Private international law applies to cases governed by private law which involve factual connections with several countries. A major issue governed by private international law is the question of which country’s law should be applied to determine the merits of a dispute. This thesis focuses on choice of law in respect of transnational contracts. It compares the legal principles concerning choice of law adopted by way of European harmonization with those currently utilized in the United Arab Emirates. The purpose of this comparison is to find points which are not addressed in the United Arab Emirates law under its Civil Transactions Code, or on which its provisions are unsatisfactory. In particular, the absence of any special provisions on choice of law for contracts such as consumer, insurance, and employment contracts which involved disparity of bargaining power between the parties, is considered. The thesis proposes new provisions which could usefully be adopted in the UAE by way of amendment to its Civil Transactions Code in the light of the European solutions under the Rome I Regulation. Attention is also given to a recently established territorial enclave, the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), which has its own legal system, based on an English model, and is designed to attract international businesses and investors. Thus the thesis examines choice of law under DIFC law, and (in view of the rapid development of the DIFC legal order, and the numerous issues therein which have not yet been fully resolved) also considers other areas of private international law in the DIFC (such as judicial jurisdiction, arbitration and the enforcements of judgments and awards).

Challenging questions arise in the effort to adequately protect the cultural rights of individuals and communities worldwide, not the least of which are questions concerning the very understanding of ‘culture’. As contemporary anthropologists began to understand ‘culture’ as the fluid and ubiquitous narratives that are shifting and sometimes contested, does it still make sense to speak of culture in the context of human rights? If so, what kind of State obligations does this understanding entail? This thesis explores the issue whether the United Nations human rights treaty-bodies jurisprudence is sufficient in protecting the cultural rights of groups and individuals. To achieve this, the present thesis analyses the works of the treaty-bodies on the scope of cultural rights protection and how the treaty-bodies impose limitations on cultural rights. Borrowing from contemporary anthropological knowledge on culture, this thesis demonstrates how the work of the treaty-bodies has failed to acknowledge culture as competing discourses of power and has failed to address potential violations on cultural rights which accompany discourse production as individuals and community struggle over meanings. It also demonstrates how the treaty-bodies, when applying limitations on cultural rights, adopt an highly essentialised notion of culture which sets up culture and gender as fundamentally opposite positions and obscures the question on individual agency in cultural practices. To solve the above difficulties, this thesis argues that, in the context of protecting cultural rights, the treaty-bodies must look beyond the cultural text and must seek to understand the power relations which underpin the production of meaning. In the context of limiting cultural rights, treaty-bodies should begin their assessment by understanding how discourses are produced, reproduced, experienced and resisted, and how these processes impact women emotionally and practically. Concrete steps to accommodate these perspectives are also considered.

Articles 2(a)-(f) and 16(1)(h) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) prohibit discrimination and enjoin State parties to ensure substantive equality between men and women in marriage and family relations. To ensure compliance with the CEDAW, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee) examines State parties' periodic reports and makes pertinent observations. In 1985 by ratifying the CEDAW without any reservations, Uganda willingly undertook to make her laws and institutions regulating rights of succession to property compliant with the CEDAW. On 9th August 2002 the CEDAW Committee expressed concern over the country's state-made and non-state-made laws of marriage and succession. Uganda was called upon to remove, in family relations, among others, de jure discrimination and eliminate de facto discrimination against her women. With the above concerns in mind, this dissertation primarily measures Uganda's laws and institutions regulating rights of succession to property with the standards set by the CEDAW. To clarify rights of succession to property, however, laws and institutions regulating rights to property in marriage and upon divorce are also juxtaposed against the said CEDAW standards. The dissertation suggests reforms with a view to making Uganda's said laws and institutions compliant with Articles 2(a)-(f) and 16(1)(h) of the CEDAW. Whilst some of the law reform propositions are based on intuition, given that countries rarely improve their laws without looking at what other jurisdictions are doing, this dissertation has sought progressive ideas from the English, Scots and South African laws and institutions regulating rights to property in marriage, upon divorce and upon the death of a spouse. While there is legal pluralism in Uganda's laws and institutions regulating women's rights to property in marriage, upon divorce and upon the death of a spouse, such pluralism should not prevail over compliance with Articles 2(a)-(f) and 16(1)(h) of the CEDAW, as an international legal imperative: women's rights to property in Uganda may be regulated by state-made, customary and Islamic family laws and institutions so long as compliance with Articles 2(a)-(f) and 16(1)(h) of the CEDAW is guaranteed.

