Sacred sites fonn a vital component in manifesting the right to freedom of religion. They also function as identity icons for the religious communities in a multi-religious state like India. Protecting them therefore, from aggression, or demolition by states and non-state actors is fundamental to guaranteeing such freedom. The consequences of attacking a sacred site are obvious from the Ayodhya dispute, in which all three organs of the Indian state failed to protect the Babri Masjid from illegal demolition, and to prevent the subsequent nationwide riots. However, the legal failure of the judiciary is quite apparent from the fact that it could not adjudicate an ongoing dispute for more than forty-two years. This protracted delay helped the religious militant groups to transfonn a local issue into a national dispute which has affected the secular and democratic fabric of contemporary India. This presents a further challenge to the pluralistic nature of Indian society and threatens peace and security in the South Asian region. The inadequacy of domestic legal mechanisms to settle disputes and provide remedy for violation of human rights warrants intervention at the level of international law. The existing international law provisions, namely, the right to freedom of religion, rights of the minorities, right to property and protection of cultural rights, have failed to include the protection of sacred sites as a right to a religious community. The global human rights mechanisms are mostly monitoring bodies and lack the judicial power. In promoting and protecting human rights, the regional human rights mechanisms, particularly the regional courts, have made use of their ability to deliver binding decisions on member states. The inadequacies in international law are best addressed by a regional convention for the protection of sacred sites, embedded in the existing structures of SAARC.

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The factions and discourses of feminism and transgender are often perceived as reciprocally exclusive. Those taken to belong to subjectivities associated with each faction have frequently held this perception. This exclusion may operate because each faction is only supposed to be associated with certain sexual subjectivities. The possible alienation between transgender and feminism is the social problem that the researcher addressed, in order to consider what positive outcomes on the law, as it pertains to gender, may emerge from cooperation between the two factions. To assess this emancipatory potential, the researcher compared primary data in the form of online narratives ventured by a group of trans people with secondary data in the form of published texts identified as narratives of 3rd wave feminism. 3rd wave feminism, transgender theory and post-1970s trans narratives showed potential to align with the inclusive philosophy evident in ethics of care while not foregoing focussed rights pertaining to certain ethnic, sexual and social subjectivities. The resulting postconventional ethics promised to facilitate a legal process that could benefit oppressed genders and that could recognise gender as genre and genealogy rather than as fixed essence. Images of fixed gender essence should give way to the transformation of trans and gender variant people from the ‘Others’ of heteronormativity to empowered others whose difference can be valued or, for those who wish to be accepted as men and women, whose similarity can be respected. The research for this thesis found that value and respect for gender, based upon knowledge and not stereotype, can be facilitated by both by woman’s inclusion-ist politics and by the care of maternal relations in order to reveal trans subjectivity and gender variance as legitimately whole subjectivities. This knowledge has revealed how oppressive elements of discourse such as silence/secrecy, infantilisation, interpellation, gatekeeping, separatism and heteronormativity have affected trans and gender variant people’s ability to manifest a social voice.

The Court of Justice of the European Union characterizes the Union as a Rechtsunion: a law-governed union. The conception of “the law” in Article 19 paragraph 1 of the Treaty on European Union transcends the Treaties, according to the Vice-President of the Court of Justice, Koen Lenaerts. This thesis demonstrates with reference to the work of Georg Jellinek that the Union is a non-sovereign state and, with reference to the work of Eugen Ehrlich in particular, that the state-based perception of law is a misperception. Not all production of law is reserved to the state and not all law is state-recognized law. There is extra-state law. It has been alleged that the Court of Justice of the European Union has had “a free law attitude”. The author discusses the free law doctrine developed at the beginning of the twentieth century and has made literal translations of writings in German, French and Italian by the main representatives of the free law movement. The free law doctrine provides a descriptive framework for the case-law of courts. The author describes the creation by the Court of Justice of four constitutional principles of Union law through its case-law. He concludes that every court is, to quote Hermann Kantorowicz, praeter legem law-creatively active and has, in that sense, a free law attitude. The decisions of judges are often volitional decisions. How the law will be applied should be predictable but volitional decisions, because they are unpredictable, are inconsistent with the principle of legal certainty. In the Union and its member states the judiciary and not the statute or “the law” is pre-eminent. The author suggests how the concept of law should be defined in a material Rechtsunion. He argues that societal legal norms could be provided with an appropriate position consistent with the principle of legal certainty by making the validity of a societal legal norm contingent on its material lawfulness.

