The focus of the thesis is the diplomatic and legal implications of the capture of ships at sea in the later Middle Ages. It challenges key assumptions in much secondary literature concerning the definition of piracy, seeking to explore several major themes relating to the legal status of shipping in periods of war or diplomatic tension in this period. The thesis draws primarily on diplomatic, legal and administrative records, largely those of English royal government, but also makes use of material relating to France, Holland and Zealand, Flanders and the Hanse. The majority of studies on this subject stress the importance of developments which occurred in the fifteenth century, yet I have found it necessary to follow the development of the law of prize, diplomatic provisions for the keeping of the sea and the use of devolved sea-keeping fleets back to the start of the thirteenth century. This thesis questions the tendency of historians to attach the term ‘piracy’, with its modern legal connotations, to a variety of actions at sea in the later Middle Ages. In the absence of a clear legislative or semantic framework a close examination of the complexity of practice surrounding the judgement of prize, the provision of restitution to injured parties, and diplomatic mechanisms designed to prevent disorder at sea, enables a more rounded picture to emerge. A detailed examination of individual cases is set within the broader conceptual framework of international, commercial and maritime law. Chapter 1 provides a study of the wartime role of devolved flees by means of a case study of Henry III’s Poitou campaigns of 1242-3. It demonstrates that private commissioned ships undertook a variety of naval roles including the transport of troops, patrolling the coast and enforcing blockades. Further, it argues that it is anachronistic to criticise private shipowners for seeking profit through attacks on enemy shipping as booty was an integral incentive in all forms of medieval warfare. Chapter 2 provides a detailed examination of the application of letters of marque, one of the principal means of obtaining redress for injuries suffered at the hands of the subject of a foreign sovereign. It demonstrates that far from being a justification for ‘piracy’ letters of marque were highly regulated legal instruments applied in the context of an internationally accepted body of customs. Chapter 3 examines the concept of neutrality and the relationship between warfare and commerce through a study of Anglo-Flemish relations during the Anglo-Scottish wars between 1305 and 1323. It argues that universal standards of neutrality did not exist in this period and that decisions on prize took place within the context of an ever-changing diplomatic background. Chapter 4 focuses on the provision of restitution once judgement had been made through an examination of a complex dispute between English merchants and the count of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland spanning the opening decades of the fourteenth century. It emphasises the ad hoc nature of restitution with a variety of means devised to compensate the injured parties and the difficult and often inconclusive process undergone by litigants against a backdrop of competing interests, both local and national. The thesis concludes that the legal process surrounding the capture of shipping was civil rather than criminal in nature. The plaintiff’s need to obtain restitution was the driving force behind such actions rather than the state’s desire to monopolise the use of violence at sea. The reliance of the English crown on devolved shipping made such a policy fiscally impractical.

Domestic criminal law helps define State sovereign identity. Over the past fifty years some criminality has become increasingly transnational in character. In the absence of a universal criminal code (as opposed to specified international crimes), States apply municipal law to prosecute offences of a transnational nature relying on mutual legal assistanceto secure evidence located outside the prosecuting State. A comparatively late contributor to the development of mutual legal assistance the UK now seeks to influence the work of the EU in developing a legal framework upon which to base mutual legal assistance and enhanced international law enforcement co-operation. The course of this developmentis outlined. This thesis examines through questionnaire and interview data, investigator and prosecutor experience of mutual legal assistance mechanisms in gathering of evidence from abroad for use at trial in England and Wales. Comparisons are made with data from an earlier survey of UK police (1996) and with an evaluation of mutual legal assistance administrative mechanisms within the EU (1999-2001) in order to identify changes in investigator experiences since the EU began to drive the strategic development of regional international law enforcement co-operation with the Treaty of Amsterdam and to assess whether politicians and administrators are delivering the solutions needed by investigators working across national borders. Set within the legislative context of the Criminal Justice (International Co-operation) Act 1990, the data indicate that neither this regime nor the emerging EU framework were addressing all practitioner concerns. Political responsesto the New York terrorist attacks of September 2001, which occurred during data gathering for this thesis, accelerated legislative construction in the UK and the EU. Updated to include discussion of these changes (some still not yet entered into force), the thesis now provides a benchmark against which to assess their impact in due course.

