational production networks and the expansion of multinational companies, as well as the development of digitalisation - all elements of the globalisation phenomenon - have largely contributed to render ineffective national labour laws. This major shift has modified the context in which labour relationships take place. States and their boundaries constitute no longer the only reference framework for labour regulations. Employment relationships have radically changed in terms of time, place, and space. Current labour laws consist of overlapping national, regional, international and even 'private' regulations. Regional legal orders have been presented as complementary systems developed to address the deficiencies faced by national systems. However, the synergy between transnational economic integration and the promotion of labour values and protection of labour rights at the regional level has been less clear. This thesis explores whether there is a unique methodology of regional integration in the labour sphere, or diverse ways to regulate labour matters at the regional level are possible depending on the economic, social, political and institutional contexts. To answer this question, it analyses the EU and Mercosur cases. This thesis rejects a Eurocentric approach, and drawing on recent regional integration literature, embrace a perspective whereby both regional organisations are understood as diverse and autonomous experiences, which have developed their own institutional and legal systems. Nonetheless, this has not entailed the dismissal of the European experience when examining Mercosur. The EU and Mercosur are regional integration organisations characterised by both structural differences and some similar purposes. This thesis examines comparatively the institutional and legal, as well as the economic spheres of both organisations. The EU remains indisputably the most developed and autonomous regional organisation. Its labour dimension has partially reshaped and complemented national labour laws. However, this thesis argues that there is no a unique paradigm of integration. Drawing on this approach, it suggests that even though developing supranational institutions may more speedily advance the adoption and integration of regional labour laws, it is not a feasible option in the current context of Mercosur. This does not mean that the development of a successful regional labour dimension is not possible. This thesis concludes that regional and national actors can further develop the existing intergovernmental Mercosur labour dimension.

A highly interesting and controversial question in the regulation of public contracts is what follows in that situation where a contract has been concluded unlawfully, that is, in breach of those rules of public nature that regulate the contractual activity of public authorities. Will a contract lose or limit its initial effects, and, if so, under what circumstances, who can challenge the effects of such contracts and, how are the various conflicting interests involved balanced? The answer to these questions is of crucial importance for the integrity of any public procurement regulatory system, and consequently the realization of many of their policy objectives. By using comparative and contextual legal analysis of several selected jurisdictions, this thesis identifies, conceptualises and systematises the practical and policy considerations surrounding the treatment of unlawfully concluded public contracts. The analysis conducted attempts to systematically present the difficult balance between the various conflicting interests and multifaceted regulatory issues that arise in the context of unlawfully concluded public contracts. The thesis suggests that a careful balance between the public and private interest is essential for the treatment of such contracts and proposes a roadmap of regulatory and policy considerations that legal systems may wish to reflect upon when dealing with this issue.

This thesis investigates legal cases involving environmental valuation, that is, the exercise of putting a monetary value on environmental goods, services and amenities. There is a vast economics literature on environmental valuation, but relatively little legal literature on the use of environmental valuation in the courtroom. Nevertheless, environmental valuation is relevant, or even central, to a range of cases - for example, when courts are called upon to prospectively (ex ante) evaluate a regulatory costbenefit analysis, or retrospectively (ex post) determine how much compensation to award for environmental damage. This thesis sets out to redress this gap by studying US and Indian court cases involving environmental valuation. In each of these jurisdictions, I analyse and compare prospective and retrospective valuation cases, which legal scholars have traditionally treated as separate spheres of enquiry. There are two analytical themes which tie the case studies together, and help define the approach I take in this thesis. The first is the framework of valuation choices: I characterise environmental valuation as a three‐stage decision process: whether to value or not to value, what values to measure, and how to measure them. A key contribution of my thesis, therefore, is to outline, define and systematically apply an analytical framework - that of valuation choices - in a range of cases spanning two jurisdictions and a variety of subject matter, thereby yielding valuable insights and trends with respect to judicial decision‐making on environmental valuation issues. The second integrating theme is the concept of context-driven valuation. I argue that in both jurisdictions and in each category of case (prospective and retrospective), courts have implicitly or explicitly been making valuation choices, and furthermore, that those choices have been context-driven, that is, impelled by, or justified in light of, context. Drawing on the case studies as well as literature on the judicial role, I argue for a recognition of judges' own unique expertise at making context‐driven valuation choices.

This thesis critically examines protectionism in the Nigerian Insurance Sector and discusses it in the context of both the liberalisation efforts of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the anti-protectionist measures that are inherent in a multinational insurance programme. Chapter one introduces the work and provides insights into the background, aims and objectives of the research. The Chapter also identifies the key research questions to be answered by the work and further discusses the key concepts relevant to multinational insurance programmes. Chapter two critically analyses the global anti-protectionist legal framework for the insurance sector enshrined in the WTO General Agreement for Trade in Services (GATS). It proceeds to analyse the Nigerian insurance regulations and closely examines the extent to which they comply with or diverge from Nigeria's GATS obligations. This Chapter briefly discusses the insurance legal framework in the United Kingdom and comparatively identifies approaches that can be adopted and lessons Nigeria should learn from the UK. Despite the identified positives from the UK regulatory framework, Chapter two points out that the GATS liberalisation efforts have been highly inadequate and ineffective in resolving the insurance sector protectionism that characterises many jurisdictions including Nigeria. It therefore identifies multinational insurance programmes as a private sector driven solution to this problem and noted that the WTO approach and any other inter-governmental approach may not yield an immediate solution to this problem. Chapter three essentially assesses the internal and external workings and operation of Multinational Insurance Programmes. The Chapter introduces and extensively discusses the Multinational Insurance Programme as a special type of insurance and argues that it was invented as a result of globalisation and it exists in two major forms - admitted and non-admitted cover. It then critically analyses the solutions and drawbacks inherent in both an admitted and non-admitted insurance cover. Finally, the chapter discusses the various forms of non-admitted cover including the design and structure of a controlled master policy. Chapter four acknowledges the fact that the adoption of Multinational Insurance Programme helps to address the problem of protectionism, but it raises an additional issue of the legality of its adoption in the context of Nigerian law and under the laws of other non-admitted jurisdictions. The chapter therefore addresses this issue and discusses instances where severe regulatory sanctions had been imposed for usage of this form of insurance. The chapter further discusses the response by experts to this legality challenge through the invention of circumventing tools or permissive options like cut-through clauses, financial interest clauses, fronting arrangements, among others. Chapter five recognises that apart from regulatory protectionism, state actors adopt fiscal measures in the form of taxation to protect a particular sector. The chapter proceeds with a critical analysis of the role of taxation as a protectionist tool in Nigeria and points out the widespread discrimination and unfair tax laws and policies that have stalled the growth of the insurance sector and affect both admitted and non-admitted insurers alike. The chapter queries the rationale for such laws and policies, especially in view of the fact that it discourages growth and investment in the insurance sector. The chapter contains solutions for each problem identified and recommends quick fix option for the implementation of some of these solutions. Chapter six of this thesis, summarises the work and concludes by making strong recommendations that can turn the fortunes of the Nigerian insurance sector through the adoption of more liberal laws and policies.

