En Syrie, plus de la moitié des terres agricoles sont exploitées en faire-valoir indirect par une multitude de petits exploitants. Les terres appartiennent à quelques grands propriétaires fonciers et à des grands exploitants qui profitent d'une législation très libérale en matière de baux ruraux. En résulte une relation contractuelle précaire et déséquilibrée entre propriétaires et fermiers. L'objectif de cette thèse est de voir comment faire évoluer le droit syrien en matière de baux ruraux afin de proposer un régime équilibré et stable permettant le développement d'une agriculture plus productive et l'amélioration des conditions de vie des familles rurales. A cette fin, nous procéderons à une analyse critique du droit syrien relatif aux baux ruraux , puis rechercherons les possibles apports du droit français en vérifiant l'opportunité de les mettre en œuvre en Syrie. / In Syria, more than half of the agricultural land is farming by a multitude of small tenants. The land belongs to a few large landowners and big farmers who benefit from very liberal legislation on agricultural tenancies. The result is a precarious and unbalanced contractual relationship between owners and tenants. The aim of this thesis is to see how to change the Syrian Law on agricultural tenancies in order to propose a balanced and stable regime allowing the development of a more productive agriculture and the improvement of the living conditions of the rural families. To this end, we will conduct a critical analysis of Syrian Law on agricultural tenancies, then look for the possible contributions of French Law by checking the opportunity to implement them in Syria.

The research presented in this thesis examines the questions of (i) why the prevailing form of Islamic finance has tended to only textually comply with Sharia law while breaching principles underlying; and (ii) how Sharia governance could be standardised in order to ensure that Islamic finance reliably provides a genuinely Islamic alternative to conventional finance so as to engender market trust in the Islamic finance industry. The primary methodologies applied in this thesis are a text-based analysis and a qualitative interview study. A thorough text-based analysis of the religious and academic thinking around Islamic finance serves as a useful starting point for the design of the qualitative semi-structured interviews of a sample of 20 academics with experience of Islamic finance in practice across three culturally distinct jurisdictions (namely, the UK, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia). This paper finds that the existing models of Sharia governance across and within jurisdictions allow for a variety of interpretations, leading, in turn, to the inconsistent issuance of fatwas, thereby undermining the credibility of Islamic finance as genuinely compliant with Sharia principles. A lack of standardisation permits the coexistence of Sharia boards operating at different levels of Sharia supervision. This provides banks with the opportunity to seek to obtain a competitive financial advantage by utilising a less rigorous standard of Sharia governance. In order to counter the logics of neoliberal capitalism which result in banks ‘shopping around’ for favourable interpretations, this thesis concludes that Sharia governance should be part of an integrated and standardised system of Islamic corporate governance.

As a developing country, the Sultanate of Oman finds it relatively challenging to balance foreign investment protection whilst safeguarding its national sovereignty and interests; however, it recognizes the importance of providing the necessary legal protection for foreign investors. This is the first study to examine foreign investment protection in Oman. It identifies existing guarantees and weaknesses in protecting foreign investment within the Omani legal system and establishes how this level of protection could be enhanced from a legal perspective. It examines the extent of Oman’s existing legal obligations under the terms of the multilateral and bilateral investment agreements to which it is a signatory, to examine the role they play in safeguarding foreign investors’ rights. It also investigates the effectiveness of Oman’s dispute settlement mechanisms for resolving foreign investment disputes. Oman’s administrative policies and practices relating to foreign investment are analysed in order to pinpoint any shortcomings in the current system for enforcing foreign investment legislation. Based on these findings, policy recommendations are made which are intended to improve the protection offered to foreign investment in Oman whilst allowing Oman the necessary degree of protection to its own public policy space. This study concludes that Oman have taken the approach to provide adequate legal protection for foreign investment. In addition, in the context of the development of international investment law, the Al-Tamimi case in particular illustrates the need for Omani legislation and legal practice to strike a balance between protecting foreign investors' rights and safeguarding national interests. Moreover, Oman cannot reduce any guarantees in its international agreements, particularly with regard to seeking international dispute resolution, unless it can guarantee an efficient national legal system and dispute resolution mechanism. Whilst improved legal protection plays an important role in attracting foreign investment, this needs to be part of a broader strategy aimed at making the Sultanate a desirable destination for overseas investors. Thus, this study recommends that in order to enhance protection for current foreign investors and attract future investment Oman needs to establish a specialised investment council with a unified policy, making it easy to do business in the Sultanate. This initiative needs to be supported by a new national arbitration centre in Oman and training to upskill the Omani judges and workforce.

