This thesis examines the legal authority of non-state rules in international commercial contracts and their application in state courts. Non-state rules can be divided in uncodified rules and codified rules. Uncodified non-state rules are general principles of law, practices, trade usages, and custom. They have a customary origin. Codified non-state rules are model laws, restatements of law, standard terms and conditions, and guidelines. They are created by international organisations and trade associations. Non-state rules have legal authority in the national and the international sphere. Their legal authority can be established by looking at different factors: promulgator, substance, support, and application. It is especially the last factor which plays a deciding role in measuring their legal authority. This thesis uses three main case studies: France, England, and the US to understand the legal authority of non-state rules. After having established what non-state rules are and how their legal authority can be measured this thesis concentrates on their application in courts. It asks three important questions: when can non-state rules be applied? When are they applied? And how are they applied? There are four scenarios in which non-state rules are applied in descending degrees of legal authority: first of all, they are applied as the applicable law to the contract, secondly they are applied as sources of domestic law, thirdly they are used to interpret the applicable law, and fourthly they are applied as contractual rules. Legislations have a preference for uncodified non-state rules such as trade usages and general principles. These are often sources of domestic law. To apply these uncodified non-state rules judiciary resorts to codified non-state rules to go from the general principle to the practical application. After studying the application of non-state rules in depth, this thesis concludes with a framework and classification that leads to understanding the legal authority of non-state rules.

The relationship of international investment law (IIL) with the rule of law is an increasingly important topic. There is a broad agreement that the rule of law is a guiding notion for IIL and investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS), both in terms of their own operation and regarding the obligations imposed on host States. One of these obligations – the FET standard – has been specifically interpreted as requiring respect for certain fundamental rule of law principles such as predictability, non-arbitrariness and transparency. The principal argument of this thesis is that the FET standard should be seen, in addition to securing international rule of law for foreign investors, as a tool to strengthen the national rule of law in the host States. Progressive development of the FET subprinciples should be complemented with a systematic taking into account the existing national rule of law framework in a host State. This can both enhance ex ante predictability of FET decision-making, and allow for other broader benefits that come out of rule of law improvement. The proposed approach would involve a systematic recourse to a holistic set of existing municipal and international obligations beyond the investment treaty so to help interpret and apply the FET standard. These obligations embody a specific national vision of the rule of law that should be given recognition and support, within limits and without jeopardizing the international character of the IIL norms. Furthermore, decision-making can be enhanced by having recourse to comparative benchmarks to provide persuasiveness of determinations and by limiting the role of good faith considerations. With a complementary focus on the national rule of law, investment awards can become a clearer source for suggesting needed reforms, bringing benefits to a wider circle of domestic stakeholders and more broadly supporting the host State development.

My thesis critically examines whether Malaysian laws on Muslim women’s rights are harmonious with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (Women’s Convention). I argue that the interpretation of ‘equality’ is the key to constructing the possibilities of harmonisation. In my conceptual analysis of rights in Islamic and international legal jurisdictions and declarations and in feminist discourse, I argue that both Islamic and international legal jurisprudences present rights as an instrument for equality among human beings. I argue that the principles of equality according to the Islamic jurisprudence and feminists’ standpoint are harmonious. I argue that Malaysia has taken appropriate measures, including laws, policies, administrative decisions and programmes, to eliminate women’s disadvantages based on the principal areas of concern and recommendations made by the CEDAW in its Thirty-Fifth Session. However, there are a few areas that need specific improvement for the betterment of the laws, policies, administrative decisions and programmes in securing Muslim women’s equality rights. I explore whether reservation of Article 16 (1) (a), (c), (f) and (g), pertaining to different entitlements to rights for women and men in Muslim marriage and family relations entered by the Malaysian Government to ensure the prevalence of Shariah practised in Malaysia, renders Malaysian Muslim women’s rights laws irreconcilable with the principle of equality underpinning the Women’s Convention. I argue that Malaysian laws may become harmonious with the Women’s Convention through a womanist interpretation of Shariah, and the empowerment of the rights-bearer within the Women’s Convention’s wider objectives.

