This thesis examines a selection of High Court of Admiralty depositions pertaining to Ireland in the sixteenth-century. The seventeenth-century ushered in the ‘Golden Age’ of piracy as well as the plantation of southern Ireland by pirates. Prior to this, the Irish Sea was already active with ‘gentlemen of fortune’ plying their trade, acting as pawns of war, and providing goods through a black-market; thus creating the foundations for the expansion that followed. This thesis analyses the nature of piracy and its relationship with Ireland during the sixteenth century, by illustrating who may have gained from acts of seaborne depredation; and will further illuminate why the island was such a choice location for pirates to operate from and later relocate to. Following a political overview of sixteenth-century Ireland this thesis will cover three chapters, each focusing on a different level of society that benefited from piracy. Each section will analyses a set of cases, comprised of individual depositions, to understand the relationship of ‘political’ piracy, ‘official’ piracy and ‘buyer and merchant’ piracy in the context of Pre-Golden Age Ireland. The sources used in this study from the High Court of Admiralty are a resource that have remained largely untapped. The collection has yet to be edited and translated fully. The manuscripts held in the National Archives also remain un-digitized and are at risk of being lost from damage and general degradation. The present work helps to highlight the value of the Court of Admiralty records. The scans presented in the appendices and enclosed pen drive ensures the preservation of this important data as it relates to Ireland in the sixteenth century.

This thesis analyses the application of rules of immunity and universal jurisdiction in respect of international crimes by adopting a constructivist approach to the interests of the international community and formation of customary international law. Accordingly, the study proposes an alternative understanding of customary international law in order to analyse the rules of immunity, universal jurisdiction and international crimes and their interrelated operations. The operation of the rules of immunity and universal jurisdiction regarding international crimes is conducted on the basis of a constructivist understanding of the interests of the international community to determine whether legitimate rules can be institutionalised in customary international law as well as rules based on the self-interests of States. This thesis also considers whether rules, based on their legitimacy, can comprise different legal implications in international law. In this context, the study considers how international crimes, which give rise to the dual responsibility for States and their nationals, are created by adopting a constructivist approach to customary law formation. This study further considers whether international crimes in international law are based on legitimacy rather than the self-interests of States, and whether they can give rise to different legal implications, specifically with regard to rules of universal jurisdiction and the immunity of officials. The development and application of the rules of jurisdiction and immunity are considered separately in international law on the basis of their development in customary international law. This study seeks to determine the appropriate general approach to the rules of jurisdiction by analysing both the permissive and prohibitive approaches to the rules of jurisdiction.

This thesis will explore the socio-legal response(s) to women who kill. Interrogating the constructions of “woman” and “femininity” within criminal legal discourse it will argue that the agency (that is, the ability of an individual to choose to act in a particular way) of women who kill is denied, both passively and actively within criminal legal discourse. It will be argued that denying the agency of women who kill is problematic for numerous reasons, including but not limited to, the construction and reinforcement of gender discourse surrounding femininity and issues of justice both being done and being seen to be done for women who kill and for their victims. In order to address these issues, this thesis will therefore propose an agency-based model for women who kill, which will interrupt both the passive and active agency denials which currently exist for these women.

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Much scholarly attention has focused on the incremental extension of criminal liability for ‘terroristic speech’ (reflecting the widely acknowledged preventive turn in criminal law). This thesis examines the case law of Turkey's Yargıtay (Court of Cassation) and Constitutional Court on 'terroristic speech' in the light of regional (the European Court of Human Rights), and international (Human Rights Committee and CERD) standards. While this corpus of human rights law has obtained some positive traction in Turkey (resulting, for example, in the passage of a number of progressive Constitutional amendments), it is argued that the modern day regulation of 'terroristic speech' resembles in many ways the now outmoded offence of 'sedition' for silencing political dissent. It must of-course be recognized that Turkey has experienced a protracted conflict, and that recent ‘terror’ attacks in European capital cities have reinvigorated the international ‘War on Terror’. At a deeper level, however, this observation evidences a troubling state of affairs, for, even in this ‘human rights era’, the imposition of far-reaching restrictions on speech continues seemingly without contradiction. Indeed, in many cases, the relevant criminal law offences, especially those pertaining to indirect incitement, were themselves been introduced at the behest of international instruments such as the UN Security Council Resolution 1624 (2005); the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism, 2005; and the European Union Framework Decision on Combating Terrorism, 2008. It is argued that the regulation of ‘terroristic speech’ epitomizes the state-centricity of human rights norms; (a phenomenon which Leigh and Lustgarten colourfully describe as assigning ‘the safekeeping of children in a school playground to a pit-bull terrier’). Moreover, it also reflects the fundamental inability of the international community to agree upon a definition of ‘terrorism’. The thesis thus draws on recent scholarship (Stampnitzky) to chart the ‘invention’ of ‘terrorism’ as a fundamentally political term involving moral judgment. It is argued that the infusion of this political concept into legal reasoning is inherently problematic. The binary nature of ‘terrorism’ belies the more spectral nature of ‘political violence’, and it is the latter which ought to inform a more nuanced judicial response to ‘terroristic speech’.

