Tasked with enforcing the criminal law against suspected offenders, public prosecutors have traditionally enjoyed broad discretion, which is usually structured by legal and policy guidelines defining rules prosecutors should follow when making their decisions. Basing its analysis upon direct observations and interviews in the two jurisdictions under study, this comparative thesis endeavours to understand how the French and Anglo-Welsh criminal justice systems attempt to combine the necessities of accountability for public prosecution services in modern democratic societies with the flexibility and reactivity needed in the application of the law provided by prosecutorial discretion. There have been few systematic, empirical accounts of the decision-making process of these national prosecution services. This thesis argues that neither system observed achieves a satisfactory balance between accountability and discretion for public prosecutors. In France, although democratic and hierarchical accountability channels are well developed in theory, oversight is weak due to the primacy of the concept of ‘adaptation’ in the legal culture and the strong professional ethos of procureurs as independent judicial officers. In England and Wales, public prosecutors are part of a highly bureaucratic and centralised structure which strictly enforces consistency in prosecutorial decisions at the expense of much discretion and autonomy for individual prosecutors whose responsibility is limited to narrow and repetitive tasks due to the segmentation of the prosecution process. This overbearing accountability structure, coupled with a historical balance of power in favour of the police, appears to prevent prosecutors from making decisions perceived as unpopular with their hierarchy or the police. Finally, pressure on resources and a drive for efficiency in both jurisdictions have resulted in the bureaucratisation of the criminal justice process with part of the prosecution workload being delegated to unqualified staff and minor cases being processed as quickly as possible into a one-size-fits-all system.

This thesis conducts a conceptual analysis of the proportionality of non-consensual adoptions in England and Wales. It does so by examining the English legislation and case law on adoption and the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). This thesis considers and applies rights from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) to determine when non-consensual adoption may be regarded as a necessary and proportionate interference with children’s and parents’ rights. The proportionality principle requires the domestic courts and the ECtHR to strike a balance between the various rights and interests of children and parents while taking into account children’s welfare. The final strand of the proportionality principle identifies whether the State measure is the least restrictive measure available to satisfy the State’s objective. This strand is not applied in all non-consensual adoption cases heard by the domestic courts or the ECtHR. However, this thesis argues it is essential to identify whether less restrictive alternatives exist as these measures may prove equally effective in protecting children’s welfare when compared with adoption, and may also protect children’s and parents’ rights. This thesis makes a conceptual contribution to the academic scholarship on non-consensual adoption law by identifying how the UNCRC, the ECHR, the best interests principle and ECtHR jurisprudence can be applied so as to provide optimal protection for children’s and parents’ rights in adoption cases. This thesis concludes that judicial reasoning in the courts should routinely consider UNCRC rights and the effectiveness of less restrictive alternatives. Furthermore, it argues that there is a positive obligation under ECHR Article 8 to provide State assistance in circumstances where children can safely be raised by their parents, which is not yet recognised in English case law.

Cases that reach the Supreme Court are ‘hard cases’ where the result is not clearly dictated by statute or precedent. To reach a decision in these cases, a judge must exercise discretion and the non-legal factors that influence discretion have been the subject of extensive debate. Theoretical and empirical studies examining the influences on judicial discretion have focused on demographic characteristics and facets of the judicial personality including political ideology and attitudes. Personal values are related to these factors and have been demonstrated to play a role in decision making. This thesis demonstrates a relationship between personal values and judicial decision making in the Supreme Court. This thesis translates theories and techniques used in psychological research to examine the role of personal values in judicial decision making. A novel method of assessment of value expression in judgments was developed. This method revealed a different pattern of values expressed in the majority and minority judgments of cases that divided the Supreme Court, demonstrating a relationship between values and judicial decisions (value: decision paradigm). This was confirmed by an empirical study of legal academics. Drawing on this novel method, a series of Supreme Court cases were analysed to develop a theory of discretion, division, uncertainty, and values, suggesting that the influence of values is mediated through largely subconscious instinctive responses in cases where the outcome is perceived as uncertain. The role of values has significant implications in the debates surrounding judicial diversity, which have centred on overt characteristics, how the judiciary are seen. The study of judicial values has revealed tacit diversity in the Supreme Court which is associated with judicial decision making. The value: decision paradigm provides a new framework to analyse judicial decision making, judicial division, and the exercise of judicial discretion and the subconscious influences on these processes.

This thesis identifies the underlying values of German and English contract law. It establishes that to some extent almost all values are reflected in both jurisdictions but that in many cases the underlying values compete with each other. The thesis identifies the balance of the values in the context of four problem areas namely pre-contractual duties of disclosure (breaking off negotiations), mistake, unfair contract terms and changed circumstances. The thesis concludes that although almost all values are reflected in each system the balance of the values differs significantly. This is important and topical because identifying the balance of the competing values within a jurisdictions and contrasting these to another jurisdiction provides a deeper level of understanding of the courts' decision-making process. The particular questions which the research addresses are twofold, firstly, which values are competing within the context of a particular problem, and secondly, what weight is given to each value in a given context in contrast to the other jurisdiction. In order to address these questions a combination of doctrinal and comparative research methods is adopted. The focus is on the decisions of the respective courts', but doctrinal elements are also explored through the way in which cases were interpreted by academic writers at that particular time, while a functional comparative method is adopted. The work does not aim to create its own theory of contract or try to engage in the theoretical debate of which universal values 'should' apply. The implications of the research findings are that policies at a European level can more accurately identify the core underlying values if they firstly identify the viability of harmonising areas of contract law and at a national level and evaluate potential legislative changes in light of these values. Additionally, identification of the values also allows further research on the desirability of the values to be conducted.