In 2012, Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) were elected in 41 police forces across England and Wales. This reform significantly changed the structure for police governance for the first time since the formalisation of the tripartite system in the Police Act 1964. Elected by the local public, with powers to set the police budget, hold the Chief Constable to account, create local policing strategies through public consultation, and allocate funding for community safety activities, PCCs were criticised as likely to have omnipotent power and potentially politicising the police. This theoretically driven thesis uses urban political analysis to identify the impact of these new actors on local community safety policy, specifically how the agenda is set in negotiation with other relevant actors, and the type of agenda that this negotiation produces. The multiple-embedded comparative case study design enables insight into the significance of the English and Welsh Context for PCCs, through the examination of two case study sites: Bristol, in Avon and Somerset, and Cardiff, in South Wales. Through the use of interviews, document analysis, observations and social media analysis, the impact of PCCs on local community safety agendas is evidenced to be limited due to their necessary operation within a policy network, in which other actors have community safety agenda-setting responsibilities, and resources to pursue these. The creation of PCCs’ agenda is reliant on local contingencies within the policy network, including PCCs’ claims to expertise and how they view their role, how other agencies engage with the new actor, and the local context of the case study site. This dependence on established agencies within the policy network, results in convergence of PCCs’ agendas, focused on risk management and situational crime prevention, favoured by local authorities in the era of austerity.

This thesis examines the challenges and opportunities associated with embedding Evidence Based Policing (EBP) by using a case study of a single metropolitan police force. In order to achieve this aim, the thesis objectives are to examine: the sources that officers and staff draw upon to inform their decision making; how they understand EBP and research evidence; the extent to which they use research evidence; and their perceptions regarding the organisational challenges, and opportunities, to engage with, and embed EBP. A triangulation mixed methods design is used to explore this. The thesis demonstrates the significance of role in relation to EBP and it is suggested that the heterogeneity of ‘policing’ should be more widely scrutinised by policy makers and scholars. Within the case study force, the thesis also identified variance in how the concepts of research evidence and EBP are understood, with no consistent understanding of the term. Consequently, ambiguity exists regarding the expectations of officers and staff in implementing EBP within their role. This thesis also highlights the necessity to build the capability of officers and staff in relation to EBP, in particular their skills for critical appraisal of research evidence and other knowledge sources, including professional experience. The thesis also reports that the nature of crime and demand was perceived to be changing and that the existing ‘evidence base’ was not perceived to reflect the nature of crime and demand that the police force deals with. The thesis makes recommendations for a re-conceptualisation of EBP, to encompass a range of information sources including research evidence, with an emphasis on the importance of a shared understanding of EBP within the police force. The proposed model encompasses a range of information sources including research evidence, professional experience, organisational information, stakeholder views and national guidance. It also suggests a need to draw more heavily on public perception as an information source in police decision making. The term ‘Informed Policing’ is favoured, rather than EBP to better reflect the more inclusive conceptualisation and emphasis on the critical appraisal of knowledge sources.