The Rotterdam Rules have come to harmonise and update the law of international carriage of goods wholly or partly by sea. This Convention has been praised for being more aware of the interrelation between carriage and international sale contracts. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the impact that the Rotterdam Rules will have on international commercial sales when the applicable law is English law. The focus of the research has been placed on the provisions of the Rotterdam Rules which have been inserted to facilitate trade. The international trade of goods heavily relies on documentary performance. The transport documents are of the utmost significance and where they are negotiable, they enable sales down a string through transfer of a document of title. The provisions of the Rotterdam Rules allowing the seller to obtain the appropriate document for tender to the buyer have been examined, to discover possible implications on CIF and FOB contracts. Thus, study of the compatibility of the Rotterdam Rules with the Incoterms is critical. Equally significant has been the research of the relation between the requirements a transport document or electronic record should satisfy under the Rotterdam Rules and a letter of credit governed by the UCP 600, as this is the preferred method of payment in modern overseas sales. Moreover this thesis investigates the way in which the transport document can secure the seller’s and buyer’s rights under their contract of sale, if issued in an electronic form. Currently there is a particular interest in paperless contracting especially in the oil trade. Thus, whether the Rotterdam Rules can operate successfully, along with eUCP and modern registries and what law reforms need to take place to optimise trade facilitation and certainty in this area have also been examined. Finally because international sale agreements incorporate English law due to the advantages of freedom of contract, this made necessary the discussion of the trade dimensions of a volume contract that derogates from the Rotterdam Rules. The fluctuating balance between codification, consolidation of legal principles and freedom of contract as reflected by the Rotterdam Rules and texts of other rule-setting organisations underpins the findings of this thesis. Thus, not surprisingly, the way the Rotterdam Rules, which are a piece of international codification, legitimise freedom of contract in agreements that would otherwise be subject to a mandatory regime deserves special consideration. All the chapters are strongly interrelated both in conceptual and teleological legal terms. This thesis asserts that the trade implications from the application of the Rotterdam Rules are due to the idiosyncrasies of the regulation of carriage and trade laws. Although they may touch upon common concepts, they are constituted by varied legal sources and drafted by delegations, which, due to their background and composition harmonise the law based on different priorities. This justifies the synergies identified in this thesis; it is a thesis which goes beyond the implications identified and suggests the way forward so that the Rotterdam Rules can have a positive effect on sales concluded on shipment terms.

Traditionally, the enforcement of competition rules in Europe has been predominantly via public enforcement. Following the European Court of Justice’s ruling in 2001 in which was established the right for compensation of harms suffered by any victim of antitrust infringements, the European Commission has made proposals to create a private antitrust enforcement regime. While compensation of victims is the first and foremost guiding principle, the regime thus created, should, according to the Commission, also deliver overall better compliance with competition rules whilst creating and sustaining a competitive European economy. In designing the system the Commission contends that it should not be grounded on similar features to that of the United States private enforcement mechanism as it has resulted in abuses of the system by private parties for private interests. A deconstructive reading of the Commission proposals, however, reveals that the envisaged regime contains more characteristics of the United States system than is explicitly presented. Furthermore, a direct comparison of common prohibitions in both systems exposes a significant lack of safeguards against misuse of the rules by private parties in the European system. This thesis also compares the envisaged European regime with the Canadian public enforcement regime. Despite the restricted cause of action accorded to private parties, the Canadian system is not immune from exploitation of the rules by private parties for self-interest. These findings call into question whether the proposed system will deliver the stated aims. This thesis concludes that considering the costs of private enforcement, European competition law should be solely the competence of public officials. It is argued that although not formally recognised either in the literature nor in the case law of the EU courts, the Commission is already legally empowered to award compensation to victims of antitrust violations. This thesis presents suggestions for an enhancement of the current public enforcement framework.

This study examines the problems we face in making a coherent theoretical link between the international law of piracy and the law of the sea in the context of the rise in maritime piracy in Africa over the past three decades. It focuses on four nations affected by piracy in the Gulf of Guinea and Horn of Africa. Furthermore, the international law of piracy is concerned with two types of jurisdiction: prescriptive jurisdiction and enforcement jurisdiction. However, the law of the sea (UN Law of the Sea Convention) defines five types of jurisdiction: territorial seas, exclusive economic zone (EEZ), the continental shelf, high seas, and seabed or seafloor outside the area of claims of territorial seas under the EEZ. The above implies that where a State that has enforcement jurisdiction is unable or unwilling to enforce prescribed international laws against piracy, recourse ought to be had to a State with jurisdiction under the law of the sea. The current thesis seeks to demonstrate that maritime piracy has substantially increased in north-eastern and western parts of Africa because, albeit the development of the law of the sea has transposed towards acknowledging the rights (and obligations) of coastal States in order to defend their territorial seas with reference to the piratical incursions, not enough attention has been given to the consequences flowing from the fact that the coastal states in question do not possess the requisite resources and systems to enforce international law and/ or prosecute pirates. It is submitted here that piracy in its modern form in the Gulf of Aden and Gulf of Guinea is a transnational crime that may best be contained through a regional legal infrastructure. It is also argued that the multilateral approach of linking enforcement jurisdiction to Universal Jurisdiction is problematic since it translates into ‘relational statism’ that is, where States habitually pursue only their self-interests. As such, consistency and clarity in the international legal situation may best be achieved by recourse to a traditional ‘auto-limitation’ approach whereby jurisdiction is essentially territorial and can only be exercised by a State outside its territory where it obtains the consent of the territorial State (perhaps through Convention or Treaty) or in accordance with a permissive rule derived from international custom. Therefore the thesis of this study suggests the need for legal reform. Chapter 1 provides the background to the study as well as the framework for the research. The main research aims, objectives and research questions are addressed in Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Chapter 7 concludes the research by presenting the findings and recommendations together with an outline of the research contribution.