Underpinning the law on documentary credits and independent guarantees is a legal principle of autonomy which dictates that these financial instruments should, as a matter of law, be treated separately from a trader’s contractual agreement. However, despite this, fraudulent behaviour may still occur when these financial and legal instruments are used in practice. In response, a fraud exception to the autonomy principle has been recognised by many national and international courts in an attempt to mitigate the effects of fraudulent trade practices. The application of this exception within the English courts is, however, problematic owing to the narrowness of its construction and application. Additionally, the paucity of alternate legal instruments for regulating fraudulent trade practices means that Jordanian courts are not in any better position than their English counterparts, leaving traders confused as to their legal position when a fraud dispute arises. Given the large financial value of fraudulent transactions and the risks involved, the use of these legal instruments has declined as has the banks’ investment in this area creating a problem for legal policy makers. The aim of this dissertation is to, first, critically examine the fraud exception under English and Jordanian law by exploring the problems associated with the application of the fraud exception; and, second, to propose legal reforms which would alleviate both the legal and practical problems associated with the fraud exception as it stands currently. The thesis is that, whilst the autonomy principle plays a vital role in international trade, the courts should facilitate the fraud exception application and recognise other exceptions, such as the non-genuinity and the underlying contract exception, where the former exception would be unable to prevent fraud occurrence. The approach is based upon a critical evaluation of Anglo-American and Jordanian case law, supplemented by secondary sources and a qualitative examination of the Jordanian approach to the fraud exception based upon interviews with Jordanian judges. The dissertation concludes that an effective legal approach to fraudulent transactions using documentary credits and independent guarantees must be founded upon objective rather than subjective principles and that the courts’ use of injunctions should be different in cases involving holders in due course from those not involving such parties. These findings will impact upon legal policy debates within both English common law and international trade law more generally and the examination of the Jordanian position is instructive in that it is the first such study of its kind.

This thesis addresses the issue of compliance requirements under international law. Compliance with international norms is a contested issue. On the one hand the meaning of compliance is contingent on the theory of international law one holds. But on the other hand, the requirements for compliance are not clearly set out in the norm itself. This is problematic as the increased normative impact of international law brings more non-state actors under the regulation of regimes devised to regulate state activities. Compliance is expected of non-state actors with international norms, the compliance requirements of which are not clear even for states, the intended regulatees. Also, as the reach of international law expands, international law is under threat of fragmentation This means actors must contend with competing compliance requirements further prompting a need to identify those requirements more clearly and systematically. A general scheme for identifying such compliance requirements could help improve understanding of the meaning of compliance and improve levels of compliance. I propose such a scheme by critically examining key aspects of the concept of compliance and reviewing compliance theories. The thesis then sets out a Compliance Strategy and Framework (CSF) to systematically identify compliance requirements under international law. I then provide a Compliance Framework (CF), which sets out those requirements. This scheme will of necessity be of a general nature to be adapted in application to particular issue areas of international law. I illustrate the Compliance Strategy and Framework (CSF) by adapting it to the area of human rights. Specifically I show how the CSF may be applied to identify compliance requirements with the human rights associated with participation and accountability and I extend that example with a simple illustration aimed at using the CSF to identify the World Bank’s compliance requirements in relation to those human rights in the context of a Bank project. Finally, my thesis contends that the CSF is a valid scheme, according to international law, for identifying compliance requirements with norms of international law.