Using a comparative case study design, this thesis explores the impact on the Mexican federal judiciary of steep rises in violent crime, proliferation of armed organised crime groups, greater involvement of the military in crime control activities and the government’s ‘war on organised crime’. The thesis develops ‘enemy penology’ as a theoretical framework based on the observation that the Mexican government has increasingly conceptualised offenders as enemies and called for an explicitly militarised criminal justice response. Drawing on this theoretical framework, the thesis analyses qualitative data from two different sites –a ‘crime control as warfare’ scenario (highly militarised state) and an unchanged context (less militarised state). Findings are examined within the enemy penology framework and also drawing on theories of judicial behaviour and judicial roles in order to explain the overarching finding that judges seem to have insulated themselves from the ‘enemy penology’ promulgated by the government. Analysis of 40 written judgements in drug cases and 28 semi-structured interviews with judges (drawn from a total of 56 interviews achieved during the fieldwork) indicated that decision making, guilt determination and sentencing were almost identical in the two locations despite stark differences in context. In both locations, the study observed an inclination to privilege police evidence, high conviction rates despite poor prosecutorial performance and insufficient evidence, and a tendency to impose minimum sentences. Interviewees discussed these issues as well as the impact of armed criminality, military involvement in crime control and judicial independence. Overall, the Federal judiciary appeared to be not influenced by the enemy penology paradigm reproduced by public officials and criminal policies. Mexican judicial behaviour was found to be strongly shaped by a formalistic and legalistic understanding of judicial duties where accuracy in law interpretation is expected, disregarding other goals, including politics and policy considerations. This understanding is enhanced by the judiciary through strict observance of precedents, reversals and enhancing law-interpreter and ritualist judicial roles. Nonetheless, the empirical data also showed that judges’ views and opinions are informed by strategic goals, attitudes, motives, managerial needs and the pursuit of self-respect and recognition. In sum, examining court judgements and judges’ views about deciding cases in the light of the prevalent ‘enemy penology’ provided a rich understanding of the way decision-making in criminal matters is constructed by judges as well as the complex and often contradictory layers that comprise the image and role of the Mexican federal judge.

In 1985 the power of the prosecution of offences was taken away from the police. The Crown Prosecution Service was created to provide an efficient, fair and independent review of cases accountable to Parliament and the public. The importance of this separation of powers goes to the constitutional heart of the criminal justice process. This study is a comprehensive analysis of how prosecutors exercised their statutory powers in the 1990s particularly by reference to the prosecution of public order offences. The thesis provides an extensive analysis of the law relating to public order offences as well as a detailed picture of the prosecution of public order offences in the Manchester City magistrates' court through the use of three methods of case study data collection (a questionnaire, a cases survey and case files). The findings of the research suggest that the Crown Prosecution Service plays a re active rather than pro-active role in the decision-making concerning prosecutions for public order offences. The police are the dominant partner in the relationship between the police and Crown Prosecution Service who rely almost entirely on the police for the information available in prosecution cases. There is a need for change in the way public order offences are prosecuted so that the Crown Prosecution Service really does provide an effective and independent review of cases. Only then will the Crown Prosecution Service be working in the interests of justice and have earned its full trust and respect as a member of the criminal justice system.