The end of World War II was the beginning of an era of promises being made for the protection of human rights. Since then, the international community has established a variety of legal instruments that aim to achieve this protection. These legal instruments at the international level provide certain standards for states to fulfil, such as the right to a fair trial and prohibition of arbitrary detention. Despite the growing international human rights network including several official and non-official actors, non-compliance with international protection standards by states is still a serious challenge within the system. The ever-enlarging literature on international law compliance theories persistently seeks to find ways to overcome this problem. Immigration detention of children, one of the human rights issues on which the international network has provided guidance to states, has been practiced by Turkish and British immigration authorities for a considerable period of time. This practice has been justified on the grounds of efficient immigration control. Nevertheless, these two countries recently took legislative steps towards compliance with international human rights standards regarding immigration detention of minors. This research investigated these processes in Turkey and the UK to find out whether there were any actors that influenced the decision to change legislation by applying a selected compliance theory that focuses on socialisation between various actors such as courts and international monitoring bodies and the state. It was clear that these two very different countries reached the same conclusions via distinct routes, in reference to different reasons and motivations. While the theory’s predictive value showed only limited success in the UK’s case due to its reliance on socialisation and international law, it had high explanatory power for Turkey’s case. Nonetheless, it still demonstrated the importance of identifying actors capable of influencing decisionmaking of states to further strengthen the system of protection of human rights.

This study investigates accountability of the judiciary for its role in authoritarianism as an integral part of accountability in transitions. It argues this is an important but relatively neglected aspect of transitional justice theory and state practice. The thesis of the research is that the judicial institution, as the third branch of government ought to be held accountable for its role in past governance in transitional societies. This is particularly important to obtain comprehensive accountability. It is also relevant to the crucial task of institutional transformation which is a key objective of transitional justice. The paucity of critical perspectives on the role of the judiciary during a society’s troubled period would appear to be because of the view that it lacks a distinct role in governance. This suggests that the judicial function was inconsequential or judicial outcomes were invariably imposed. In view of the acknowledged important role of the judiciary in both liberal and democratising polities all over the world, it is argued that the purview of transitional justice mechanisms should, as a matter of policy, be extended to scrutiny of the judicial role in the past. There is the need to publicly scrutinise the course of judicial governance in post-authoritarian societies as a cardinal measure of institutional transformation. Following on the recognition that the judiciary in post-authoritarian contexts will be faced with enormous challenges of dispute resolution, restoration of the rule of law, as well as a key role in policy determination and governance, its institutional transformation following a period of siege is critical to the survival of democracy and the rule of law. The mechanism of choice identified in this research for scrutiny of the judicial function in transitional societies is the truth commission. The research proposes extending the purview of truth-telling processes as a measure of public accountability to the judiciary in post-authoritarian contexts. The research adopts a comparative perspective but to contextualise the argument, it focuses specifically on judicial governance and accountability for the past in Nigeria’s transition to democracy after three decades of authoritarian rule.