The central goal of the current thesis is to understand the experience of crime committed by various types of offenders and, in so doing to examine its psycho-social and criminal background correlates. This is explored by drawing on a narrative approach. This approach includes both the episodic roles criminals play during the crime as well as broader aspects of their understanding of their life story. A consequent research question is the relationship between their life narratives and their conceptualisation of their roles when committing their crimes. This perspective views the immediate components of the criminal experience as emotional and cognitive, essentially subjective in nature, thus self-report measures are used to uncover these internal processes. In the current thesis, the Narrative Roles Questionnaire (NRQ) was used. This is a standardized, quantitative method designed to reveal an offender’s crime narratives. In addition to the NRQ an offender’s general view of self/world and life was measured with the Life Narrative Questionnaire which is composed of positive and negative life narrative themes. The offenders’ history of offending was measured by the D-60 (History of Offending Questionnaire) which consists of three distinct offending styles, namely Instrumental, Sensory and Power. All these measures, along with a demographic information were completed by 468 Turkish prison inmates. Each questionnaire was translated into Turkish. Reliability and validity analyses revealed more than satisfactory results, which indicated the applicability of these scales in Turkish culture. Results indicated a consistency between life and offence narratives in terms of strength. This suggests that independent of the direction (negative vs positive), offenders who have a strong attitude towards themselves/life/world have a stronger commitment to the roles they enact during the offence. There was also a significant relationship between history of offending styles and offence roles. This showed that except for the Victim role, all offence roles are associated with aspects of the history of offending. This differentiates the Victim role from others as being more circumstantial and not associated with previous criminal behaviour. These results are relevant to developing different rehabilitation strategies for offenders based on the roles they enact during the offence. In addition, the results show that, while life outside of crime has more predictive power for the Victim and Hero NRQ roles, for others history of offending behaviour has more predictive power. The results of the third relationship, between the life narrative themes and history of offending styles, show that a negative life narrative theme is associated with a history of Instrumental and Sensory offending styles. Whereas a positive life narrative is associated with the Power offending style. Also, offenders with a strong attitude towards life/world/themselves score higher on the Power offending style. These results uncover the relationship between criminal history and how offenders see themselves/life and world outside of crime. There is evidence supporting specialisation in offending because distinct factors emerged in the history of offending scale. Each offending style is shown to be associated with different psycho-social and criminal background characteristics. The results show that the effects of an offender’s attitude towards a) their lives outside of crime, b) their history of criminal behaviour, and c) their experience of crime, vary based on the narrative roles they enact during the offence. Furthermore, the results show that life narrative themes moderate the relationship between history of offending styles and offence roles, which indicates that one’s view of self/life/world (which is accepted as a dynamic, changing and unfolding factor) has an impact on how history of offending (which is a static, unchanging factor) affects the offence role choice which is an immediate experiential aspect of crime. The major methodological contribution is the adaptation of the three primary measures to the Turkish context and the work shows the high ecological validity of these scales in a novel cultural context. Along with presenting an understanding of the experiential aspects of criminality, the major theoretical contribution of the current thesis is to provide empirical evidence for the theory that there is consistency in an offender’s behaviours in crime and outside of crime, and that this consistency is effectively revealed through the application of narrative theory. The theory and results open paths to the development of rehabilitation and crime prevention strategies by targeting life narratives of offenders. They point to the potential development of interview techniques based on offence roles. Furthermore, there are applications of the history of offending and offence role relationships to police investigations; understanding the revealed associations would help investigators to infer offender characteristics.