The aim of this thesis is to understand the political struggles that underpin international investment law. Social movements of various kinds have expressed alarm over an 'epidemic' of international legal challenges by transnational corporations against state measures designed to protect the environment, public health, or human rights. These state measures have often been introduced directly in response to hard-fought civil society campaigns (ranging from antimining protests in El Salvador to climate change campaigns in Germany), yet academic analysis of what is formally known as 'Investor-State Dispute Settlement' proceeds on the premise that these are simply disputes between 'investors' and 'states', as indeed the term implies. In turn, where the academic focus shifts towards wider questions of why this field of law emerged, and what role it plays in global politics today, even the investors disappear from view, and only states remain. The theoretical argument of this thesis is that the state is not an agent in political struggles, but a social structure that is both the 'congealment' of historic social struggles and a 'strategically selective' arena within which social struggles are fought today. This theoretical argument challenges the state-centric premises of the academic literature, and enables a different empirical explanation of the politics of international investment law, and of the 46 investment disputes arising out of environmental protection measures that have been selected for closer analysis. Drawing upon the work of scholars such as William Robinson, Stephen Gill, and David Schneiderman, the empirical argument of this thesis is that international investment law arose at the initiative of a transnational capitalist class, and it is designed to constrain the political agency of opposing social groups by 'locking in' policies that favour corporations. At stake in the struggle over international investment law is ultimately the very possibility for a different future.

This doctoral thesis is concerned with the application of the international framework for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing to the threats emerging from the criminal misuse of non-traditional payment methods. The international framework plays a significant role in the development of national responses to money laundering and terrorist financing, it is therefore important to understand how it, and then individual countries have responded to this emerging threat. The thesis will explore three developed economies, with advanced anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing frameworks, they are: the UK, the US and Australia. From these countries best practices and deficiencies will be identified. This thesis will examine five NTPMs and outline the money laundering and terrorist financing risks associated with them. It will then Identify and analyse the relevant parts of the international AML and CTF framework, in relation to NTPMs. The analysis that follows will be broken down into the following thematic headings: 1. Global Role and Implementation of the International Framework; 2. Competent Authorities; 3. Application of the Risk-based Approach; 4. Preventive measures; 5. Confiscation of the Proceeds of Crime; and 6. Mutual Legal Assistance. Following on from this it will assess the compliance of three case study countries with the parts of the international AML and CTF framework that are relevant to NTPMs. The abuse of NTPMs, whilst still an emerging trend, are likely to increase in frequency and evolve in nature, in the coming years. It is therefore important to know how both the international framework and national responses adapt to these emerging challenges. For these reasons the area is worthy of academic consideration.

In recent years, countries around the world have witnessed a number of corporate scandals, varying in their enormity. Nigeria has been no exception, having suffered its fair share of these corporate scandals. In many countries, the discovery of some new corporate scandal is unsurprisingly accompanied by calls, from various quarters, for increased directorial accountability. Such calls are then, in their turn, followed by the introduction of new corporate and securities regulations, as well as reforms to existing corporate governance codes. In this quest for increased directorial accountability however, almost all the attention tends to be placed on the substantive content of the laws and codes governing directors. Much less attention, by contrast, has been devoted to the effectiveness of the enforcement regimes applying to these laws and codes. Yet, in the absence of effective enforcement, substantive rules have little impact. Consequently, while it is important to have appropriately developed company law regimes, which impose duties and responsibilities on directors, such laws are likely to fall well short of the mark unless they are also well enforced. It therefore becomes necessary to examine critically enforcement within the context of corporate law. In light of the crucial importance of enforcement in securing directors’ compliance and accountability, this thesis focuses upon the enforcement of corporate law in Nigeria. It analyses three major enforcement regimes in Nigeria: the criminal enforcement regime, the private civil enforcement regime and the public civil enforcement regime. Drawing on criteria for determining effective enforcement developed in the course of this thesis, it argues that the public civil enforcement regime offers the best potential for achieving significant real improvement in the enforcement of corporate law in Nigeria. To further reinforce the argument made for an enhanced public civil enforcement regime, this thesis uses three enforcement case studies derived from the UK and from Australia. The enforcement experience in these countries, whose corporate law regimes bear close similarities with that of Nigeria, have revealed that the public civil enforcement regime, by a clear gap, offers a potentially effective enforcement regime in corporate law. In short, then, this thesis argues that attaining effective enforcement of corporate law is within Nigeria’s reach but this can however be achieved only if it reforms, and develops, public civil enforcement in order to realise the potential benefits of this enforcement regime.