This thesis considers the concepts of identity, diversity and resilience in the context of the Cypriot judiciary. To do this it asks (1) how judicial identity is created, expressed and maintained (2) to what extent judicial identity is shaped by subgroup identities and what impact do these subgroup identities have on the collective identity and (3) what a diverse understanding of judicial identity might offer to the demands of a changing judiciary. These questions are answered through an empirical study of the Cypriot judiciary involving interviews and observation with current and former judges. It argues that judicial resilience is the product of a multi-vocal judicial identity. Judicial resilience and diversity go hand in hand. A diverse judiciary is a resilient judiciary - a judiciary able to transform and reproduce member relations in a multi-vocal way, to approach challenges as opportunities, to develop a 'growth mindset' and to learn, adapt and flourish.

Despite the extensive research conducted in the area of sexual assault and attributions of blame towards victims of sexual assault and rape, there are several gaps in our understanding of the issues specifically related to the under-representation of male and transgender victims. In order to understand the patterns and nature of male and transgender rape in British society it is necessary to identify and explore the factors which may contribute to the under-reporting of rape by these groups. Therefore, attitudes towards male and transgender rape victims were examined in order to identify which variables (e.g. victim and perpetrator gender, victim sexuality, type of rape, rape myth acceptance) influenced victim blame and responsibility, and determined whether these were consistent with motivational theories of victim blame. Motivational theories of blame assert that people blame victims for two basic reasons: firstly, to maintain control over their environment and secondly, to maintain self-esteem (Bruggen & Grubb, 2014). Two theories that have been used to explain blame directed towards rape victims are the Defensive Attribution theory (Shaver, 1970) and the Just World theory (Lerner, 1980). It is intended that the findings of the present research will effectively challenge misconceptions about rape and help develop a strong relationship between the community and health care system which will effectively encourage male and transgender victims to report their rapes and get the legal, medical and psychological treatment they require in order to aid their post-assault recovery, free from prejudicial judgement.

My PhD project engages in a micro-level examination of the institutional character and knowledge work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), maps the judicialisation of climate change in terms of the evaluation and certification of climate science by domestic courts, and considers the role of climate litigants (e.g. environmental NGOs and future generations) in terms of the cross-fertilisation of science-driven argumentation and advocacy strategies across numerous jurisdictions. More specifically, by undertaking a detailed examination and analysis of salient climate change lawsuits which embody substantive discussions about climate science, my PhD thesis argues that through the production, certification and use of climate science in litigation, the IPCC, domestic courts and litigants are co-producing a new and emergent body of transnational law and jurisprudence on climate change. Since this is largely judge-made law, I posit that it can be thought of as a kind of co-produced ‘transnational climate change case law.’ I apply a Science and Technology Studies (STS) lens to frame my analysis of climate science as a form of applied science and trans-science and argue that the work of the IPCC, courts and litigants in relation to climate change can be regarded as a complex network of interactive relationships and hybridised knowledge practices, including: i) science-policy co-production; ii) science-policy-law co-production; and iii) science-law co-production, respectively. This new body of transnational climate change case law is the byproduct of epistemic interactions between these three principal actors, which are circumventing traditional executive and legislative processes. This dynamic signifies a shift away from a purely statist conception of climate change regulation which is largely consistent with the transnationalisation of environmental regulation and law writ large in recent years.

This thesis examines the development of the fiduciary duty under the Maltese corporate law as an example of legal transplantation through the Maltese statutory and judicial approach. Based on the review of the legal transplantation literature, it assesses the factors that have influenced the Maltese statutory and judicial process. Historical, cultural, economic, prestige and political factors and familiarity with the law are discussed. It demonstrates that the Maltese statutory path has been influenced by the Italian legal system through the application of mandate law and thereafter by the English legal system with the inclusion of indirect influences, which started to prevail from the 1940s, and subsequently with the enactment of Article 136A of the Maltese Companies Act 1995 in 2003. However, it also indicates that the fiduciary duty in Articles 1124A and B of the Maltese Civil Code 1870 only have a Roman influence. It concludes that, although the statutory regulation of this duty was linear and influenced by historical and cultural factors, most of the Maltese judiciary have been inconsistent in applying the law and has departed from the factors that influenced the legislators from the 1940s onwards by having started to apply the economic and prestige factors.

This thesis explores the international and national legal tools binding the EU and Russia in the energy field and how they impact on the EU-Russia geopolitical relationship. This work will focus on natural gas regulation, given the rising importance of this energy source on the global scale. The approach used starts from legal analysis and is constantly enriched by taking into account economic, political and practical considerations. From the international law perspective, we argue that the rules of World Trade Organization (‘WTO’) represent the only workable legal framework in the instant case. Internally, we identified the Lisbon Treaty as a turning point of European energy regulation. Pre-Lisbon gas legislation could be problematic when assessed under WTO rules and its application showed a lack of coherence with external EU energy relations. By contrast, we found that the Lisbon Treaty and the ensuing legislation are likely to empower the EU with the adequate tools to overcome the pre-Lisbon problems and build solid bilateral relations with Russia. This could be a major improvement to secure EU natural gas supply since economic data show that Russia is likely to remain the most important EU gas supplier in the next 25 years.

Having been concluded at the 2013 Bali Ministerial Conference, the WTO TFA entered into force on 22 February 2017. Indonesia became the 125th WTO Member to deposit the ratification instrument to the WTO on 5 December 2017 and prior to that had already given its domestic approval for the WTO TFA through Law No. 17/2017 dated 22 November 2017. However, there is legal ambiguity attached to the direct applicability of a treaty in Indonesian domestic law. This includes the WTO Agreement and particularly the WTO TFA. Regardless of the categorisation system provided under SDT provisions for the implementation, Indonesia’s ratification to the WTO TFA has let the WTO believed that, on the one hand, Indonesia is committed to implement the WTO TFA provisions in domestic law, but on the other hand, to keep the ambiguity present in domestic law. Unlike any other WTO Agreements in Annex 1A, the WTO TFA is based on cooperative approach in the implementation of its provisions instead of reciprocity principle. The approach is momentous to the invocation of its provisioned rights for private actors which is argued to consist of two rights: substantive economic rights and procedural rights. They may need it both as a sword to cut down any unnecessary trade costs and a shield to protect them from trade difficulties. The case of Indonesia shows a WTO member with excessive trade costs in cross border and protectionist laws. The protection of private actor rights to prevent them from inappropriate treatment has therefore taken on some urgency. The rationale is to reduce unnecessary trade costs and unveiling trade protectionism which disadvantages them. A proposal for improvement in the implementation of trade facilitation reform in Indonesia for the benefit of government and private actors is also submitted. Nevertheless, allowing or precluding such invocation of those rights is a matter of the applicable law of a state– in this case, Indonesia.