Counter-insurgency assumed a status during the twentieth century as one of the British military‟s fortes. A wealth of asymmetric warfare experience was accumulated after World War Two, as the small wars of decolonisation offered the army of a fading imperial power the opportunity to regularly deploy against an irregular enemy. Yet this quantity of experience has been misguidedly conflated with quality. This thesis holds that the British, far from being the counter-insurgent exemplars that history has benevolently cast them, have in fact consistently proven to be slow learners and slow strategic burners in the realm of counter-insurgency warfare. The case study-based nature of this thesis, utilising the chronologically and geographically dispersed examples of Malaya (1948-60), Kenya (1952-60), South Yemen (1962-67), the first decade of the Northern Irish „Troubles‟ (1969-79), culminates with an analysis of the recent British counter-insurgency campaign in southern Iraq (2003-09). This thesis will blend historical narrative with critical analysis in order to establish a new paradigm through which to interpret and analyse British inertia in counter-insurgency and help unpack the mythology of inherent British competence in the realm of irregular warfare. Three major dimensions emerge. These elements constitute a „Tri-Partite Counter-Insurgency Model‟, and were carefully selected as comprising the major causal and impacting factors contributing to success or failure in counter-insurgency, and were settled upon after an exhaustive review of primary and secondary literature relating to counter-insurgency, both historical and doctrinal. The Tri-Partite Model is constructed by three interactive and interdependent factors: the counter-insurgent, the insurgent, and the international political context.

Energy is required to manufacture a good or create a service and the energy sector is the backbone of every economy. Until recently, governments worldwide have considered the energy sector too cmcial to be left to market forces. Accordingly, energy markets have been fragmented and segmented into national and highly protected markets. Likewise, international trade in energy has traditionally been synonymous with petroleum trade, which in turn has been effectively regulated by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), outside the reach of the multilateral trading system. However, the past two decades have seen the emergence of a trend towards the introduction of the trade discourse into the energy sector. This trend has two main components. The first component has its roots in the efforts made at the bilateral, regional, and international levels to impose GATT-type and even GATT-plus disciplines on energy trade. In this regard, mention may be made of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement, the NAFTA agreement, and the Energy Charter Treaty. The second component, initially originated at the national level, has been the deregulation movement, namely reforming the electricity and natural gas industries. As a result of this policy shift, the electricity and national gas industries have been evolving from monopolistic into competitive industries with increasing numbers and types of participants. Accordingly, trade in electricity and gas is a new dimension of trade in energy, which is particularly relevant to the trade in services debate. It should be noted, however, that the GATS ongoing energy services negotiations also include the liberalization of oil and gas field services, which are related to the upstream segment of the oil and natural gas industries. Two WTO agreements, namely the GATT and the GATS, are of particular importance in analysing these components. Furthermore, in order to give the full picture of the current energy trade debate, the dual pricing debate and the relevant developments of the Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Agreement and their potential implications for trade in energy-intensive products should also be examined. The purpose of this study is to explore in extensive detail the two aforementioned components that shape the current energy debate. It is aimed at analysing the relationship between these components in the context of the energy trade discourse. The overall aim is to provide a better understanding of the processes and trends relating to this complex, multidimensional and dynamic subject and to identify how and to what extent trade in energy is integrated into the world trading system. Some tentative observations are also made with the desire to point towards the next steps.

The ultimate aim of this thesis is to examine the legitimacy and procedural fairness of the asset-freezing legal systems1 as a counter-terrorism measure, in order to offer recommendations on how to reform the law in Jordan. To that end, it is argued that counter-terrorism measures generally undermine procedural fairness and relevant human rights. This thesis explores how sophisticated legal orders deal with the adverse effects of lack of legitimacy and procedural fairness in the asset-freezing counter-terrorism, in order to form a model that can resolve the defects in the application of the asset-freezing systems. To achieve this end, the thesis is divided into seven chapters. It starts with a brief introduction. Chapter 1, seeks to explore the development of the asset-freezing in the United Nations (hereinafter ‘UN’), the changes in its nature, and determines if the United Nations Security Council (hereinafter ‘UNSC’) is empowered to impose such asset-freezing obligations. Chapter 2, inspects the decision-making procedures involved in the asset-freezing against designated persons such as UNSCR.1267, and its descendants, and the observation of procedural fairness in the UN legal order. Chapter 3, examines the application of the UNSC asset-freezing systems by the European Union (hereinafter ‘EU’) and its procedures, and the observation of procedural fairness in order to explore its inconsistencies and flaws. Chapter 4, looks at the legal challenge to the UN and EU legal orders, the lack of judicial protection in the UN, and the possibility of compensating for this lack by the EU Judiciary based on the autonomy of the EU legal order to see if the EU courts have the capability to provide effective judicial protection and the extent of such judicial protection . Chapter 5 deals with the approaches followed in applying the UN, EU and national asset-freezing systems and their procedure in the UK legal order, also the observance of procedural fairness in these contexts. Chapter 6 examines the right to effective judicial protection and the approach followed to accommodate the security considerations in proceedings before the UK court. Chapter 7 explores the application of the asset-freezing systems in Jordan, the lack of procedural fairness and the limited judicial protection offered. Finally, the thesis presents concluding remarks and recommendations for law reform in Jordan.