This thesis investigates the ethical issues and controversies that surround the use of plea bargaining in international criminal tribunals. Existing approaches to this subject have a tendency to be overly abstract, resulting in often ideologically deterministic justifications or critiques of plea bargaining in an international context. These approaches also fail to take into account any human dimension that may be involved in these negotiations. This thesis goes some way towards remedying this by making use of extensive in-depth interviews with international trial professionals. The thesis incorporates these interviews into an analysis of plea bargaining through three theoretical models: classic utilitarianism, classical liberal rule of law and legal imperialism. Each of these three models highlights significant issues in relation to the use of plea bargaining in an international context. Whilst they offer both justifications and critiques, revealing a number of gaps and blind spots, elements of each offers something that can assist an understanding of the use of plea bargaining in such a controversial arena as international war crime tribunals. The thesis argues that, when considered together, a holistic approach begins to develop which offers a more nuanced approach to plea bargaining than is currently available. This analysis is assisted and illustrated by interviews with named participants in war crime tribunals. These assist in developing a more unique perspective on plea bargaining by contextualising its theoretical findings by placing them into the tangible and realistic contexts of legal practitioners. The thesis opens with an introduction which sets out its aims and objectives. After which there is a separate chapter that discusses the methodologies used in this thesis. This is then followed by two chapters that outline the role of the international tribunals and introduce the concept and to explain the trajectory of plea bargaining and its use in the global arena. The thesis then moves on to its more substantial chapters which evaluate the this particular legal phenomenon; the third explores the justifications for plea bargaining through the theory of utilitarianism, examining its relevance in light of the interview responses, whilst the fourth is concerned with the objections to plea bargaining that are contained within the concept of the classical rule of law. Here, once more, the interviews undertaken with legal practitioners are used to challenge the theoretical assumptions put forward by such liberal thinking. Building even further on these responses, the fifth chapter argues for a consideration of plea bargaining as a form of legal imperialism. The thesis concludes with a critical reflection that draws on its analysis of the three models to offer some recommendations concerning the future use of plea bargaining within the context of international war crime tribunals.

When talking about the importance of the agri-food production environment and the application of food safety and sanitary measures in it, a list of growing unfortunate related events come to mind such as: the rise of diseases coming from farming production, the rocketing of environmental degradation and overexploitation of genetic farmed pools, the economically important agri-food scares and overall, the opacity of agri-food production and regulation. This thesis examines the divergence between legal measures and legal application of global agri-food standards as a legitimacy crisis and has a twofold aim. First it aims to illustrate the role that regulatory legitimacy plays in effective compliance by studying the construction of regulatory legitimacy as a discursive practice. Second, and as a result of this the thesis asks how South Indian animal farming systems and international safety and sanitary measures construct their environmental normative legitimacy and introduce some implications for the animal farming/public health international debate. In this social constructivist approach, the thesis applies a combination of environmental discourse and framing analysis –discursive framings- to empirically study the construction of (non) formally binding norms in agri-food environments. These ´discursive framings´ it is argued, help represent the architectures of green compliance embedded in agro-environmental narratives, uncovered through the uses of language. In this way, framings help detect a variety of forms of (non) endorsement of safety and sanitary measures by regulatory stakeholders and with it, their role in ´racing standards to the top or to the bottom´ in agri-food regulation. An exploratory study comparing documents about safety and sanitary measures (believed to reinforce levels of safety and sanitary compliance in trade conflicts) in international dispute resolutions and interviews of key stakeholders in the field (believed to reflect safety and sanitary compliance in animal farming practice) in South India are conducted. The comparison of expected compliance between dispute formal documents and transcripts of actors under potential regulation provides insight into the discursive constitutions of legal and social safety and sanitary standards. It also informs on a number of counterproductive effects (cooptation, substitution or dilution of regulatory measures) when poor translation of normative preferences from global sanitary provisions of market access into the subnational agri-food environment begins to take place. The thesis empirically demonstrates how present public understandings of WTO-SPS Agreements in India have the potential to induce existent food safety and sanitary compliance into a race to the bottom increasing diseases from farmed animals in this country: given the consistent constellation of discursive voids that have left scientific knowledge out of agro-ecological and animal health present concerns, subnationally and internationally. The conceptual framework, the primary and secondary data and the analyses account for this complexity, namely, the convergences and voids left among discursive constellations of green compliance and their roles in existing models of agri-food regulation. Finally, the thesis presents the contributions to the study of Dryzek´s environmental discourses that a constructivist research like this can make to the study of legitimacy crises and efficacious regulation in general and between international market access, public health and the ago-environment in India (the case studied here) in particular.