This thesis is concerned with sub-state politics and the influence it has on political behaviour and attitudes. Parting company with much of the existing literature that examines elections in multilevel systems, I argue that it is incorrect to assume that factors at the statewide level determine electoral behaviour and attitudes at the sub-state level. Rather, elections at the statewide and sub-state level should be seen as interdependent. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the thesis and sets up the analytic framework upon which my research is based. I also give a broad discussion of my method and explain why I choose Scotland and Wales as cases in my argument. In Chapter 2, I outline and describe my primary data sources – the devolved election studies – by detailing their origins and design. Chapter 3 examines what voters know about sub-state politics. I examine data from 10 election studies in total and introduce a unique new dataset of press coverage of the NHS to examine policy attribution. I find that considerable proportions of citizens have little knowledge of sub-state political issues. Chapter 4 focuses on the role that national identities play in vote choice at sub-state and statewide elections. I also introduce the concept of party blocs in Scotland and Wales. Results indicate that national identity is a substantial predictor of bloc vote choice. In Chapter 5 I examine how sub-state identities influence how voters cast their ballots at elections to different levels of government. My results indicate that vote switching is more prevalent among those who identify with a sub-state identity (instead of a statewide identity). Chapter 6 tests whether split-ticket voting at devolved elections is driven by strategic motivations. While voters appear to understand when it is in their interests to cast a strategic vote in their constituency, there is no evidence suggesting they do in the list vote. In the final chapter, I conclude by highlighting the findings of this thesis and remarking on the importance of this work for future analyses of elections in multilevel systems.

The proliferation of regional and international human rights adjudicatory bodies increases the likelihood of conflicting interpretations of fundamental rights and freedoms, which may trigger judicial fragmentation. International Human Rights Law (IHRL) certainly offers a fertile ground for fragmentation to arise for the high sensitivity of the issues related to many human rights and the determinant role of social, cultural, religious and historical concerns. While judicial fragmentation in International Law has been at the centre of the scholarly debate in the last decade, the same phenomenon within IHRL has been less explored. The present thesis aims at providing a better understanding of the current phenomena of fragmentation and convergence in IHRL and identifying their triggering factors. In particular, it aims at answering two key research questions. First, is judicial fragmentation actually affecting IHRL or does convergence prevail? And, second, what are the factors that can be identified as contributing to this situation? Looking at the case-law of the three main regional human rights systems (African, European and Inter-American) and the UN Human Rights Committee, this thesis assesses the extent of judicial fragmentation in IHRL, concluding that the phenomenon is limited and the worries about it mostly exaggerated. Moreover, adopting a wide range of methodological approaches, this thesis identifies and explores several factors that can explain this substantial convergence and the few cases of fragmentation. On the one hand, elements strictly related to the adjudication, such as the understanding and application of the principles of necessity and proportionality, the adoption of subsidiarity and deference doctrines or the resort to judicial dialogue confirm their relevance in shaping the case-law and avoiding or triggering fragmentation. On the other hand, other factors such as the composition of the bodies and the personal profile of who decide the case, the role of registries and secretariats as well as NGOs also proved to have an influence on the judicial behaviour of these human rights bodies, ultimately affecting convergence and fragmentation.

In recent decades, a groundswell of public and political attention has turned towards the injustices of the past, and the legacies of antecedent atrocities that resonate in the present. Gradually, presumptions of a linear historical progression (and thus an automatic process of 'moving on') are being displaced in favour of recognition of the potential for transgenerational transmission of wrongs. On this account, simply looking forward is insufficient. The past must be acknowledged and accounted for. In the history of international law, this necessarily involves engagement with European expansion into the 'New World', and the forced migration and enslavement of over twelve million Africans. Thus, centuries of advocacy and activism coalesce in the contemporary movement for reparatory justice for the system of transatlantic chattel enslavement. While social, political, and philosophical discourse has evolved to engage with the increasing impetus for historical justice, international legal argumentation has evidenced little development, and the orthodox position has held steady. The system of transatlantic enslavement represents a feature of the morality and legality of the times, albeit a regrettable one, and thus is not amenable to judicial reparatory processes. Not only does this narrative preclude the operation of judicial mechanisms in response to the reparations case, but the maangmamizi - the African holocaust of chattel, colonial, and neo-colonial enslavement - is legitimised through its purported legality. A permissive rule of international law enabling enslavement is employed in denying the moral and political calls for redress, as well as the legal case. Yet, simultaneously, reparations activists and scholars rely on contrary assertions of international prohibition to cement their calls for justice within the judicial frame. This thesis explores the limits of the international legal system, and the place of enslavement within it, reconsidering the development of modern international law to account for subaltern perspectives. The history of prohibition is resituated within the context of the marginalisation of African peoples in the birth of the nation State, the construction of civilisation, colonial encounters, and the longer history of enslavement's regulation in international law. Thus, the persistent assertion of uncontroversial legality is destabilised, providing an entry point for the reassessment of additional legal barriers to recovery in the face of widespread historical injustice, and for a broader understanding of reparatory justice premised on the international legal frameworks, but also transcending them.

A key trend in laws and policies aimed at combatting terrorism is the increasing use of policing strategies that allow law enforcement officers anticipate risk so that they can engage in preventing, interrupting and prosecuting those suspected of terrorism offences before their commission. One such pre-emptive policing strategy is the use of terrorist profiling. The rationale underpinning terrorist profiling is to allow law enforcement officers identify those likely to involved in terrorism or its associated activities so that law enforcement officers can prevent, interrupt and prosecute suspects before an act of terrorism. The use of terrorist profiling is highly controversial given that its use has been perceived as being unlawful. Previous attempts to analyse terrorist profiling has tended to rely solely on human rights law as the analytical lens to evaluate the usefulness and lawfulness of terrorist profiling. The discussion in this thesis argues that the effectiveness and usefulness of terrorist profiling should only be undertaken by deconstructing the profiling process so as to allow a thorough examination of the phenomenon of terrorist profiling. As a result, the discussion in this thesis establishes two analytical lenses as the basis to systematically examine terrorist profiling. Firstly, the discussion develops an effectiveness framework that examines the construction of terrorist profiles separately from the application of terrorist profiles. Secondly, the discussion also draws upon criminal profiling methodologies and approaches as the basis to evaluate different manifestations of terrorist profiling. These analytical lenses are used to conduct a taxonomy on different manifestations of terrorist profiling so as to systematically evaluate their usefulness as a law enforcement tool to predict likely terrorist characteristics.

This thesis argues that UK deportation law exists in a state of tension. On the one hand, the political imperative to deport foreign national offenders, and on the other, to protect the human rights of children. The human rights of foreign national offender’s children, are protected in UK law by their right to family life (under Article 8 ECHR, domesticated by the Human Rights Act 1998), and their right to their best interests as a primary consideration, and not to be blamed for the wrongdoing of their parent (under Article 3 UNCRC, domesticated by s55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009). However, the right to family life under Article 8 ECHR may be interfered with on the basis of the public interest in deporting foreign national offenders. This tension in UK deportation law is evinced by the apparently irreconcilable characteristics of these legal obligations. This thesis theorises this by arguing that deportation decisions are polycentric in nature, because of the multiplicity of human rights and interests at stake and which must, by law, be given effect to. Furthermore, UK deportation law creates a plurality of decision-making norms; multiple legal principles which must also be given simultaneous effect to. This thesis traces the attempts of UK law to give effect to the best interests of the child in deportation decisions through three distinct phases of decision-making approach. It concludes that no deportation decision-making approach adopted to date has effectively reconciled the human rights obligations and the best interests of the child by resolving the problems of polycentricity and the plurality of decision-making norms. Finally, this thesis demonstrates that UK deportation law is capable of giving effect to the best interests of the child by taking the human rights of children both seriously and literally.

