This research determines the fundamental rationales, principles of copyright law and <I>droit d'auteur</I>, in order to ascertain whether these legal mechanisms or institutions are viable in the light of information technology. Moreover, the analysis is directed towards the determination of the emergence of intellectual property rights in their cultural, economic, historical, political and legal relation to technological change. It is argued that none of the current intellectual property mechanisms are viable in the light of information technology. Further, only the fundamental rationales of <I>droit d'auteur</I> would appear to respond adequately, on principle, to the challenges of the information age under a new concept of authorship. The inadequacies of the current intellectual property institutions and information technology derive from the manner in which intellectual property rights emerge. Legal rights ought to be the spontaneous product of individual claims and the basis of a new system of voluntary interactions, where legal institutions, such as intellectual property, validate common practice instead of dictating it. As a result, it is demonstrated that as opposed to early intellectual property systems which emerge out of the individual claims, modern copyright law dictates the emergence of rights by granting to authors property rights in commodities. By contrast, <I>droit d'auteur</I> rationally secures property rights in works as a simple recognition of authors' rights in their work, being thus independent of technologies with the attribution of copyright. Following this line of thinking, markets are systems for consensual exchange of owned goods which are intended to encourage individuals to make productive use of resources. Since works of the mind produce externalities which prevent markets from forming efficiently, copyright is sought to provide incentive for the production of the optimal amount of information.

The aim of this thesis is a study of relations between marriage, property and law. It looks at the legal relationship of marriage, the form and nature of matrimonial property and the rules of Scots law as they apply to the property of husband and wife. The study falls into three parts. In Part I there are three histories. Historical changes in Scots law, in marriage and in property are traced through the accounts of legal and philosophical writers and through the historical account of marriage presented by L. Stone in <i>The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800</i>. Part I presents isolated historical accounts of change in each of the three elements of law, marriage and property. In Part II, the patterns of change that emerge from these histories are questioned. It is argued that presentations of change in isolation may create an image or perception of change which can give rise to unfulfilled expectations. The term 'image' is intended to convey the possibility of illusion, a false or misleading picture. The dominant image of change has three characteristics: the disappearance of property from marriage and its replacement with affect, an increasing emphasis on privacy and a split from the public and an increasing emphasis on individualism rather than community. These trends can be discovered in the historical accounts of each of the elements of marriage, property and law. In Part III these emerging images of change are used to analyse specific points of interaction between marriage, property and law. The aim of this study is to consider how an image has arisen of marriage and its relations with property and law, to assess what contribution this image has made to the confusion which seems to surround the relations between marriage, property and law and to explore how this confusion is reflected in Scots law.

This thesis is an analysis of directors' powers, duties and liabilities under the British company Law. It consists of ten chapters, the first of which is an introductory one. The second chapter discusses the powers of directors. Directors' duties to the company are examined in chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6. The fair dealing rules (i.e. the co-conflict rule and the no-profit rule) and the statutory as well as the common law role to relax them are examined in both chapters 3 and 4. The fifth chapter is concerned with directors' duty of honesty and good faith; whereas, the duty of skill and care is examined in chapter 6. Directors' duty to individual shareholders is the subject of chapter 7. In chapter 8 directors' duties to the creditors of their company have been highlighted. Litigation and the protection of minority shareholders have been examined in chapter 9. The thesis ends with a summary and conclusions. The power to manage a company is usually vested in the board of directors. A director's primary duty is owed to his company. However, in some exceptional cases a director may owe duties to the company's shareholders and its creditors. It is submitted that the fair dealing rules as applied in the U.K. are inflexible. The courts, however, have shown their willingness to relax them. The test of the duty to act <i>bona fide</i> is mainly subjective. Whereas the test of the proper purpose is mainly subjective. Directors' duties of skill and care are mainly governed by the common law rules. The applied test to the duty of care and skill is mainly subjective. Since a director's breach of duty may harm the minority shareholders, the common law as well as the legislation tried to provide minority shareholders with the necessary protection.

This study examines the relevance and consequences of the use of the comparative method as a tool of interpretation of the law of the European Convention on Human Rights and particularly, the capacity of the "transplants" of principles and legal thinking from one tradition to the other to enhance the protection of rights and freedoms. The metaphor of "transplants of laws" is proposed to depict more clearly the complexities of transfers and borrowings between various systems of protection. The work is guided by the question: "Is there a European law of human rights?" The affirmative answer is qualified by the existence of overlapping systems and remedies which affect ECHR construction. The comparative method is used, therefore, to bring to light the effect of these pressures in specific cases. The consequences of the dynamic interpretation, the doctrine of the margin of appreciation and the supranational judicial review of member states' actions are also addressed. There is a limited inquiry into the drafting of the ECHR and into the protection of human rights in the EU system from the point of view of the same comparative method. In addition, the effect of the ECHR in three countries (with civilian, common law and "mixed" legal systems) is studied. It is the conclusion of this work that the strain produced by a multiplicity of systems on interpretation is turned to positive use with the help of the comparative method and this, in turn, improves the protection of the individuals. Further reliance on the method can assist the European organs in the refinement of their interpretative tools. As a result, a more harmonised protection of human rights emerges which is easier to share by different legal systems, although without becoming one single system of protection.