The thesis analysed unique data collected in the Environmental Law Foundation (E.L.F.), a London-based charity with a network of legal advisers located throughout the UK. It had two main purposes: firstly, to prove that costs constitute a barrier to judicial review and; secondly, to understand better the concept of environmental justice in light of polycentricity. Environmental justice focuses on patterns of disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards and promotes increased access to information and participation in decision-making. Adjudication is said to have a limited role in achieving environmental equity as it rarely addresses issues of political and economic distribution. The thesis analysed the UNECE Aarhus Convention which is binding in the UK. It is alleged that the UK Government is in breach of the Convention’s third pillar which requires access to a review procedure not to be “prohibitively expensive” (art 9(4)). E.L.F. receives calls for support from primarily poor communities facing environmental problems and refers the viable ones to a legal adviser for free initial advice. The study reviewed 774 referrals focusing on 219 of these at various stages of judicial review. A half of these referrals received a negative opinion as to the prospects of success at judicial review and the remaining half were advised to proceed. In the latter pool there were 54 cases which were prevented by the cost barrier. A significant number concluded in out-of-court/in-court settlement. The latter sample consisted of planning law-based claims which are polycentric due to the variety of involved interests. The data was also matched with the Indices of Multiple Deprivation to show polycentricity. The findings were analysed through the participatory thesis of judicial review and the concept of limits of adjudication. Thus access to adjudication may create opportunities for engagement and contributes to achieving environmental justice.

This doctoral thesis firstly examines the issues surrounding the retrospective deployment of criminal law in the context of international War Crimes Trials, specifically the empirical model presented by the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals 1945-46 at the end of the Second World War. Secondly, it evaluates the theoretical perspectives and ambiguities within the writings of Carl Schmitt during the period from 1912 until the immediate aftermath of WWII. Thirdly, it extrapolates an analytical model from Schmitt’s work with which to scrutinise and evaluate the utilisation of ex post facto criminal law at Nuremberg. Established literature deals comprehensively with the prevailing state of international law prior to Nuremberg, whilst there is also a wealth of documentary evidence and academic commentary, both laudatory and critical upon the prelude to the Trial proceedings and the ensuing juridical process. This thesis, however, focuses upon the deficits inherent within the hitherto largely undifferentiated notion of ‘retrospectivity’ and the formulation of an appropriate typography of the retroactive strands latent within it. Following an elucidation of the historical significance and provenance of the doctrine: nullum crimen sine lege nullum crimen sine lege praevia; nulla poena sine lege praevia, that is, ‘no crime and no punishment without previously established law’, it explores and evaluates the salient provisions of the Nuremberg Charter unilaterally enacted by the Allies on 8th August, 1945, under which the entire trial proceedings were subsequently governed. The segments of the Charter ostensibly reliant upon the deployment of ex post facto criminal law are extracted, analysed and linked to the relevant strands of retrospectivity, identified within the postulated typography. The thesis also explores the defining qualities and assumptions of a Schmittian approach to domestic and international law and the extent to which this is derived from the seminal theory of Thomas Hobbes. Several monographs and numerous articles have been devoted to scrutiny of the writings of Schmitt but none have dealt specifically with his international law perspective towards retrospectivity or, in consequence, the nature and limits of such analysis. Extrapolation of an analytical model/interpretative scheme and application of it to the specific issues arising from the concept of retrospectivity, in the particular context of Nuremberg, also facilitates formulation of a critique of the viability of this stance. In an age of seemingly burgeoning war crimes and crimes against humanity, the need to punish alleged perpetrators is manifest. This thesis, however, suggests that even a Schmittian perspective is capable of illuminating the toxic ramifications of violation of the ‘rule of law’ in furtherance of this perceived imperative.

This thesis examines the central research questions as to what extent the Irish language plays a significant role in the Irish legal system and how parties seeking to utilise the legal in the legal system fare. The thesis applies standard jurisprudential research methodologies in analysing the key legal developments which have occurred in Ireland from independence in 1922 until today where Ireland is a modern constitutional democracy and member of the European Union. The role of the 1937 Constitution, in particular, is key given the strong legal reliance upon its text in determining the legal status of the Irish language and the extent to which that status can be relied upon in legal proceedings. By interpreting case law from the foundation of the State through until the seminal case of Ó Beoláin in 2001 the gradual development of Irish language rights can be charted. The implications of the Ó Beoláin decision are examined including many of the cases which came about in the immediate aftermath of the case. Among the consequences of the Ó Beoláin case was the Official Languages Act, 2003 which imposed new obligations upon the State and State agencies as well as notionally providing additional supports for those seeking to access justice through the medium of Irish. The effectiveness of this legislation is examined together with recent developments such as the trend towards legal realism and the implications arising out of the Irish language’s interaction with international law. Legal education and training through the medium of Irish is identified as a key factor which contributed to all of areas identified. The provision of services and the ability to access justice through the medium of Irish ultimately depends on there being professionals with sufficient Irish to provide services. The dissonance between the notional status of the Irish language and the reality faced by those seeking to access justice through the medium of Irish is a constant theme throughout the thesis.