This thesis examines the law applicable to unmarried couples on relationship breakdown through the lens of vulnerability theory, developing a framework of 'relational vulnerability' which argues that as a result of the state's expectation of and preference for economic self-sufficiency, the homemaker becomes vulnerable. Relational vulnerability is defined as the broad susceptibility to harm that arises as a result of an individual existing within an uneven or unequal relational framework. Firstly, I argue that relational vulnerability is primarily caused by the way that the state, through law, prioritises autonomy and rationality at the homemaker's expense. Her inability to live up to the economic ideal causes her harm on economic, emotional, and spatial levels. Secondly, I argue that legal understandings of homemaking (i.e. care and domestic work) are influenced by myths of altruism and domesticity, labelling it as gendered, sentimental, and privatised. As a result of this, the homemaker struggles to assert an interest in the family home on relationship breakdown. Thirdly, I argue that the state owes an obligation to redress relational vulnerability by promoting resilience. In the final chapter, I examine three hypothetical responses to vulnerability, evaluating the extent to which these are able to make the homemaker resilient.

The question of who qualifies as an investor stands as one of the foundational issues of international investment law. However, it has been argued that the notions of nationality and the origin of capital are increasingly irrelevant within structure of international investment law. According to this view, practices such as treaty shopping have been submitted as being a true reflection of the multilateralized nature of investment law and a manifestation of its purpose. However, the response of other stakeholders in the regime particularly host states, suggests that this view lacks consensus. One of the manifestations of this differing position is the increasing incorporation of the denial of benefits (DOB) clause as an in-treaty mechanism for limiting the practice of treaty shopping in international investment agreements and treaties. The DOB clause has been argued to be an effective remedy possessing the potential of limiting treaty shopping, and serving as a vehicle for birthing stability and predictability in international investment law and arbitration. It is the veracity of this position that this work seeks to test. At the heart of this research is the determination of the question of the effectiveness of the DOB clause as a mechanism for limiting treaty shopping.

Analysis of the success of judicial reforms in ex-Soviet countries is an area that has received comparatively less academic attention than in other countries where judicial reform efforts were undertaken around the same time. In addition, the far-reaching impact of judicial independence and judicial impartiality standards on the protection of other human rights standards and on complaints to international human rights bodies, is an area that has been acknowledged but not adequately explored. This thesis attempts to address these gaps by examining the history and theories of judicial independence and impartiality, and analysing why these standards are routinely violated by governments. This thesis then seeks to understand the impact of de facto judicial independence and impartiality standards by examining the effects of those standards have on the content of applications to circumvent domestic remedies and on the incidence of torture. It finally seeks to scrutinize the reasons behind the relative success of judicial reform efforts in some countries, against the comparative failures of other reform efforts in the various countries involved in this study, whilst identifying themes of judicial independence and impartiality across the region.

Many Islamic countries propose legitimising the death penalty using theological and secular political reasoning. They argue that the punishment is privileged within a conception of theocracy expressed through state sovereignty and/or it is an efficacious criminal justice policy for punishing those who commit the 'most serious crimes'. This study argues that such justifications are misguided, and that the UN Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) provides a cogent mechanism to provide a clearer perspective on the legitimacy of the death penalty within Islam. To investigate the claims of the erroneous theological reasoning for the death penalty, the present study uses the UPR as a methodological lens from which to scrutinise Islamic Member State reasons for the use of the punishment. The UPR is an innovative mechanism for the peer-review of the human rights record of all 193 UN Member States, and this includes the human rights implications for implementing the death penalty within Islam. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Sudan are presented as two case studies, and the work considers whether the sovereign state discourses for maintaining the death penalty are compatible with international human rights standards. The foundational assessment of this UN mechanism for assessing the Islamic use of the death penalty is then followed by an exegesis of Islamic law and presents findings on the legitimacy of Islamic state propositions for maintaining the death penalty, based on theological interpretations. It identifies a more enlightened reading of Islamic jurisprudence to provide cogent reasons for the prominence of the right to life over the Islamic Member State claims to legitimise the death penalty.

International criminal law judicial bodies often use philosophy as part of their justificatory narrative. Such use has not yet been systematically analysed nor has the impact thereof on institutional legitimacy been ascertained. Through systematic content analysis, the thesis empirically identified a taxonomy of philosophies used in a selection of international criminal law pronouncements, before evaluating their compliance with a formal rule of law standard. On the Fullerian rule of law adopted, justifications ought to be public, clear and consistent. Through the analysis undertaken natural law, legal positivism, feminism, Third World Approaches to International Law and realism were generally found to be consistently used over the selected juristictions. Inconsistency appeared in conjunction with ethical theories and liberalism. Such inconsistency in judicial output brings the institutions' outcome-based legitimacy into contention. In turn, this pressurises the consent legitimacy afforded to these bodies or, in other words, the international community's perception of whether these judicial bodies are legitimate. The thesis concludes with suggestions on how these philosophical inconsistencies might be understood and addressed to enhance the rule of law in and institutional legitimacy afforded to international criminal law judicial bodies.

The law of real burdens developed in Scotland in a piecemeal fashion over 200 years, resulting in a series of arcane rules which left property owners unclear about their rights and complicated the sale and purchase of property. The Title Conditions (Scotland) Act 2003 (TCA) represented a major overhaul of the law in this area, aiming to clarify and modernise provision on real burdens and bring certainty while reducing costs. This thesis looks at how the TCA is working in practice and evaluates whether those aims have been achieved in relation to three key parts of the TCA, namely implied rights to enforce, interest to enforce and the Development Management Scheme (DMS). In addition to a systematic exploration of the background to the reforms, my research involved empirical work with solicitors and insurers to ascertain their experiences with the new rules. The case law in these key areas is fairly limited and has not provided clear guidance, with many resorting to insurance as a solution to the uncertainty in the law of implied rights and interest to enforce, while the DMS appears to have been largely ignored by the profession. This thesis sets out my findings on the operation of the law in practice, considering particularly the difficulty for practitioners in understanding and applying the rules on implied enforcement rights for common scheme burdens and interest to enforce, and the knock-on effect for clients in terms of transaction timescales and costs. Issues with some aspects of the DMS raised by practitioners and academics are also explored.