The present thesis explores how both ‘live’ (current) and ‘cold’ (often unresolved) UK homicide investigations are currently, and have been in the past, conducted. In contrast to other related research, it focuses in particular on underpinning theory, organisational processes and investigator practice. By comparing ‘cold’ and ‘current’ homicide investigations, it explores their investigative similarities and differences, and also other more complex factors that have combined to alter the way in which approaches to both, as well as their outcomes, have changed over time. To offer a rounded, holistic overview of the field, a range of perspectives on homicide investigation are presented, first the detail in case and process-specific datasets at three levels, specifically individual cases, Force–level approaches and National overviews, and second, the personal and professional experiences of lead investigators, the Senior Investigating Officers, which also explores how perspective and context can influence these investigations. The early chapters explore the theoretical and practical underpinning influencing the ‘scenario’ of a homicide investigation and how those have changed and impacted on investigations differently over time. They also evidence key differences between ‘initial’ and ‘subsequent’ investigations, new knowledge that in turn provides a rationale for adopting a fresh approach, namely one that rather than considering individual investigations in isolation, instead views the ‘investigative lifetime’ of a Homicide, and its management and evolution through multiple investigations and reviews, as a single process, -an ‘investigative continuum’, within which a single investigation or review is merely one part of the whole. Later chapters explore a holistic overview of Homicide investigations, both historic and current. Specifically, they explore how Homicide-related deaths are recorded and managed at three separate levels, namely the single ‘death event’, within clusters of ‘unresolved’ cases, and by national overviews and perspectives. They also examine the specific methodology, policy, and practice of Homicide investigations, comparing case data at every level with the personal perspectives of experienced senior investigators. From this they identify a range of shortfalls and opportunities for innovation. Firstly they question the value of these datasets as generally-accepted references for ‘stakeholders’ of Homicide investigations, and by challenging the historic and current capability and capacity of extant datasets and processes to support and manage effective investigations, and particularly unresolved or historic investigations, they argue the need for better and more useful databases to be developed. Secondly, they identify a range of process and procedural practices that of themselves can influence investigative outcomes, and from this propose a range of new measures to enhance investigative practice throughout the investigative continuum’, for example adopting investigative approaches that anticipate failure rather than success and thus better prepare investigations to avoid such failure, and arising from this concept, new approaches that properly capture and preserve investigative material in a form that creates investigative ‘time capsule’s; -repositories of material and information more fit to be revisited by future enquiries. The research also explores the actual decisions made by Senior Investigating Officers in real homicide investigations with different outcomes, in context, and over time. Using new methodology it categorises these decisions according to their intended impact, and then contrasts them with contemporaneous investigative ‘events’. From this it identifies a range of specific patterns in decision-making that appear to influence investigative outcomes for better or worse, findings which not just support and extend the understanding of ‘tipping points’ observed by other studies, but which go further, firstly by identifying new and additional factors in the investigative process, termed ‘transition points’, and secondly by suggesting that these appear, both in isolation and in interraction with ‘tipping points’, to influence investigative outcomes in complex and hitherto unrecognised ways. The four perspectives provided by the research thus identify a range of issues and explore how they have combined to impact upon homicide investigations both historic and current, across the 'investigative continuum’ to date. From this the research establishes firstly that a range of identifiable differences exist between ‘initial’ and ‘subsequent’ homicide investigations and the processes which govern them, secondly that these differences can impact upon investigative outcomes, and third, how this can happen. It offers a range of new knowledge, concepts and approaches, almost wholly hitherto unrecognised in related research, and identifies how both individually and taken together these can influence different aspects of homicide investigation such that these factors and how they operate can be better understood. Finally, the research findings also suggest a range of opportunities to utilise this new learning to influence not just existing investigations, but also those of future homicide events, and proposes a range of opportunities both for further research and for practical changes in investigative policy, practice, and delivery designed to in order to stimulate and improve investigative understanding, outcomes, and ‘success’.

Until the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) came into force in 2004 trans people in the UK were not able to legally change their birth certificates and other documents to accurately reflect the way they experienced their gender identity. Previous case law defined sex and gender in primarily biological terms and made several highly problematic assumptions about trans people. For example, it assumed that trans people were intentionally deceiving either potential partners or indeed the state, by wanting to access marriage rights while being in homosexual relationships. The GRA has supposedly revolutionised gender rights in the UK by moving away from a biological understanding of sex/gender and by making it possible for trans people to change their birth certificates, gain access to legal rights, and as a result enjoy protection against discrimination. However, it contains several provisions that effectively encourage trans people to regulate their gender identity. This regulation aims to enforce a binary gender framework; regardless of whether this binary reflects people's own understanding of gender. Overall, the GRA seems designed to create subjects that govern their behaviour and self-expression in a way that aligns with a purely binary model of sex/gender and sexuality. Although a deviation from these norms does not incur any direct punishment it indirectly leads to a denial of rights and legal protections, which is particularly worrisome when considering the impact on those people, who are not just unwilling, but unable to meet the standards set out in the GRA. By reviewing relevant legislation and case law, and through qualitative research with people engaged with the GRA, I argue that instead of uncritically accepting or completely rejecting the GRA trans people engage with this law in a more sophisticated way. The GRA does not accurately reflect many trans people's own understanding of their gender identity or their sexuality. As a result people have to make strategic choices about how they present themselves to officials throughout the recognition process.