One of the impacts of globalization on the nation states across the globe is how the system reduces governmental intervention and weakens governmental control over many activities within a state's territory. From the governance perspective, states regulate and administer affairs within their territories in accordance with their constitutional mandates of satisfying fundamental objectives of their needs; the extent to which states can satisfy those needs is critically dependent on their ability to pursue public interest oriented policies for meeting the basic needs and for further development of its citizens i.e. for the public good. However, as the tasks of states entail regulation and administration for public purpose, it carries the risk of infringement of private interest or unfair treatment against private entities operating within the state. The complex nature of the investor - state relationship, therefore, provides a lush ground for tension and conflict between public and private interests. Private interests in this context, are the state's commitments to the foreign investors covered by investment treaty jurisprudence, while public interests are the domestic needs regarding public good also linked to compliance with other non-investment albeit international obligations. Under various domestic legal orders and some international law regimes, there is a well-developed principle of legitimate expectations which allows courts and domestic tribunals to filter, both, the legitimacy of individual's expectations and public interest dimension of governmental activities. In investment treaty arbitration, however, this tool or mechanism is lacking. The practice of the investment treaty (ad hoc) tribunals reveals the worrying degree of inconsistency and lack of coherence in the analysis of formulation and application of the principle of legitimate expectations. The principle as applied by investment treaty tribunals can be understood as 'reliance by foreign investor' caused by 'a state through its representation, conduct, or established legal framework', pursuant to which the foreign investor suffers damage or loss emanating from the state's regulatory or administrative measure. While Claimants in investment treaty arbitration are increasingly relying on the principle to frame their claims, its contours remain unsettled. In addition to the varying degrees of ambiguity in the formulation of the principle, the reach of its application raises the tension of overlap with a public interest dimension of the state's regulatory and administrative functions, particularly in the areas of human rights, public health, environment, and necessity measures or public choice. This thesis uses the doctrine of 'margin of appreciation' as an analytical framework for a comparative approach methodology. The doctrine of margin of appreciation as a public law tool could serve as a lens through which investment treaty tribunals could both formulate and apply the principle of legitimate expectations without obscuring the regulatory and administrative functions of states.

This thesis analyses the roles of law and informal institutions in the interactions of large industrial companies, investors and stockbrokers in the Mexican equity market between 1975 and 2005. It shows that those market players combine official and informal solutions which creates an institutional environment that has not maintained levels of public trust that existing literature suggests are essential to sustain financial development. It proposes a theoretical framework to investigate the evolution of equity markets by bringing together the literature on 'law and finance' with one strand of the literature on institutional analysis which emphasises the influential role of informal rules, in combination with formal laws governing human behaviour. This thesis, which relies predominantly on qualitative methods, including interviews with key informants among Mexican companies, investors and financial firms, shows that market players differ in their expectations about securities law depending on their characteristics and motives to take part in the equity market. An important difference exists between those economic agents who acknowledge themselves as members of a group whose dealings in the market are crucially underpinned by personal connections as the source of reciprocal trust (insiders), and those players who do not benefit from such personal ties (outsiders). Because law frequently fails to offer adequate protection to outsiders, informal solutions substitute and compete with legal institutions, sometimes in ways which are convergent with the goals of securities law, but often ways which are not; this is referred to in this thesis as the 'dominance of ineffective formal institutions' (DIFI). Accordingly, the DIFI hypothesis is put forward: the number of economic agents involved in the Mexican equity market correlates to the stretch of the personal ties that support dealing among insiders. The dissertation therefore stresses the importance of the law-in-action and of informal social norms for financial development.

The aim of this thesis is to examine English and Australian law relating to legal liability insurances, in order to determine whether English law can be regarded as having gone down a less desirable route in resolving the problems that arise. Australia has been chosen as a comparator because of its previous colonial position whereby English common law was directly applicable, but, against that backdrop of shared jurisprudence, the Commonwealth of Australia, and its constituent States, have developed, under independence, their own solutions in this area of law. There are various problems that emerge, both as between the injured third party and the culpable insured defendant, and between that insured and his liability insurer. This analysis is approached by first comparing English and Australian law relating to the extent of the indemnity provided by insurances against legal liabilities incurred by the insured. This is to be found in Chapter 1, where the judicial interpretation of the primary insuring words of such policies is considered, and in Chapter 2, where the legal effect of the main express terms and conditions encountered in both English and Australian policies are discussed. Statutory reform affects the position in Australia. Chapter 3 examines the extent of the problems, and the ramifications, that can arise in the four categories of resistance of the insurer to providing an indemnity to the insured - avoidance ab initio of the policy for non-disclosure or misrepresentation of material facts at inception; repudiation of liability for breach of an insurance warranty; rejection of the claim for breach of a condition precedent or other policy condition; and denial that the claim is within the scope of the policy indemnity. The statutory compulsory regimes adopted in England and Australia with regard to the insuring of motor vehicle liability and employers' liability to their employees are discussed and contrasted in Chapter 4. The claimant third party's direct rights of action against the liability insurer of a judgment debtor are considered in Chapter 5. Finally, conclusions are reached on the preferred approach on all of these aspects.

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