The main contributions of this thesis to existing literature is the introduction of a new methodology for researching the effect of copyright law on creative output using dynamic markets created in a lab experiment. The markets of interest are creative industries, examples of these markets are markets such as, book and music publishing, where copyright is an important part of how the markets operate. Motivating creative production in such industries is more complex compared to motivating production in industries with more mechanic or algorithmic tasks. The methodology presented in the thesis is a contribution to existing literature on copyright and motivation, as previous literature does not utilise a dynamic experimental environment. The results of this research indicate that both pay structure and the availability of information regarding the actions and performance of other competitors can influence creativity. There is some evidence that public information/attribution was important to market participants, as it in some cases provides an incentive for higher production and in other cases it cancels out an effect which are otherwise found when only tournament pay/economic rights were present. There is evidence of lower satisfaction in tournament pay/economic rights groups which suggest that individuals exert overconfidence before participating in the market causing lower satisfaction due to below expected performance. This might also result in over supply in winner-takes-all markets as participants overestimate the probability of their own success when entering the market. Besides this, the lower satisfaction could increase turnover in the creative industries and thus decrease overall human capital in the market as the unsuccessful experienced individuals leave the market due to low satisfaction.

This thesis evaluates the role of non-State actors as participants in the legal regime governing deep seabed mining beyond national jurisdiction (the "deep seabed" or the "Area"), with a focus on corporate participation. Deep seabed exploration and exploitation is regulated on behalf of the international community as a whole by the International Seabed Authority ("ISA"). The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea ("UNCLOS") provides the broad legal framework within which the ISA operates. The overwhelming majority of States are parties to UNCLOS (the US being the most notable exception). UNCLOS is underpinned by the principle that the Area and its mineral resources constitute the common heritage of mankind. No State or commercial entity can unilaterally claim sovereignty over them. All exploration and exploitation activities must be conducted with the ISA's permission and oversight. Much of the existing legal structure applicable to mining in the deep seabed has yet to be applied in practice and many legal rules have still to be developed. Despite this lack of a completed legal framework, deep sea mining technology is racing ahead. After decades of anticipation and exploration, deep seabed mining beyond national jurisdiction is set to begin in the coming years. A host of actors are already operating within the Area, including an array of non-State actors such as corporate entities. In this context, this thesis analyses whether imminent commercial mining activities in the Area by non-State, corporate actors will serve to undermine the UNCLOS conception of the common heritage of mankind. A product of its history, the UNCLOS legal regime applicable to the deep seabed is an unlikely hybrid of capitalist and communist values, embracing the role of private actors while enshrining principles of resource distribution. Given the potential for conflict between the values underpinning the regime, how will the regime function when mining by non-State actors commences? What legal challenges or contradictions, if any, will this present for the operation of the UNCLOS regime, particularly in terms of the realisation of the common heritage of mankind?

The duration and complexity of copyright in relation to unpublished materials is contributing to a 20th century 'black hole' in the online historical record. Archives collect, preserve, and provide access to records of governments, businesses, communities and individuals: the raw evidence of transactions, activities and events that informs our understanding of the past. The transformative nature of online access to the archival record supports human rights, democracy, openness, transparency, accountability, culture, learning, research and innovation. Despite reform, the legal framework in the UK fails to provide a safe harbor for archives that could make comprehensive online access to the country's rich and diverse archival holdings possible. This thesis presents the results of a survey of the UK archive sector that explores how copyright affects digitisation of collections, and analyses five digitisation projects at a variety of archive institutions, in order to better understand the decision-making processes and risk management strategies that make archive collections containing third party rights materials available online, despite the tendency towards risk aversion within the archive sector. The thesis found that a small proportion of UK archives have made third-party rights holder material available online, supporting the view that the sector, in general, is risk averse in relation to third-party copyrights. However, evidence gathered suggests that approaches taken by less risk-averse institutions can be adapted to suit the needs of a wide-range of cultural heritage institutions, and best-practice guidance could have a significant impact on online access to 20th century collections. The study contributes baseline data on the sectoral approach to copyright, rights clearance and risk management, and how these approaches affect digitisation, in order to provide a starting point for further research and best-practice guidance for the UK archive sector.

International mining and construction projects have given rise to concerns about whether the interests of cultural heritage itself and of those who have an interest in safeguarding cultural heritage are respected and weighed. The regulations that could potentially apply could come from cultural heritage law, investment law, human rights law, archaeological rules, and laws on mining and construction. A crucial question is whether regulations that are designed to protect cultural heritage contribute to an adequate legal framework in the context of international investment activities. How are disputes between foreign investors and a host State, disputes relating to movable cultural objects, and conflicts involving non-state actors to be dealt with? The social-legal methodology is employed to highlight legal, economic and social perspectives. The conclusion that the existing legal framework is ineffective is inescapable due to the lack of specific measures at both international and national levels. There are cases in which protection of cultural heritage has been used as a justification for host State's interference in investors' activities, along with the preservation of the environment, human rights and public interests. Foreign investors still consider investment arbitration as a preferred method to resolve Investor-State disputes with cultural elements. Amicable arrangements may be helpful to deal with cultural property related disputes and to avoid conflicts raised by parties than this State from escalating into serious legal conflicts, but the parties involved face some difficulties in finding a suitable approach to balance their conflicting interests. From these findings, recommendations are offered to improve the laws and procedures to achieve a higher standard of cultural heritage protection. The thesis highlights the role of unique tools of international investment law - including state contracts and guidelines of investment financiers and the requirements for more efficient rules on archaeological reports and cultural impact assessment. The thesis also demonstrates that the competing interests of the different parties concerned are to be dealt with promptly and adequately if there is to be any hope of settling Investor-State disputes, disputes relating to cultural properties or conflicts initiated by local communities or nongovernmental entities.

The aim of this research is to address the question of how false beliefs about the law should be dealt with by the criminal law. While there has long been discontent with the current position, I argue that proposals to deal with this issue in relation to the mens rea are inadequate, and that a more consistent approach to this problem can only be developed by exploring the place of knowledge of the law as an autonomous concept from mens rea. This approach thus aims to complement the traditional model of criminal responsibility based exclusively on volitional states (mens rea) with one based also on cognitive states. In doing so, this thesis develops a meaningful and operative account of the cognitive or epistemic conditions of criminal responsibility, analytically scrutinising the question of how the criminal law should treat those who act in ignorance of criminal prohibitions and who unwittingly break the law. Part I of the thesis looks at the conditions for the establishment of criminal responsibility from the perspective of an institutional theory of the criminal law. The first two chapters develop a critical account of the two current ways a false belief might be recognised as a defence - mistake of fact and mistake of law - and the ways that different theoretical accounts, characterised as legal positivism and legal moralism, have sought to address this problem. These chapters also survey the ways that a mistake of law defence might be currently recognised and examines the proposals of those authors willing to expand the conditions under which ignorance of law should exculpate. After that, in chapter III, the dissertation begins to develop a fresh approach based on an institutional framework for the criminal law. The chapter explores the connections between criminal law and interpersonal and institutional trust. The last chapter of part I argues that both volitional and epistemic/cognitive conditions are key in a correct account of deliberation or practical reasoning processes before action. Thereafter the Epistemic Condition on Criminal Responsibility (ECCR) is proposed as an algorithmic test, able to distinguish culpable from non-culpable ignorance. Part II of the thesis, rejecting the classical dichotomy of mistake of fact versus mistake of law, introduces a new kind of approach based on distinguishing between brute facts, institutional facts and institutional commands. Chapter 5 discusses and defends the feasibility of the distinction between brute and institutional facts, arguing that the perception process of both is dissimilar. Later, the chapter applies the ECCR to existing cases in common law jurisdictions related to false beliefs about brute facts. Chapter 6 scrutinises the practical distinction between false mistakes about institutional facts and false mistakes about institutional commands and applies the ECCR to false beliefs about institutional facts. The last chapter puts the ECCR into practice to address false beliefs about institutional commands. Finally, a general point about false beliefs is considered: when the duty to seek legal advice becomes a right to rely on a trustworthy source.