The thesis critically analyses the legal problems associated with the recognition and enforcement of domestic and foreign arbitral awards in Saudi Arabia. The aim is to illuminate whether or not the new Saudi Arbitration Law 2012 (SAL) and the new Enforcement Law 2012 (SEL) will be able to resolve these problems. In the thesis, we investigate the reasons for the problems with regard to the SAL 1983, and then discuss the SAL 2012 in terms of the possibility of resolving such problems. Moreover, the study includes a semi-comparative study in the light of Sharia Law and international practice. The thesis deals with Saudi judicial practices by looking at a significant number of Saudi judicial cases that relate to the enforcement of arbitral awards. This is what enhances the view that the thesis will make an effective contribution to the field of arbitration. A number of legal problems, such as the lack of identification of the limited grounds for a challenge, the competent court to decide such a challenge, the arbitration having the authority of res judicata, and the potency of the competent court to review the merits of the dispute, should all be considered due to their negative impact on the enforcement process. In this thesis, we have concluded that the new SAL 2012 and SEL 2012 can cope with and resolve many of the legal dilemmas associated with the matter of the enforcement of arbitral awards. These new pieces of legislation will be able, to some extent, to reassure and comfort national and international parties without violating Sharia law. However, some potential legal obstacles may emerge in terms of the enforcement process as it relates to arbitral awards. Therefore, the author of the thesis believes that the level of satisfaction may not be as much as is hoped for.

Suicide is a major public health concern in the UK, with recent published rates for England at 11.8 per 100,000 population for the year 2011. There has been extensive research into individual-level risk factors for suicide, though some suggest that ecological and social factors may also have an influence on suicide. The majority of the UK literature investigating this has examined suicide rates in relation to area-level deprivation or social fragmentation scores. Most of the research has not accounted for ecological fallacy (in this instance the erroneous assumption that factors associated with suicide at the group-level would be associated with suicide at the individual-level and vice versa). This thesis uses multilevel modelling to investigate differences in suicide by area, in order to account for both individual and area-level factors. Data from the 2001 UK Census, and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) were combined to create a complete case-control sample of suicide vs. non-suicide for the year 2001. This represents an alternative methodology for examining suicide incidence in England and Wales. Analysing this data by NHS Primary Care Organisation (PCO) for England, and Local Health Board (LHB) for Wales could influence how NHS services are allocated. UK Census data was then linked with patient data from The National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness (NCISH), to examine suicide amongst both the general population and people in contact with mental health services. Analysing this data by PCO and LHB highlights specific risk factors for certain types of suicide in different areas in England and Wales. Again, this could influence the allocation of NHS services within particular areas. This study found that including information about individual-level characteristics explained the majority of variance in suicide types between areas. Social fragmentation was associated with certain types of suicide after controlling for individual-level factors, and was associated with suicide risk in the initial case-control sample. This suggests that social cohesion at a local level is important for suicide prevention, and for improving the mental health of the nation. This supports the goals of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy for England.

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No description available.

This study analyses the discursive construction of part-time employment and the workers in it in the employmentand legal contexts in Britain and Japan, applying an analytical framework of the law developed from a post-structuralist feminist viewpoint. In doing this, this study contributes to knowledge in the field of legal studies by providing an account of the active role of the law in the area of employment,through the operation of discourse, in shaping and reshaping structural inequality which part-time women employees face in contemporary British and Japanese society. Evidence for this study is collected from statistical data, questionnaires and interviews with managers, interviews with a group of ex-part-time women workers pursuing a legal case and the close reading of legal materials in the two countries. From the examination of these data, two discourses are identified,which circulate in employment and legal institutions in both countries and which help to produce the differentiation between full-time and part-time employees. One discourse emphasises differencesin labour-related factors, such as working hours, job content and commitment, while the other emphasises differences in the gendered characteristics and domestic positions of men and women. I show that the two discourses operate within and across these institutions, constructing part-time employment as different from and inferior to full-time employment on both labour related and gender-related grounds, and legitimisingthe disadvantaged position of part-time employees. This discursive construction has brought about a gendered hierarchy within the law in which the inferior working pattern of part-time employment is gendered as women's, while the superior pattern of full-time employmentis gendered as men's. On the basis of this analysis, I argue that the law is one of the most influential discursive mechanisms which bring about and help to sustain the hierarchical gendering of society, contributing to the production and reproduction of unequal power relations between the sexes and between employers and part-time women employees.

The thesis focuses on comparative criminal evidence law and sets out to explore whether it is possible to devise rules of criminal evidence that would suit different jurisdictions. This work should be treated as an exploratory project as it aims to find a suitable approach and then test it using three different rubrics of evidence law – evidence of prior convictions, hearsay evidence and standard of proof. Those rubrics in six different jurisdictions will be examined. The thesis first discusses the mainstream dichotomous approach to comparative criminal procedure and evidence, concluding that the inquisitorial-adversarial distinction has by today lost much of its descriptive power and was never meant to be a normative model. Instead, the author finds that all Western style jurisdictions today are concerned with accurate fact-finding and in order to facilitate accurate fact-finding, should take into consideration the cognitive needs and abilities of fact-finders. Since for the most part human cognition is universally the same, this psychology-based approach can serve as a foundation for evaluating the evidentiary regulation – and unless some extra-epistemic factors prevail, should guide legislatures towards optimizing and unifying their evidentiary regulation. Based on the recent studies in legal psychology, the author offers recommendations that would be workable in all sample jurisdictions. This is in part possible because empirical research tends to debunk often-held beliefs about professional judges being far superior fact-finders immune from the cognitive biases and emotional appeal usually attributed to jurors.