Much has been written about the sentencing systems and practices of Western common-law jurisdictions, but little is known about those of Thailand, an Eastern civil-law country. This thesis fills this gap in the literature by identifying key characteristics of Thai sentencing culture and proposing a theory for understanding them. The focus is not on the Penal Code but on Yee-Tok, a judicially self-imposed form of sentencing guidance, the details of which are not publicly available and whose role in sentencing decision-making remains invisible to those beyond the judiciary. My aim is to find out how Yee-Tok works in the pursuit of consistency and accountability in sentencing. The study finds that consistency and accountability are not alien concepts to Thai sentencers. Even though each lower court has a different Yee-Tok, evidence from focus groups of lower court judges appears to suggest that the differences between each Yee-Tok may be limited. In addition to the duty to sentence in accordance with the Penal Code monitored by the higher courts, Thai lower court judges, by convention, are expected to comply with Yee-Tok in their court and to consult their Chief Judge before departing from it. Although there is no statutory obligation to comply with Yee-Tok, this research finds that most judges appear to wish to comply with Yee-Tok. Consistency in sentencing outcomes in each court is achieved due to the compliance of all judges with the Yee-Tok of their court. Accountability in sentencing is understood as the need to ensure that sentencers adhere to judicial custom and observe high moral standards. Three main characteristics of Thai sentencing culture were identified in this research: conformity in sentencing decision-making; the tendency to impose prison sentences relatively frequently; and the lack of demand in the eyes of the judiciary for public accountability in sentencing. These characteristics can be explained by a theory based on two conceptual building blocks: the judicial structure of a career judiciary; and Thailand’s political, social and cultural context. This study seeks to understand Thai sentencing. However, the findings also have implications for the fields of comparative criminal justice, comparative law and comparative judicial studies.

The integration of victim participation into the Rome Statute introduces a restorative function into the practices and procedures of the International Criminal Court alongside its more traditional, retributive mandate, engendering an obligation on the Court to provide restorative justice, or at least, aspects of it, to participating victims. Restorative justice, however, is under-developed in international criminal law in both theory and practice. Moreover, the Court itself has failed to indicate what it means by restorative justice, or what restorative justice would encompass in practice for participating victims. The thesis demonstrates instead that the restorative mandate is in danger of being either subsumed by the retributive function or usurped by a purely procedural justice model. Through an exploration of what restorative justice for participating victims would comprise, this thesis addresses the disconnect between the intentions of the drafters of the Rome Statute and the realisation of restorative justice for victims in practice. Through an interdisciplinary approach, using psychological literature and theory, the thesis identifies, examines and argues for an appropriate overarching goal for restorative action at the ICC: the achievement of a sense of justice in participating victims. This goal is developed and disaggregated into its constituent parts with a view to rendering the concept of restorative justice tangible, applicable and operational within the practices and procedures of the Court. The thesis thereby provides a contribution to theory and practice. The thesis then considers how the Court’s progress in the pursuit of its restorative mandate can be evaluated. In the absence of any existing assessment instrument, the thesis develops and proposes the detailed framework of a psycho-legal assessment tool for the monitoring and evaluation of the Court’s pursuit of restorative justice for participating victims, thereby providing a further contribution to practice.

The dissertation applies an innovative interdisciplinary design to explain which conditions or combinations of conditions are causally relevant for effective state cooperation with international criminal courts and tribunals. I answered the research question by conducting two empirical analyses. The first study places states at the centre of the analysis. The literature review identified six conditions: court independence; court outreach; international interests (such as the threat of sanctions or the promise of membership of an international organisation); the proximity of suspects to the state’s political or military elite; the state’s institutionalisation of relevant law; and government stability. These conditions were divided into two groups, according to their proximity to the state. It was then possible to analyse how different constellations of court outreach and international interests interact with state level conditions (government stability, institutionalisation and proximity of suspects to elites). The qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) relies on an original dataset of 34 cases related to the cooperation of Kenya, Uganda, Serbia and Croatia cooperation with the International Criminal Court and the Yugoslav Tribunal was created. By using two-step QCA to account for the interactions of conditions, the dissertation answers the question of which tools might be used to promote cooperation. Two pathways sufficient for cooperation were identified. The results indicate that even when proximity of suspects to elites is significant, cooperation can be achieved when international pressure combines with outreach and a high level of ICL institutionalisation. The second pathway suggests that cooperation follows when suspects do not hold high-level leadership positions. Even in this situation, international pressure and outreach play a role. The second analysis, a small-n QCA of five human rights and international criminal courts, assessed whether court independence has an influence on cooperation. The results suggest that independence positively affects cooperation only in presence of a contextual factor, high degree of norm socialisation among state parties.