Policy-making and service development tends to what has been called the 'ideal of impartiality' whereby difference between different population groups is reduced to unity. At the same time, inherent within equality law is an understanding that the population is heterogeneous, experiencing complex forms of injustice which require the opportunity for legal redress. The Equality Act 2010 includes a general duty on public authorities, the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED), to have due regard to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between different groups in relation to nine protected characteristics. Secondary legislation in Scotland has added significant additional requirements with the potential to transform the way that public authorities think and act about equality including duties to report progress on mainstreaming the equality duty, to publish equality outcomes and report progress and to assess and review policies and practices. The way that this secondary legislation has been conceptualised, interpreted and how it has informed planning and practice within public authorities has not previously been the subject of a body of research. This thesis has sought to contribute to greater understanding about the potential of the PSED in Scotland by applying interpretive policy analysis to the application of the duty in one city, Glasgow. Interpretive approaches to policy focus on meanings that shape actions and institutions and draw on a range of methods to follow the objects, the language, the relevant actors and the acts associated with the policy. Within this context, an assumption has been made that a compound narrative about injustice, equality as constitutive of social justice and institutional change within the city can be derived by investigating meaning and action associated with the PSED from a number of different perspectives. Firstly, the framing and the discourses associated with formal texts required for compliance produced by five key institutions with responsibility for different facets of city life have been investigated critically. These five institutions are the Scottish Government, Glasgow City Council, the Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and the City of Glasgow College, selected for both their relationship to social structures which determine equality and for their responsibilities for its different dimensions. Secondly, the perspectives of three communities of meaning - those directly responsible for compliance, those indirectly responsible for compliance and advocates for social groups - have been gathered through the use of semi-structured interviews in order to compare and contrast their interpretations with the formal texts. Lastly, the meaning and actions associated with the mainstreaming requirement of the secondary duties have been considered in order to ascertain whether and how equality aspirations have shaped the strategic and operational responsibilities of Glasgow City Council, health and social care provision and further education in the city in relation to theories of urban justice. The PSED was largely viewed as an important and beneficial piece of law, that there was no room for discrimination within the city and that equality across different social groups was an acceptable ideal. The duty was also viewed as a means of exerting pressure on public institutions both from within and from the outside to reflect on the meaning of equality and to consider the way that organisations both perpetuated and resolved inequality. At the same time, the opportunities afforded by the secondary duties to transform social systems and dimensions of equality were not met and as a consequence the potential for Glasgow to be a more just city for its heterogeneous population not realised.

This thesis seeks to examine contemporary factors that prevent an orderly resolution to a sovereign debt crisis. It comprises of five chapters. The first chapter introduces the research and highlights its main contributions. The second chapter narrates the background and motivation for the study. The third chapter studies a related paper on holdouts in sovereign debt restructuring and finds that, under a discrete time version with two creditors, asymmetric pure strategy Nash equilibria exists. This result, overlooked by the original paper, implies immediate agreement as the time between successive periods tends to zero. The fourth chapter investigates the impact of heterogeneous beliefs on delays in sovereign debt restructuring and finds that parties inefficiently delay settlement when their combined beliefs of court-outcomes are sufficiently heterogeneous. The chapter also explores other model expositions and establishes delay conditions. The fifth chapter studies the implied duty on the debtor to act in good faith in sovereign debt restructuring and is divided into two parts. The first part theoretically examines the efficiency and distributional impacts from enforcing a good faith duty on the debtor when bargaining with heterogeneous creditors. Here, good faith is defined as the non-violation of the court interpretation of the pari passu clause. The second part identifies judicial attempts made to enforce the good faith debtor duty to negotiate and proposes a doctrinal threshold that restricts judicial intervention to situations in which there is clear evidence of a failure, on the part of the debtor, to negotiate in good faith.

Persistent structural inequalities within the solicitors' profession in England and Wales include the entry barriers faced by non-traditional applicants, and the hegemonic masculinity of the profession. Legal education is a significant actor in the process of legal professional socialisation, and vocational and professional training (VPT) is particularly significant because it is the only part of the formal legal education process through which almost all aspiring solicitors will go. Existing research does not specifically examine the significance of VPT in the formation of the professional identities of aspiring female solicitors, nor the ways in which that significance may vary depending on class background. The study set out to answer the research question: What is the significance of the vocational professional training process as a site of professional identity formation and professional socialisation for intending female solicitors? Using the Legal Practice Course (LPC) as a vehicle, the study obtained qualitative data by conducting semi-structured interviews with female students at four institutions. An initial study was conducted at one institution (n = 9) and the main data collection phase took place during the subsequent academic year, when students across three further institutions (n = 14) were interviewed as they began their LPC and again as they finished the course. The study is intersectional in nature and draws on concepts of professional identity and profession, together with those of field, capital and habitus. Its findings represent a contribution to debate about the professional project and suggest that VPT in its current form may reflect and thereby tacitly endorse or even exacerbate the professional status quo. The study's findings contribute to knowledge in the field of legal professional identities and, although not generalisable, may provide a starting point for changes to aspects of the legal education and training process, and for future research.

With this thesis, I argue that when selecting which patient should be the recipient of an organ for transplant, a social value judgment about the patient should be included alongside judgments about the patient's level of urgency and prognosis. The reason for this suggestion is that better use can be made of scarce organ resources, in terms of the overall welfare created from each transplant, if the wider effects of the transplant for society are taken into account rather than simply how likely it is that the patient will benefit. I argue that the survival of a patient that makes valuable contributions to society will create more overall welfare than the survival of a patient who makes less valuable contributions. Other commentators have made similar suggestions, however, their discussion of the issue is relatively brief and as such, their arguments are not comprehensive enough to stand up to criticism. With this thesis, I go beyond their limited discussion and provide an original contribution to knowledge by way of providing a much more detailed analysis of the ethical issues surrounding the inclusion of social value considerations in organ allocation decisions than has been given before, thereby providing a stronger and more convincing case for their inclusion. In order to support this, I also provide a viable framework for how these social value considerations can be acceptably incorporated into the organ allocation decision from both an ethical and practical perspective, something that is sorely missed from the existing literature. Whilst the inclusion of social value judgments into resource allocation decisions has negative associations, I have presented a possible system whereby they can be included alongside the current organ allocation system in such a way that other important values, such as equality and fairness, can be maintained.