Aims. To evaluate the statutory jurisdiction of the Sheriff Court in Scottish local administration. This involves consideration of significant powers held in a wide range of areas: for example, compulsory hospitalisation of the mentally ill, appeals over parental choice of school, assumption of parental rights by local authorities, and licensing appeals. Objectives. 1. To establish theoretical general principles based on the constitutional ideal of the rule of law, which encourage definition of the judicial role, and the advantages and disadvantages of court-based adjudication as a decision-taking process in the administrative law arena. These can be used as standards in the evaluation of the sheriff's multifarious statutory duties in local administration. 2. To set out the historical development of the sheriff's jurisdiction in local administration, in order to illustrate: (i) the socio-legal factors which have influenced the evolution of the sheriff's role; (ii) the confusions which have arisen in case law; and (iii) the amorphous nature of the jurisdiction. 3. To resolve the confusion surrounding the sheriff's jurisdiction in local administration by: (i) giving close attention to current case law; (ii) categorising the sheriff's current powers on the basis of the theory and general principles of the rule of law, and the historical material; and (iii) providing empirical material which gives an idea of how often individual powers are exercised in practice. 4. To evaluate the sheriff's current powers according to the standards set out under the theory and general principles of the rule of law by: (i) library based research into the different categories of power; and (ii) detailed empirical research into how representative powers operate in practice. The advantages and disadvantages of shrieval adjudication are also considered in more general terms. Conclusions. Some categories of the sheriff's powers are identified as being either anomalous in terms of the theory and general principles of the rule of law, or obsolete: these are contrasted with categories which are neither. There is little justification for the continuation of the former, although the latter could be developed further. It is stressed that case law is confused and anachronistic; and that there are a number of serious deficiencies in sheriff court practice.

Land, under the Federal Constitution of Malaysia, is a State matter. As such it is crucial for the survival of a State, both financially and politically. Given limited resources, land forms one of the State's most important assets and sources of revenue. From annual rents imposed on all alienated lands the State generates its largest share of land revenue and regulates the administration of rent collection through the provisions of the <I>National Land Code</I>. Politically, land also symbolises the sovereignty and inherent power of a State Authority within a Federal arrangement. But whether or not this in theory matches reality, is the concern of this study. Just as it has been in the past, land will always be an important ingredient in a State's finances in the foreseeable future. Revenue from land rent has contributed a lot to the infra-structural development of the country. It is difficult to imagine a State relinquishing its hold over land matters unless there exists a more viable alternative. Evidence suggests that currently returns from land rent form a meagre percentage of a State's total revenue and therefore, are not commensurate with the strength of its jurisdiction in the constitution. To make matters worse, whilst the State's debt increases, rent arrears keep accumulating over the years. Retrieving information from primary sources and documentary evidences, and extracting data from interview and observations of selected Land Offices at work, this study attempts to examine the possible causes of rent defaults and recurring arrears in Peninsular Malaysia by focusing on some of the socio-legal and administrative aspects of the problem.

The legal relationships under commercial letter of credit are discussed in this thesis under the United States and the United Kingdom law, with occasional reference to the law of some civil law countries. An introductory overview of documentary letter of credit is put forward in chapter one of this thesis, in which the definition and development of documentry letter of credit, and an illustration of how it operates in an international transaction have been discussed. The thesis is divided into two parts, the first part deals with the relationships between the main parties of documentary letter of credit. Chapter two discusses the relationship between the applicant for the credit and its beneficiary. Chapter three dicusses the relationship between the applicant for the credit and the issuing bank with emphasis on the legal nature of their relationship. In chapter four the discussion is directed to the relationship between the issuing bank and the beneficiary in which a large part of this thesis is devoted to the theoretical analysis of the nature of their relationship. In part two, the thesis discusses the relationships between the main parties of letter of credit and the other participating parties. Chapter five discusses the relationships between the main parties (i.e., the issuing bank (or requesting bank)), the applicant for the credit and the beneficiary - and the intermediary bank (i.e., intermediary - issuer, confirming and advising bank.) Discussed in chapter six are the relationships between the main parties of documentary letter of credit and the holder of the beneficiary's draft whether it is a collecting bank, unauthorized negotiating bank, authorized negotiating bank or discounting bank. The thesis ends with a summary and conclusion.

This dissertation is an analysis of 'discovery' in judicial decision-making. I discuss four types of 'discovery': (1) legal justification as 'discovery', (2) insights as 'discovery', (3) general problem-solving strategies as 'discovery', and (4) 'discovery' as a method of expression and persuasion. Chapter One reviews the conventional jurisprudential literature on 'discovery'. It begins with the American legal realists' explanation of 'hunching' in judicial decision-making and then traces how 'discovery' and justification have come to be considered distinct processes. The realists' and legal positivists' conflicting opinions concerning the nature of 'discovery'' are presented and I conclude that the only way to settle the conflict is to study 'discovery' in detail. Chapter Two begins with a critical evaluation of the analogy between science and law that Neil MacCormick draws between scientific testing and legal justification. The chapter ends by identifying elements in legal justification that play a role in discovery. In particular, the legal syllogism and the requirements of coherence and consistency play roles in the process of discovery in judicial decision-making. In an effort to examine 'discovery' in more detail than that found in conventional jurisprudence literature, Chapter three introduces the work of Bernard Lonergan on insight in other fields. I present his approach to studying human knowing and his account of insight in theoretical and practical problem-solving. Then, in Chapters Four and Five, I use Lonergan's method and his analysis of insight to study 'discovery' in theoretical and practical problem-solving in judicial decision-making. I conclude that not only does insight play a key role in interpreting situations and discovering solutions to legal problems, but insight plays a crucial role in testing interpretations and evaluating courses of action.

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