Giorgio Agamben's work is a constant presence in the current critical debate over sovereign power, law and politics. With the more than two decades long series Homo sacer, he has traversed the borders of academic disciplines, providing renewed sources of inquiry for the orientation before the contemporary widespread and violent biopolitical-economic administration of life. This research project investigates some of the central themes of the critical account of legal and political thought that Agamben has offered in his works. The eight chapters composing this thesis are conceived as specific theoretical paths through Agamben's oeuvre, which in their autonomy and mutual interaction aim at offering a, hopefully, meaningful contribution to the field of continental legal philosophy. In this work, I argue that Agamben's Homo sacer project provides a fundamental theoretical framework for the comprehension of the role and functions of law and sovereign power in biopolitical regimes. The central thesis that this project advances is that Agamben's interrogation of juridical and political thought and of ontology uncover a missing link in the problematic separation of sovereignty and law from governmental practices that the discourse on biopolitics has inadvertently inherited from Foucault's work. Agamben succeeds in doing this in two main ways: first, he redefined the contours of the theory of sovereignty in relation to biopolitics (shading light over the tight bond that ties together sovereign power, life and governmental practices); second, with the idea of "form of life" he has disclosed a biopolitical interpretation of law, providing, also, the ground for an innovative theory of the subject. This work, thus, is structured in two parts. The first part has been organised around Agamben's engagement with the question of sovereign power. Rather than focusing on the problems of the state of exception or the camp - given that the critical literature on such topics is more than abundant - I proceed with the analysis of sovereignty, as a "normalising power", in its relation to life and the idea of government. The second part of the thesis, instead, has been devoted to the disentanglement of the concept of the "form of life". A form of life is a life that has been put-in-form, actualised in a given (legal or social) institution, and trapped under the yoke of sovereign power. While the tone and the plane of analysis of the two parts could be sometimes divergent, they intersect on a central point: sovereignty as the power to establish the criteria of normality of the political community, to decide on the forms of life that are "inside or outside" the legal and political order. Sovereignty, in this regard, lays down, from time to time, the limits of the social and political life of the state, and in doing so, decide which forms of "life" are a part of it (and thus worthy of protection), and which are excluded.

A new Model of Burglary Differentiation is proposed based on the central question: how do the psychological interpretations of the domestic burglary offending styles, patterns and offender characteristics relate to a social hypothesis of this crime? Reiss and Farrington (1991) suggest burglary is most commonly committed in groups. As such, the behavioural variations are investigated in relation to an individual’s position within their social network structure. A unique police database, collected from 2011 to 2015, is examined. The data was obtained from a population of offences within a major metropolitan city in the United Kingdom. It consists of 8,491 domestic burglaries (686 solved and 7,805 unsolved). A further 1,017 convicted burglaries from the Police National Computer database are also included. Initial investigation of the differences between solved and unsolved domestic burglaries provided crucial insight to the validity of modelling crime and the utility of the data. Behavioural analysis identified a good relationship between solved and unsolved domestic burglaries, validating the use of this data in modelling burglary and highlighting the evidence required in burglary detection. To provide further clarification of the sample, the behavioural co-occurrences were examined with the aim of identify distinct variations in domestic burglary. Co-offending burglary was apparent in 60% of cases, thus supporting the social hypothesis of burglary. Smallest-Space Analysis (SSA) systematically revealed thematic behavioural differences between offenders in solved and unsolved offences. It was hypothesised that through examination of the offence characteristics, offender traits, and criminal history, behavioural differentiation of burglary could be determined. Four behavioural patterns are identified: Skilled Domestic, Interpersonal, Forceful, and Non-Domestic. The succeeding study predicted offender characteristics from the previously identified behavioural styles, hypothesising differing criminal experience across offending actions. A new Model of Burglary Differentiation was found, across distinct stages of development based on the offender’s age and experience, labelled: Skilled Domestic, Versatile, Opportunistic and Non-Domestic. The prominence of co-offending within the sample allowed for a social-psychological framework of domestic burglary to be investigated. The analysis identified three distinct types of domestic burglary networks: Starter, Core, and Structured. The criminal histories of the co-offending networks were then examined, finding a robust framework of identifying criminal differentiation, with evidence of specialisation to Material, Power, and Vehicle related crime. The final study demonstrates a social-psychological framework of domestic burglary by drawing on the findings of the previous studies. The findings identify small-scale domestic burglary organisations formed through role differentiation. This has significant implications in the use of quantitative information in drawing psychological interpretations of co-offending information. The research demonstrates the utility of a social network framework for understanding the behavioural, social and psychological characteristics of burglary offenders. This suggests further exploration of the social interdependence between offenders and how individuals provide support in offending behaviours. The implications of uncovering a social-psychological framework of domestic burglary and how it contributes to theoretical, methodological and practical settings are discussed.