This thesis examines the reasons, methods, and implications of the legal reforms in Turkey's corporate governance framework. The mainstream model of corporate governance that is based on the shareholder primacy theory, which currently enjoys global hegemony, holds that the purpose of the company is to maximize shareholder wealth. Its critics argue that corporate governance should also pursue stakeholder interests, including societal interests. The thesis moves beyond these debates by analysing the recent reforms in Turkey, an emerging market, from a socio-legal perspective to determine whether Turkish corporate governance laws have conformed to the mainstream model. This research's unique contribution to the body of knowledge lies in its inter-disciplinary and critical approach in its examination of Turkish corporate governance laws. The thesis begins by exploring the process by which the shareholder primacy theory gained prominence alongside the rise of neoliberal ideology. It illustrates how this theory has been disseminated outside the Anglo-American context through the promotion of 'universal' corporate governance standards. It finds that Turkey has conformed to the mainstream model as evidenced by the alignment of its corporate governance laws with the OECD Principles. Nevertheless, while Turkish companies are characterised by concentrated ownership with family owners in control, the mainstream model is derived from an Anglo-American system of wide share dispersal that reduces corporate governance to an agency problem of aligning the interests of managers and shareholders. In this context, the research employs a Marxist theoretical framework to uncover the reason for imposing an Anglo-American variant of corporate governance rules on Turkish companies. Turkey has justified the recent corporate governance reforms with the need to attract foreign investors and its aspiration of joining the EU. The new legislation focuses on the rights of minority shareholders in an attempt to curb the power of controlling owners in favour of outside shareholders. Across this backdrop, the thesis critically assesses the implications of these legal reforms. It examines the possibility of the ownership structure of listed companies transforming from concentrated to diffused ownership, which is more suitable for the functioning of the mainstream model. Furthermore, the thesis discusses the consequences of the change of control from family owners to dispersed shareholders, concluding that this will align the objectives of Turkish companies with the interests of global investors. Overall, this thesis reveals the broader context in which neoliberal mainstream corporate governance laws are constructed, disseminated, and operate in capitalism, so that their raison d'etre can be understood and challenged.

This thesis will look at the implications of multilateral, regional and bilateral trade agreements entered into by the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. The countries included in this study are those that are members of both the Arab League and the World Trade Organisation. The twelve countries looked at have joined the WTO as relatively recent members, and are also involved in a parallel effort to increase bilateral trade agreements. The outcome of this dual approach has been mixed. On the one hand, it has been permitted by Article XXIV of the GATT either as encouragement towards the fostering of regional trade which might in turn increase overall trade according to some authors, or as a more pragmatic measure aimed at minimising obstacles to potentially global membership of the WTO. This thesis will argue that increased trade links have been shown to increase trade volume as has been encouraged by Article XXIV of the GATT. On the basis of regime theory an increase in trade would be viewed as absolute gains, and Arab members of the WTO in order to reap the maximum benefit from their membership at the organisation in the form of absolute gains should increase their participation in the organisation, in conjunction with the pursuit of regional and bilateral trade agreements to the extent these do not conflict with each other and subsequently affect the positive benefits they might otherwise have presented. To date, only Egypt, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates have been active participants in a WTO dispute as respondents. Qatar is the only Arab member of the WTO to have been a claimant. The reasons behind this lack of participation are multiple and range from a lack of financial means to enable any meaningful presence or active representation in the WTO, a reticence to engage in what is seen as a costly and highly specialised legal setting, a cultural reticence towards legal confrontation as a means to resolve disputes, and political and economic considerations that might make the MENA members of the WTO hesitant to become embroiled in a trade dispute that might result in undesirable consequences with important trade partners. There is further nuance, however, to add to the general observation that Arab WTO members are not actively participating in the organisation. There is evidence of some increased form of activity, essentially on part of the Gulf countries, as third parties to disputes. This pattern of behaviour could be significant if it marks a conscious approach to increasing participation in the WTO through observation prior to active participation in a relatively low risk manner. The new levels of activity could alternatively mark a policy of forming trade alliances through coalitions and supporting trade partners in their own disputes. There is also, however, more recent evidence of the participation of the Gulf countries in dispute settlement, but against one another which could be viewed in a positive light as an overall increase in participation, or in a negative light considering this might potentially annul any positive moves observed recently in terms of concerted action should this affect regional trade and consequently, the level of absolute gains achieved. With regards to decision-making, there is evidence of Arab country membership to various working parties, some quite active and influential. It is difficult, however, to determine exact levels of participation of the Arab countries within these working parties in the absence of freely available records of meetings for all these working parties. With regards to bilateral trade agreements, these have given rise to legal difficulties for the Arab members of the WTO as their numbers increase, leading to an already existent risk of clashing legal obligations. In addition, the lack of a coherent global approach to the negotiations of these extra regional agreements have proven problematic in light of the generalised imbalance of negotiation power between the MENA signatory and its often economically more influential trade partner. Regional trade agreements have overall lead to little increase in trade, with the exception of the Gulf Cooperation Council which despite past success appears threatened by mounting regional tensions. Whether regional trade, and nascent cooperation between Arab countries will be able to survive both within the WTO and outside the organisation is yet uncertain. What remains evident, however, is that an alternative to the previously individualistic approach to trade in the MENA region is preferable if these countries are to improve the flow of trade both with their regional and global trade partners, and that a concerted and long-sighted policy is necessary if the Arab members of the WTO are to adopt overlapping trade obligations so as to reap the benefits of WTO membership, in conjunction with regional and bilateral trade in the pursuit of absolute rather than relative gains.

To advance important social values it is often necessary to change the law. Yet changes in the law create not only 'winners', but also 'losers'. Paradigmatic examples are workers and corporations in the coal industry that are adversely affected by climate change laws. Should governments take steps to avoid or mitigate transitional losses and gains? If so, for whom and under what conditions, and why? This is the normative 'problem of legal transitions', the subject of this thesis. Various theories to resolve the problem have been proposed by scholars in the normative branches of political, legal and economic theory. The first part of this thesis critically evaluates the four dominant families of theories: property theories (in the classical liberal and libertarian tradition); efficiency theories (in the 'law and economics' tradition); legitimate expectations theories; and justice theories (the last two in the liberal-egalitarian tradition). The 'wide reflective equilibrium' method is employed to evaluate both the implications of each theory in concrete cases and the antecedent (e.g. ontological) commitments in which it is grounded. The existing theories-which tend to entail state responses that are either extremely conservative (e.g. full grandfathering or compensation) or purely reformative (let all losses and gains lie where they fall)-are found wanting. The second part of the thesis specifies and defends a new theory-Adaptive Responsibility Theory-which forges a principled middle path. The appropriate state response is shown to be a function of two kinds of reasons: wellbeing reasons and fairness reasons. Crucially, these reasons have both a direction (conservative vs reformative) and a magnitude/weight. This opens up the wide middle ground between the extremes, justifying a central role for adaptive transition policies, the aim of which is to ensure that people have the time and adaptive capabilities needed to adapt successfully to new conditions.