The subtitle of this thesis is 'An analysis of provisions of the 1968 Brussels and 1988 Lugano Jurisdiction and Judgments Conventions and the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Act 1982, with particular reference to the effects of the provisions in Scotland'. The thesis is divided into two parts. Part I is concerned with the Conventions and third states, intra-EC/EFTA bloc and intra-UK actions and the courts' discretionary powers. After a general introduction to the subject, it examines the effects of the Conventions in civil proceedings which are linked in one way or another to a state outside the EC/EFTA bloc. It considers here firstly the effects of the rules of jurisdiction of the Conventions, secondly the circumstances in which a court may decline to exercise the jurisdiction which it has in terms of the Conventions and thirdly the implications of the Conventions' provisions concerning the recognition and enforcement of judgments. Consideration is then given to certain problems relating to (a) actions involving more than one state in the EC/EFTA bloc and (b) actions purely internal to one state in the bloc; attention focuses on the effects of the Conventions on the doctrine of <i>forum non conveniens</i> in the United Kingdom. At the end of Part I the rules concerning the remitting and transferring of actions between one Scottish court and another are considered in the light of the Conventions and Act. Part II concerns the duties of a court in the EC/EFTA bloc to verify both its jurisdiction and the giving of adequate notice of the proceedings to the defender. The duties imposed principally by art 20 of the Conventions are considered from the point of view of the rules of court which should exist in Scotland - in both the Court of Session and the sheriff courts - to facilitate the fulfilling of their duties by the courts. Consideration is given to the need for a court to be informed of the factors relating to jurisdiction (a) when an action is brought and/or (b) if decree in absence is subsequently sought. The extent of the court's duty to examine its jurisdiction <i>ex proprio motu</i> is examined. Attention is focused in turn on what may be different elements inherent in jurisdiction in terms of the Conventions: the lack of a prorogation agreement in favour of another court, the lack of identical proceedings in another court, the domicile of the defender, the factor which links the defender with the court in which the action has been brought. The writer sets out model rules of court for the Court of Session and the sheriff courts concerning (a) averments of jurisdiction in summonses and initial writs and (b) matters to be considered if decree in absence is sought.

Technology is now a separate, central factor in the development of any State. However, today, inter State relations are characterised by wide technological disparity between developed and developing countries. All States agree that transmission of technological capacities to developing countries is key not only to reduction of technological inequalities, but also to maintenance of future international peace. Traditional international legal responses to the problem are inadequate or static. The traditional multilateral intellectual property legal regime is mercantilist, designed to deal with a technologically minimally interdependent international society. It promotes extra-territorial exclusive protection of private intellectual property rights by comprehensively defining those rights while setting up private international law standards as the primary basis for host country regulation of technological rights. Protection of private intellectual property is then reinforced through bilateral trreaties. Reform of the regime to facilitate international transmission of technological capacity, is largely regarded as <i>ultra-vires</i> its objectives. Increased extra-territorial effects of technology, the emergence of technologically least developed countries indicating gross interstate technological disparities, the complexity of non state and non national's technological activity in host States, among others, have speeded the evolution of new dynamic multilateral legal principles, standards, rules, procedures and instruments that more effectively define the problem of international technology development and transfer as a State based effective acquisition of technological capcity by a country under balanced legal commitments. We show that in recent decades, in relation to international development and transfer of technology, States have adopted framework treaty type arrangements which aim at dynamic conversion of multilateral decisions, policy, agreements, etc. into legal or quasi-legal norms. When implemented, the new norms extend legal measures and remedies towards those States whose international technological practices most accord with international interdependence and reduction of technological disparities among States.

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No description available.

Institutional reform, or the review and restructure of state institutions, is broadly accepted as an element of transitional justice in both scholarship and practice. Nevertheless, discussion of institutional reform in transitional justice shows little consistency or coherence either in the institutions targeted for reform, nor in the objectives which institutional reform is said to pursue. The thesis identified conceptual confusion in the objectives attached to institutional reform in transitional justice, which move unsystematically between the pursuit of (1) past-focused accountability, (2) the prevention of reCUlTence of past crimes, (3) establishing the rule of law, and (4) the promotion and protection of human rights into the future. Moreover, the thesis identifies the unhelpful investment of institutional reform with transformative objectives by transitional justice scholars, without the elaboration of either the targeted institutions for refonn or meaningful indicators of transformation. The thesis responds to these identified shortcomings in the study and practice of institutional reform in transitional justice, firstly, by bringing greater conceptual clarity to the area and, secondly, and relatedly, by redressing the paucity of empirical data on institutional reform in transitional justice. To redress the pat1iality of underpinning data, and the need for greater clarity in what institutions to study, two large-N, cross-national qualitative databases were created on vetting and lustration processes and ombuds offices in transitional states. Furthermore, the thesis considers the application of depth and pervasiveness in institutional change theory to original empirical data of institutional reform in transitional justice. The thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge in two key ways. First, the thesis has developed a comprehensive and robust empirical data set on the scale of the practice of two case studies of institutional reform in transitional states. Second, utilizing this rich new data, the thesis works inductively to understand the diversity 0/ institutional reform in transitional justice and, drawing on institutional change theory, proposes a new framework for distinguishing between institutional reform and institutional transformation.

This thesis critically examines the literature on joyriding, car crime, motor projects and masculinities. Fieldwork in motor projects combined with the methods of cultural studies locates car crime within a gendered car culture. Thus motor projects are seen to 'work' within that gendered car culture but a longer term solution to car crime is to be found in 'green' transport policies and changes in gender relations. Theoretically it recognises the reality of car crime and also the reality of the environmental consequences of car use but also the ideological context which places the car at the centre of transport Policy and many men's dreams of transcendant personal freedom. It draws as many conclusions about criminology as about car crime.