The thesis aims to contribute to the 'vanishing trial' debate. The first part updates and extends the existing body of research in this field on civil cases in courts of first instance in England and Wales, specifically the County Court, the Queen's Bench Division and the Chancery Division, both individually and combined. Three different aspects of the vanishing trial are examined - the number of cases coming into the litigation system, the number of trials and the proportion of proceedings initiated that are disposed after trial. Current studies examined patterns between the late 1950s and 2011. This thesis provides an extended analysis, for the period 1949 to 2017, analysing whether the patterns identified in existing literature remain an accurate representation of trends in civil first instance cases. The second part fills a gap in the existing literature by bringing public law into the vanishing trial debate. Judicial review cases were only briefly mentioned in a single study into the vanishing trial as showing a contrasting trend of growth between 2004 and 2011. There has however been no analysis within the vanishing trial debate as to why judicial review is bucking the trend, or the implications of this for the overall vanishing trial thesis. Separate to the vanishing trial debate, there has been a considerable body of empirical research into trends in judicial review. This literature has however only engaged to a very limited extent with trends in other areas of the litigation system. The aim of this section is to bring together the two bodies of literature by comparing and contrasting trends between civil law and judicial review cases between 1981 and 2017 for all three of the elements highlighted in the vanishing trial debate. It also aims to explore potential underlying reasons behind any convergences and divergences in patterns observed.

This thesis examines the nature of non-pecuniary losses deriving from breach of contract. It introduces the concept of contractual interest whose purpose is to connect the contents of the agreement with the consequences of its breach. The contractual interest comprises the stipulated subject-matter and the aim that the promisee achieves with its delivery. In English legal theory the concept of contractual aim is new, but in every agreement the promisee pursues a certain outcome that is achievable as a result of the performance. The aims of the agreement would be consequent on the performance, and the promisee should be able to enjoy all of them. Both pecuniary and non-pecuniary aims can be pursued in a single contract. This possibility determines the wide scope of the contractual interest that the promisee might have in the performance. If the promisee aims to achieve something further than a sole enhancement of his financial position, then he will have a non-pecuniary contractual interest. The non-pecuniary interest can exist in all sorts of agreements regardless of their subject-matters or the type of their parties. This interest determines the consequences of the breach too. Notwithstanding the particular factual circumstances in which the non-performance is materialised, the promisee's inability to achieve his aims is the only factor that defines the nature and the scope of the harms that he suffers. The non-pecuniary losses are all consequences resulting from the non-fulfilment of the promisee's aims. This new understanding reveals the wider scope that the non-pecuniary harms can have and their much more extensive injurious effects. A complete and exhaustive description of the losses that are caused in such cases will entail an identification of all non-pecuniary aims that would had been pursued at the contractual formation and the consequent failure of their achievement.

Over the past forty years the transnational women’s movement has worked to conceptualise and institutionalise the understanding of violence against women as a gendered human rights violation. Their efforts have led the response at the international level, and have shaped the (markedly feminist) international human rights law approach to violence against women. Despite successes in conceptualising and institutionalising norms concerning the elimination of violence against women, there remain problems in implementing these norms and holding states accountable. As such, violence against women is still pandemic, affecting at least one in three women. An area worthy of additional research and attention is state responsibility for prevention – particularly primary prevention, aimed at the ‘upstream’ or ‘root’ causes of violence against women – and the use of the due diligence standard as a tool for actualising this obligation. The due diligence standard is a significant development of state responsibility, which, within the context of human rights protection, broadens notions of state responsibility to include instances where there is a failure to exercise due care to prevent or respond to violative acts or omissions of private or non-state actors. In the context of violence against women, this provides a ‘juridical bridge’ for addressing private violence, particularly domestic violence, as a human rights violation, for which the state can – and should – be held accountable. The evolution of ‘systemic due diligence’ – aimed at the broader level of human rights protection – has furthered this feminist theory of state responsibility. The aim of this thesis is to deepen the understanding of violence against women as a gendered human rights violation and to discover how the due diligence standard can be better used as a tool to bring about its elimination; if, indeed, it is fit for this purpose.

Recent advances in automated weapon systems and decreasing need to have human operators in the loop of decision-making processes, has given the floor to one of the most controversial matters in the history of warfare: the emergence of Autonomous Weapon Systems, known as AWS. AWS it has been the source for significant controversy and heated international debate. One of the many reasons that are certainly behind this highly intense debate is the lack of a common ground for discussion.1 NGO's, scholars, States struggle to find a common definition of AWS, to agree in their nature and legitimacy under International Humanitarian Law; and, finally, to contemplate the possibility of a 'responsibility gap' caused with the deployment of AWS. The focus of this research is to discuss the legitimacy and accountability for the deployment of AWS under International Humanitarian Law. The first endeavour was to prove that, first of all, it is necessary to organise the speech developed around autonomous systems in order to establish an AWS legal definition and to conclude that they should not be seen as 'new agents', but as more sophisticated 'weapon systems', looking at the structure of the embedded machine learning algorithms. The second endeavour was to prove that there are no reasons to proclaim a 'responsibility gap'. AWS will require not only a higher level of responsibility from commanders, designers, programmers and technicians but also the distinction between different causes of violations of IHL caused by AWS (malfunctions, accidents and errors). The situation of a 'accidents' will require that International Criminal Law accepts the category of dolus eventualis, and in the situation of 'errors' States shall accept their full responsibility but in no manner is it possible to argue that IHL does not provide the tools to deal with the advent of warfare autonomous systems.

This thesis evaluates two key extraterritorial techniques to bring human rights standards to bear on corporate misconduct, and does so through an analysis of the dilemmas they raise. The background to the research is the difficulty of imposing human rights standards on transnational business operating in 'host' countries where, for various reasons, such standards are not implemented locally, resulting in governance gaps. Tort litigation in the company's 'home' state or 'long arm' regulation emanating from the home state are important alternative methods of establishing and enforcing human rights standards, but they engender controversy both in terms of their legitimacy under public international law and because there are a number of objections to their use that go beyond their technical legality. Concerns include intrusion into the exclusive jurisdiction of the host state to control this litigation or to determine and follow its own regulatory policy in this area, potential harm to economic development and the imposition of Western standards to non-Western contexts. In addition to these predominantly host state concerns, there are also concerns about extraterritoriality in this context from the perspective of home states. For example, the impact on access to effective remedies caused by the victims' distance from the site of adjudication is often a concern. The thesis examines examples of the techniques being exercised in practice and the approaches of lawmakers and judges to the issues raised by extraterritoriality, and then evaluates whether these concerns raise true dilemmas. For those that do, it offers suggestions for how to adapt or refine extraterritorial techniques. From this perspective, the thesis advocates a nuanced approach that builds in sensitivity to the views of host states and local populations affected by these measures, the latter being the intended beneficiaries of the rights in question, without losing sight of the overriding goals of human rights protection that might on occasion point in a different direction.